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Larry Shyatt: Why Great Followers Matter · Uncommon Impact

• 0:01
  Nathan Whitaker: Today's guest is Larry Shyatt.
• 0:03
  Nathan Whitaker: Larry was the head basketball coach at Clemson University at the University of Wyoming twice, and then a longtime assistant at the University of Florida, winning a couple of national championships there - at Providence, at Cleveland State, and with the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA.
• 0:18
  Nathan Whitaker: Larry is a full-time mentor.
• 0:20
  Nathan Whitaker: He is retired, quote unquote, from basketball, but is still doing a lot of work, building into others with his clinics, with calls, with consultant work.
• 0:29
  Nathan Whitaker: Larry just has a mindset of mentorship and how he can help other people get better.
• 0:36
  Nathan Whitaker: He's got a servant's heart, as you'll see, come across.
• 0:39
  Nathan Whitaker: Some of our mutual friends that were fun to talk about, Brendan Suhr, longtime coach in the NBA, and on Chuck Daly's dream team staff.
• 0:48
  Nathan Whitaker: It's great to hear Larry's heart as he shares about these things.
• 0:51
  Nathan Whitaker: So, Larry, thanks so much for being with me.
• 0:53
  Nathan Whitaker: I really appreciate you being a part of Uncommon Impact.
• 0:57
  Larry Shyatt: Well, I'm glad to be here, and you know family is family to me.
• 1:01
  Larry Shyatt: You and your mom and dad are family, so let's roll.
• 1:06
  Nathan Whitaker: Thanks.
• 1:06
  Nathan Whitaker: Thanks so much.
• 1:06
  Nathan Whitaker: Let me just jump in then.
• 1:08
  Nathan Whitaker: When we talk about leadership, when we talk about what it means to live an uncommon life, who's somebody who impacted you early, who made you start thinking about some of those things?
• 1:17
  Larry Shyatt: I think I think the people that I admired the most and respected the most as a youngster were my coaches and teachers.
• 1:25
  Larry Shyatt: So, you know, it was like about giving, and I'm not sure I had the intellect to do anything else.
• 1:33
  Larry Shyatt: So I went to college thinking I'm probably going to be either a physical educator or a coach someday.
• 1:41
  Larry Shyatt: In my vintage, the difference between a high school coach and a college coach was minuscule.
• 1:48
  Larry Shyatt: I mean, the salaries were quite the same.
• 1:51
  Larry Shyatt: It was just, do you want to get in a classroom and have your summers off?
• 1:56
  Larry Shyatt: Or do you want to coach but spend all summer recruiting?
• 2:03
  Larry Shyatt: Really, those were the trade-offs.
• 2:06
  Larry Shyatt: But salary, power, uh, all those things associated with, you know, leadership in some degree, they were inseparable.
• 2:17
  Nathan Whitaker: So what made you pick the one where you had to spend your summers recruiting?
• 2:21
  Larry Shyatt: I sort of thought it was exciting.
• 2:23
  Larry Shyatt: We had just got married.
• 2:25
  Larry Shyatt: We I got married 24.
• 2:26
  Larry Shyatt: She was 21.
• 2:28
  Larry Shyatt: We'd been married 51 years, uh, Pam, my soulmate.
• 2:32
  Larry Shyatt: And, you know, we both were just excited.
• 2:34
  Larry Shyatt: We'd never been west of Ohio.
• 2:36
  Larry Shyatt: We took a GA job at the University of Utah, and we took our dog and a Volkswagen Rabbit, and there we were.
• 2:44
  Nathan Whitaker: Wow.
• 2:44
  Nathan Whitaker: So so those are the early days.
• 2:46
  Nathan Whitaker: Let me jump ahead a little bit to when you're I heard a stat the other day that I think just kind of encapsulates who you are, that you have been an assistant for three coaches who were either in the Naismith Hall of Fame or are about to be, and that all of them were younger than you.
• 3:05
  Nathan Whitaker: Right.
• 3:06
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you so one that speaks to some level of humility, right?
• 3:10
  Nathan Whitaker: That I think on your behalf, that you're willing to, on their behalf for hiring, but on your behalf for um being around somebody who's younger.
• 3:18
  Nathan Whitaker: Sometimes people chafe when they've got a young leader.
• 3:21
  Nathan Whitaker: Um, what was that like for you?
• 3:24
  Larry Shyatt: It's a unique question, a unique situation.
• 3:27
  Larry Shyatt: I don't think there's ever been a basketball coach at any level that has that situation where, you know, Rick Barnes, Billy Donovan, Rick Carlisle all will be in the Hall of Fame.
• 3:38
  Larry Shyatt: And I actually was older than all of them serving as an assistant.
• 3:42
  Larry Shyatt: I never felt like I worked for any of those three.
• 3:46
  Larry Shyatt: I always felt like I was serving Clemson or Providence or Florida or the Dallas Mavericks.
• 3:54
  Larry Shyatt: And I think that's what separates you.
• 3:56
  Larry Shyatt: You have to have a servant's mentality.
• 3:59
  Larry Shyatt: Um, you know, all these books about leadership are great, all these seminars are wonderful.
• 4:04
  Larry Shyatt: I talk to Brendan all the time and Coach Donovan about them.
• 4:08
  Larry Shyatt: It's just not me.
• 4:09
  Larry Shyatt: I feel like followers are far more relevant and far more important than leaders.
• 4:18
  Larry Shyatt: Some of the worst people in the history of the world were leaders, maybe with greatness, because of the amount of people who followed and maybe shouldn't have.
• 4:32
  Larry Shyatt: Because we know right from wrong.
• 4:34
  Larry Shyatt: We really do.
• 4:35
  Larry Shyatt: And without getting political, religious, or otherwise, I find it more fascinating that that many people can't plant their feet, take a stand when they know they should.
• 4:50
  Nathan Whitaker: All right, so let's just uh let's drill in on that just a tad.
• 4:54
  Nathan Whitaker: So you've got, you know, Rick Carlisle or Billy Donovan, any one of those three.
• 5:00
  Nathan Whitaker: Uh do you remember in a time or an example or something where they're like, hey, Larry, we're gonna do X and say that to the staff, and you say thinking, okay, if I'm gonna be a great follower, I have to stop them from going down that path.
• 5:12
  Nathan Whitaker: Would you have pulled them aside?
• 5:14
  Nathan Whitaker: Would you have said, hey, no, this needs to be a public conversation?
• 5:17
  Nathan Whitaker: How would you, as a great follower, how would you do that?
• 5:21
  Larry Shyatt: Well, when asked to do something that was completely immoral or against the rules in those days, which we have no rules now, right?
• 5:30
  Larry Shyatt: Right.
• 5:31
  Nathan Whitaker: But even if you're assuming they're like installing a defense, and you're like, okay, that's totally the wrong thing to do here.
• 5:36
  Larry Shyatt: Or something, you know.
• 5:37
  Larry Shyatt: That's part of coaching.
• 5:38
  Larry Shyatt: Like if you don't have people around you who are willing, again, to take a stand, to politely, especially when the door's closed, to say, hey, look, let's look at this.
• 5:52
  Larry Shyatt: Why don't we try this?
• 5:54
  Larry Shyatt: I mean, you have to have that.
• 5:56
  Larry Shyatt: If you have a bunch of people around you who only say, yes, yes, yes, Rick, yes, uh uh Billy, uh, yes, oh, that's wonderful.
• 6:06
  Larry Shyatt: I don't know how you're growing.
• 6:08
  Larry Shyatt: I I don't think that's part of it.
• 6:10
  Larry Shyatt: So it's important, but when it's a major issue, morality, right from wrong, hurting others, hurting other groups, uh language that is just not protected, those are things that always have bothered me, continue to bother me, and that's why I always tell Brendan and Billy, I admire you going to these seminars.
• 6:37
  Larry Shyatt: It's great.
• 6:38
  Larry Shyatt: But look, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, I can keep naming people who were fantastic leaders if you just qualify by the amount of people who followed them.
• 6:50
  Larry Shyatt: My concern is why?
• 6:52
  Larry Shyatt: Why did they do that?
• 6:53
  Larry Shyatt: If they knew they were doing wrong and hurting others, why would you hurt other people for the sake of a belief you have?
• 7:02
  Larry Shyatt: A religion you have, a political uh structure that you believe in?
• 7:09
  Larry Shyatt: Why would you still hurt other people?
• 7:12
  Larry Shyatt: If it was that important, if it was that wonderful, why wouldn't it be an opportunity for everyone?
• 7:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 7:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Love the thought about the uh the the great followers and what it takes to uh to do that.
• 7:25
  Nathan Whitaker: And that really captures so much of your spirit as well.
• 7:28
  Nathan Whitaker: Um, was there anything that that those three did?
• 7:31
  Nathan Whitaker: Uh Barnes, Donovan, Carlisle, where you were like, hey, there one of the things that fascinates me is how many different ways there are to win, or how many different ways there are to be successful, whether it's business or whatever.
• 7:45
  Nathan Whitaker: Things that they were dramatically different about?
• 7:47
  Nathan Whitaker: Uh anything that comes to mind as far as you know, there's different just different ways to get there.
• 7:52
  Larry Shyatt: Um well let's talk similarities first.
• 7:55
  Larry Shyatt: All three of those guys have an unbelievable inquisitive mind.
• 8:03
  Larry Shyatt: They're constantly asking questions, asking questions with the people around them.
• 8:09
  Larry Shyatt: I thought that was fascinating.
• 8:11
  Larry Shyatt: I've never been around somebody, and in all three cases, they you know, that they were consumed with finding out more of everything.
• 8:22
  Larry Shyatt: I thought that was fascinating.
• 8:23
  Larry Shyatt: Now, differently, uh I'll tell you what, uh three people couldn't drastically be more different teaching basketball.
• 8:33
  Larry Shyatt: You know, of course, when Barnsey and I took the Providence job, we were the young kids on the block.
• 8:39
  Larry Shyatt: I mean, it was uh it was John Thompson, it was Rollie Massamino, it was Louie Carnesecca, uh, uh Jim Calhoun.
• 8:47
  Larry Shyatt: I mean, all these power brokers for years had done it, and here we were the new kids on the block, and you know, you know, we were gonna we were gonna fight everybody every day for everything.
• 8:59
  Larry Shyatt: Consequently, with Billy, when I joined Billy, I remember, you know, Shy, come on, we've known each other.
• 9:05
  Larry Shyatt: And I said, Yeah, but Billy, I don't know Anthony Grant, and I don't know Donnie Jones.
• 9:10
  Larry Shyatt: I've never met them.
• 9:11
  Larry Shyatt: I'll be happy to fly in for a day, two days.
• 9:15
  Larry Shyatt: If they feel good about it, and you give me one dollar less than them, I have no problem.
• 9:21
  Larry Shyatt: I'd love to join, but but I feel guilty.
• 9:24
  Larry Shyatt: You win 22, 23 games every year.
• 9:27
  Larry Shyatt: Coach, I'd be scared we'd mess it up.
• 9:30
  Larry Shyatt: And it ended up being a blessing.
• 9:32
  Larry Shyatt: And then in Coach Carlisle's case, I don't know if you're aware of this, when when we won it all, the first uh championship ever in Mountain West history at Wyoming and cut the nets down, went to the NCAA in 2015.
• 9:48
  Larry Shyatt: I was that was it.
• 9:49
  Larry Shyatt: I had a five-year contract worth a lot of money.
• 9:53
  Larry Shyatt: And uh I just said, Pam, I got black circles under my eyes, I'm exhausted.
• 9:58
  Larry Shyatt: And for an older coach, it's like the beer commercial, it just doesn't get any better than this.
• 10:04
  Larry Shyatt: We had five seniors, they all graduated, we cut the nets down, Larry Nance was drafted in the first round.
• 10:11
  Larry Shyatt: I'm out, and I think I can pull this off.
• 10:14
  Larry Shyatt: The AD was a friend.
• 10:16
  Larry Shyatt: I said, Look, I'll give this back.
• 10:18
  Larry Shyatt: And - five years.
• 10:20
  Larry Shyatt: You got to hire one of my assistants.
• 10:23
  Larry Shyatt: I know I'm no idiot.
• 10:25
  Larry Shyatt: I know you probably pay them half of what you paid me, but in the end, they get stability.
• 10:31
  Larry Shyatt: Pam and I can walk with our chins up, and I'm no idiot, you're gonna get a lot more money in the department.
• 10:37
  Larry Shyatt: So it's a win-win.
• 10:38
  Larry Shyatt: And that's when Coach Carlisle contacted me a week or two later and said, Shy, nobody does that.
• 10:45
  Larry Shyatt: Nobody does that in this profession.
• 10:48
  Larry Shyatt: Come to the NBA, you'll love it.
• 10:50
  Larry Shyatt: I loved him, I loved Cuban, they were so generous.
• 10:54
  Larry Shyatt: I just wasn't a fit for the NBA.
• 10:56
  Larry Shyatt: But those were differences of how different leaders and different coaches handled different situations.
• 11:05
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, I love that.
• 11:06
  Nathan Whitaker: And, you know, the the talking about the similarities, I'm so glad you mentioned that.
• 11:10
  Nathan Whitaker: Um I was with Dave Roberts recently, Los Angeles Dodgers manager, and he was talking about managing the All-Star game and how fun it was to have the best at every position together, and then coaches from different teams, and they'd have these rounders where they'd talk about, oh, really, well, how do you pitch so-and-so?
• 11:28
  Nathan Whitaker: Or what do you do when somebody's coming at you with fastballs and whatever?
• 11:31
  Nathan Whitaker: And they were just openly sharing, right?
• 11:33
  Nathan Whitaker: Guys who were going to be competing in October were openly sharing and just talking about and asking questions that I don't understand this, or why is this happening?
• 11:42
  Nathan Whitaker: Um, but let me ask you about the one dollar less, okay?
• 11:45
  Nathan Whitaker: Because uh again, Rick Carlisle talked about leaving Wyoming and the nobody does that.
• 11:50
  Nathan Whitaker: Nobody does the one dollar less, right?
• 11:52
  Nathan Whitaker: A lot of people would say, no, no, I'll come, but I need one dollar more, right?
• 11:55
  Nathan Whitaker: I need the title of whatever, and I need one dollar more to make sure that people understand how important I am.
• 12:00
  Nathan Whitaker: What was your mindset?
• 12:01
  Nathan Whitaker: I mean, I kind of get an idea when you said I gotta get a dollar less.
• 12:06
  Larry Shyatt: My mindset was simply look, this was a time in my life I had just been fired at Clemson.
• 12:11
  Larry Shyatt: You're in the best, by far the best basketball conference in the history of college.
• 12:17
  Larry Shyatt: And so you feel like uh it's the most demeaning, uh embarrassing point in time.
• 12:23
  Larry Shyatt: You think everybody is aware that you're a loser.
• 12:26
  Larry Shyatt: So I was pretty down in the dumps at that time.
• 12:28
  Larry Shyatt: And consequently, this was Coach, I've I'd known him for years through Providence, and they were really good every year.
• 12:36
  Larry Shyatt: I hadn't realized that, I guess for three or four straight years they had lost in the first round, and he he was trying to compound that.
• 12:45
  Larry Shyatt: And so, like I told him, look, I don't want to mess this up.
• 12:48
  Larry Shyatt: You guys go 23 and 8 every year.
• 12:51
  Larry Shyatt: And so, in my mind, I had been an assistant coach 24 years before I ever got my first head job in '97 at Wyoming.
• 13:01
  Larry Shyatt: And so I knew uh how important and how tough it was in many cases to be a quality assistant coach.
• 13:12
  Larry Shyatt: And I also knew that Donnie Jones and Anthony Grant didn't know me.
• 13:16
  Larry Shyatt: And so I felt like, okay, if I'm gonna join this group and we're gonna try to elevate this thing, even yet another step.
• 13:24
  Larry Shyatt: That was to me at least an appropriate step.
• 13:29
  Nathan Whitaker: Got it.
• 13:29
  Nathan Whitaker: And, you know, to hear Donnie and Anthony and of course Billy now talk about it, not only did you not mess things up, um, but it was you coming in with your expertise and your background and your defense and your, you know, and Billy talks about how much you changed things, and and it speaks again to his willingness to be open even at 23 and 8 to say, okay, there's a better way to do this, and Larry can help us get there.
• 13:53
  Nathan Whitaker: Um, let me pivot just to
• 13:56
  Larry Shyatt: one quick story.
• 13:57
  Larry Shyatt: I've got to tell you this because you know, I was a guy who relied on mostly toughness, uh defense, uh rebounding, uh some of the things that aren't as spectacularly loved in basketball, but a lot of that was because I'd always been at a have-not program.
• 14:15
  Larry Shyatt: Uh, you know, uh Cleveland State, uh New Mexico, uh Providence, uh Clemson.
• 14:24
  Larry Shyatt: These were all, you know, the have-nots in the basketball world.
• 14:28
  Larry Shyatt: Here I'm coming to Florida, and I don't have to tell you what Gainesville can offer, both football, basketball, and more.
• 14:36
  Larry Shyatt: So this was a first for me, and that that made it a little different.
• 14:41
  Larry Shyatt: I remember the one of the first uh practices, and you know, Billy loved to go up and down.
• 14:47
  Larry Shyatt: Billy Ball.
• 14:48
  Larry Shyatt: Yeah, Billy Ball sounds cool if you got the talent that Billy Ball had.
• 14:52
  Larry Shyatt: And they're going back and forth.
• 14:54
  Larry Shyatt: I mean, I got a neckache at half court from watching this.
• 14:58
  Larry Shyatt: I said, I'm gonna go down at one end and just keep watching the D.
• 15:01
  Larry Shyatt: And it was sort of funny at first, but maybe the difference that I had in how I saw things, and maybe just a little bit here and a little bit there.
• 15:12
  Larry Shyatt: Like, if you can help a little bit, I I I've tried to always tell people like a servant's mentality is sort of like you gotta give more and take a little less.
• 15:26
  Larry Shyatt: So I felt like that coming in, and I just wanted to be a little bit of a helper.
• 15:32
  Larry Shyatt: Um, you know, think about this, Nathan.
• 15:35
  Larry Shyatt: Uh, when I went to Florida, and yes, I was older than Billy, I'm probably about 12 years older.
• 15:40
  Larry Shyatt: I don't even know exactly, but and I'd already been with Barnes nine years, and I was a couple years older than Barnsey, and that was not in vogue.
• 15:50
  Larry Shyatt: If you look at the top 75 to 80 programs in men's basketball now, almost every single one has an old fart like me, uh, for a variety of different reasons.
• 16:06
  Larry Shyatt: But it was not in vogue then.
• 16:07
  Larry Shyatt: I think the first was uh when the old coach from uh Holy Cross joined Jim Calhoun, and uh uh uh and then I think I was next in 2004 to join Florida, but now it it's it's pretty much a regular on everybody's staff for a lot of different reasons.
• 16:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 16:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, it always, you know, I never thought about it, honestly.
• 16:35
  Nathan Whitaker: And I remember looking at um at you and thinking that makes so much sense.
• 16:40
  Nathan Whitaker: And then and now you look at kind of so many times we've got um young great talents that come in, and I think, boy, it would be great to pair them with somebody who has seen a little more of life and a little more of whatever it may be, right?
• 16:54
  Nathan Whitaker: Whether it's basketball or the corporate world or whatever it is, but um somebody who can bring a little expertise as you did.
• 17:01
  Nathan Whitaker: So let me ask you then, let me just kind of pivot to your to your current mentoring and and so I don't know how long ago it was that you started the clinic at Florida, right?
• 17:12
  Nathan Whitaker: It's it's no cost to attend, just get yourself to Gainesville and and now it's in Charlotte.
• 17:18
  Nathan Whitaker: Um but just your way of of giving back, and it's this total openness of folks who are gonna compete against each other, and you know, you've got NBA, college, high school, assistants, head coaches, whatever, just in this open sharing setting.
• 17:34
  Nathan Whitaker: What what made you think to do that in the first place?
• 17:37
  Larry Shyatt: Well, let me give you a little history.
• 17:39
  Larry Shyatt: This is the 39th year, except for 39th years.
• 17:42
  Larry Shyatt: Wow.
• 17:43
  Larry Shyatt: And so this thing started because of a group who I call the the The Originals.
• 17:50
  Larry Shyatt: There was a group of eight head coaches way back in the 80s that used to meet at the Atlanta Airport Marriott, which still exists, by the way, every August.
• 18:01
  Larry Shyatt: Uh Bobby Hussey, Glenn Wilkes, uh, Gary Colson, Bill Foster, George Raveling, Murray Arnold, and there's still two of them still alive, Del Harris and Sonny Smith.
• 18:12
  Larry Shyatt: And they would come in the name of sharing and preparing, and they would talk about these different things that we talk about often, and then they'd go back, punch it into their program and see what fit.
• 18:25
  Larry Shyatt: So they told us, we actually were young assistants at one time, and in the late 80s, uh, a group of, let's see, Dave Odom, Seth Greenberg, myself, the late Ricky Birdsong, Kevin O'Neill, um, to name a few, and we got together, Jeff Van Gundy, and we got together, and they said, do the same thing, meet at a -.
• 18:49
  Larry Shyatt: We we did it at school, so one year at Arizona, one year at Providence, we're the host.
• 18:57
  Nathan Whitaker: Okay.
• 18:58
  Larry Shyatt: A group of maybe 12 guys from different parts of the country.
• 19:02
  Larry Shyatt: And how can you become a better assistant or better prepare your head coach or better prepare your team as an assistant coach?
• 19:10
  Larry Shyatt: So it grew, but like everything else, we got tired of each other.
• 19:13
  Larry Shyatt: Some of us became head coaches, some of us got fired, we got families.
• 19:18
  Larry Shyatt: Shyatt happens, it changed.
• 19:22
  Larry Shyatt: So now you know some of it.
• 19:25
  Larry Shyatt: Now I joined Billy.
• 19:26
  Larry Shyatt: It's 2004.
• 19:27
  Larry Shyatt: We've done it for years, and I tell Billy and Jeremy Foley, one of my great mentors of my whole life, about this.
• 19:36
  Larry Shyatt: And Jeremy jumps in and says, I think it's a great idea.
• 19:39
  Larry Shyatt: Let's do it, let's do it bigger.
• 19:41
  Larry Shyatt: So at that point, as an older coach, I felt like, okay, we need a change.
• 19:46
  Larry Shyatt: This isn't just about us preparing us.
• 19:49
  Larry Shyatt: We're on the back end of this thing.
• 19:51
  Larry Shyatt: Let's get as many as we could.
• 19:53
  Larry Shyatt: We could only fit a hundred in that women's club.
• 19:56
  Larry Shyatt: So there was a limit to how many we could invite.
• 19:58
  Larry Shyatt: I sent invites out every year.
• 20:01
  Larry Shyatt: And so let's see if we can help as many young coaches, black, white, old, young women.
• 20:09
  Larry Shyatt: Let's make it look like our country is supposed to look.
• 20:12
  Larry Shyatt: And let's put this clinic together.
• 20:14
  Larry Shyatt: And so we did that at Florida.
• 20:16
  Larry Shyatt: We must have done it 17, 18 straight years.
• 20:20
  Larry Shyatt: And then, you know, I'm I'm getting a little older.
• 20:23
  Larry Shyatt: My two boys wanted to be part of it and carry it on, but I'm not around.
• 20:27
  Larry Shyatt: And Charlotte made more sense.
• 20:29
  Larry Shyatt: Mike Hill, one of our dearest friends from Florida, was the AD.
• 20:34
  Larry Shyatt: So we moved it to Charlotte.
• 20:36
  Larry Shyatt: We had over 200.
• 20:37
  Larry Shyatt: We're gonna have over 250 next week, and it's grown.
• 20:41
  Larry Shyatt: Uh, it's a combination of college coaches, NBA coaches.
• 20:47
  Larry Shyatt: We're not allowed to have high school coaches because uh of the recruiting rules.
• 20:51
  Larry Shyatt: And uh, so we'll probably have about 150 college coaches and 80 to 100 NBA assorted personnel.
• 21:00
  Larry Shyatt: We've got a great lineup.
• 21:02
  Larry Shyatt: It keeps me connected to the game.
• 21:05
  Larry Shyatt: Uh Bilas asked me the other day, he said, Shy, how are you getting these guys?
• 21:09
  Larry Shyatt: You had Izzo, Golden, Pope, Underwood, uh uh uh all these guys last year.
• 21:14
  Larry Shyatt: This year you got Cali pari, Billy Donovan, uh uh Schertz, uh Brad Brownell, Jai Lucas, uh Bilas again.
• 21:23
  Larry Shyatt: And he says, How are you getting these guys?
• 21:25
  Larry Shyatt: I said, I gotta be honest, I think I'm getting so old, they feel sorry for me, so they just fantastic.
• 21:35
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, thanks for that history.
• 21:36
  Nathan Whitaker: And that so that totally makes sense.
• 21:37
  Nathan Whitaker: Because one of the things that, you know, I'd sit there and watch, and and I don't know any of the basketball, right?
• 21:42
  Nathan Whitaker: But but there's so many other principles that come out.
• 21:45
  Nathan Whitaker: Like, for instance, I remember one of y'all was doing a a rebounding drill or something with you know, you got the lid on the basket, so the ball can't go through.
• 21:53
  Nathan Whitaker: And and and talking about how you were gonna run the drill until the defense got the ball three times in a row, or whatever it was, and the and the drill and The drill would never end.
• 22:01
  Nathan Whitaker: And I thought, oh, that's so great, whether it's corporate America or whatever, this idea of incentivizing what we have, that it's not that, hey guys, rebounding is important.
• 22:09
  Nathan Whitaker: Guys, rebounding is so critical that we're gonna run the drill.
• 22:12
  Nathan Whitaker: It's gonna be our whole practice if the defense can't figure out how to get the rebound.
• 22:16
  Nathan Whitaker: And so it'll be all our time.
• 22:18
  Nathan Whitaker: If and I thought, uh, you know, so principles like that.
• 22:21
  Nathan Whitaker: But here's one of the things that just I loved.
• 22:24
  Nathan Whitaker: You finished, it's probably 10 years ago, and whoever the speaker was before lunch finished like 10 minutes early.
• 22:31
  Nathan Whitaker: And you got up there and you said, hey guys, we've got uh thanks so much for whoever that was, we've got uh 10 minutes left.
• 22:38
  Nathan Whitaker: And, you know, we can either head over to the women's club and they may be ready for us.
• 22:42
  Nathan Whitaker: If not, we can mingle for a bit, or does anybody have anything they want to share?
• 22:47
  Nathan Whitaker: And everybody looks around for a second, and Matt Painter is in the third row of metal folding chairs, and you know, he's however tall he is, and he gets himself up and he's like, Larry, if you don't mind, and he shuffles out of the and he comes out and he says, There's a drill that a high school coach had recently, maybe that's why I had high schoolers on the brain.
• 23:06
  Nathan Whitaker: He said, There's a drill I recently saw when I was recruiting, and a high school coach ran it, and I asked him about it, and he told me, and so here I'm gonna start using this, and here it is.
• 23:15
  Nathan Whitaker: And he starts laying out this drill.
• 23:16
  Nathan Whitaker: I have no idea what it was, it made no sense to me being a non-basketball guy.
• 23:20
  Nathan Whitaker: But he's laying it out, and I'm sitting there looking around, going, there's other Big Ten coaches in the room.
• 23:24
  Nathan Whitaker: There's other guys he's gonna be playing in March and April, and he's just going, hey, here's a great drill.
• 23:30
  Nathan Whitaker: You guys want it?
• 23:31
  Nathan Whitaker: Take it, use it if you think it can be helpful.
• 23:34
  Nathan Whitaker: And it just totally captured for me that whole spirit of why you and Fran Fraschilla and others just do this every year and are like, hey, if there's something you can learn from things I've done or things I've run across, take it.
• 23:46
  Nathan Whitaker: I just love that spirit.
• 23:48
  Larry Shyatt: Sharing can help preparing.
• 23:51
  Larry Shyatt: I I won't mention the coach's name.
• 23:53
  Larry Shyatt: There's a Hall of Fame coach I've been trying to get to this clinic forever.
• 23:58
  Larry Shyatt: Not interested, never was into sharing.
• 24:01
  Larry Shyatt: And that's okay, everybody's different.
• 24:03
  Larry Shyatt: But to be perfectly honest, the people who love the game, those are the people I'm most impressed with, and I want most of all to come to this clinic.
• 24:14
  Larry Shyatt: I talk about it all the time.
• 24:16
  Larry Shyatt: Like the people who care the most about you, the people who love you the most, if you think about it, they tell you things you don't want to hear, and they make you do things you don't want to do.
• 24:28
  Larry Shyatt: Those are really the people who love you the most.
• 24:31
  Larry Shyatt: And that is a broader spectrum of how you should be speaking to and reacting with your own team.
• 24:39
  Larry Shyatt: Because kids are pretty smart, they can see through a lot.
• 24:44
  Larry Shyatt: And it I'll give you one small illustration.
• 24:48
  Larry Shyatt: You know, most programs have self-improvement, you know, like go to Ronald McDonald's together or go to a soup kitchen and serve, and you know, they do things together.
• 24:58
  Larry Shyatt: And I we talked about it for years, and I said, hey guys, like you can't just have that for your guys, your team.
• 25:06
  Larry Shyatt: What are you saying?
• 25:07
  Larry Shyatt: You could be a better person.
• 25:10
  Larry Shyatt: The head coach and his family got to be there.
• 25:13
  Larry Shyatt: All the assistants have to be there.
• 25:15
  Larry Shyatt: They're not dummies.
• 25:16
  Larry Shyatt: They see, is this good for you?
• 25:19
  Larry Shyatt: If something's good for you, if something's really genuine, then it's good for them.
• 25:25
  Larry Shyatt: And obviously, I I believe in my heart that it's not an analytics, uh, uh, it's not a play, but people's caring and people's trust and love of one another sometimes is more important than what you scribble uh in that football play or what you scribble on that clipboard at a timeout.
• 25:53
  Larry Shyatt: Uh as an older coach, and and I was 60 by the time I went back, I never was going to be a head coach again, but I did it because of what I had learned at Florida.
• 26:02
  Larry Shyatt: And when I went back to Wyoming, like Jeremy, my son, was my assistant, he would say, Pops, you have nothing in common with these guys anymore.
• 26:10
  Larry Shyatt: You're you're 60.
• 26:11
  Larry Shyatt: They're like 18, 19.
• 26:12
  Larry Shyatt: If they don't fall in love with either who you are or how you do what you do, you have no chance.
• 26:20
  Larry Shyatt: So that sort of lit a bell.
• 26:23
  Larry Shyatt: Like there would be a timeout at least once a game, where I'd come back to the huddle and say, okay, guys, the way I see it, we got two pretty good choices here in the next couple possessions.
• 26:35
  Larry Shyatt: We can do boom or boom.
• 26:36
  Larry Shyatt: I'd say, Larry, Josh, pick one.
• 26:39
  Larry Shyatt: Because I I really felt like if they took ownership, it would be more strong than anything I would tell them to do.
• 26:51
  Larry Shyatt: And I think more young coaches, it's hard to give that up, but it's sort of like a young coach hiring an older head coach.
• 26:59
  Larry Shyatt: Um, I think it was something that was important that gave them, they had more to bite off those next two possessions because it was in their hands.
• 27:09
  Nathan Whitaker: Wow.
• 27:10
  Nathan Whitaker: No, that's that's fantastic, that idea of ownership.
• 27:13
  Nathan Whitaker: And uh wow, I love that.
• 27:16
  Nathan Whitaker: So thank you.
• 27:17
  Nathan Whitaker: So let me just uh you've you've been so gracious with your time, and as always, right?
• 27:21
  Larry Shyatt: It I mean that's just kind of been the watchword of uh I'm retired now, unless somebody out there is gonna hire my ass and bring me in there, although I can't leave Pam too often, so it would have to be on a consulting basis.
• 27:35
  Nathan Whitaker: Okay.
• 27:35
  Nathan Whitaker: All right.
• 27:36
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, let me just ask you this then, uh, because I think I, you know, to some extent I already know the answer, but but what does it mean to you this idea of impact and uncommon impact?
• 27:45
  Nathan Whitaker: And as you move forward in in whatever stages you know you're at here with your consultancy or you're or you're not leaving the house too often, um, what does it look like beyond even uh the clinics?
• 27:56
  Nathan Whitaker: I mean, what does that look like?
• 27:57
  Nathan Whitaker: Uh an uncommon impact as you move forward.
• 27:59
  Larry Shyatt: I think a lot of guys that coached in my generation share the same guilt.
• 28:04
  Larry Shyatt: Uh I I didn't do it out of lack of love and care, but the time away from family for 45 years of coaching was immense.
• 28:16
  Larry Shyatt: And even when you were visibly with maybe your three boys in my case, your mind was somewhere else on some 16-year-old junior.
• 28:26
  Larry Shyatt: Um, so that guilt followed me, and that's why, although, you know, I don't have to tell you, Pam wasn't the happiest cat in the world when I gave away what I gave away with five years left on a contract.
• 28:38
  Larry Shyatt: But I tried to tell her inside, I felt like, okay, it's time.
• 28:43
  Larry Shyatt: It's time I gave this girl and these three guys and now five grandkids, like more important time.
• 28:51
  Larry Shyatt: Do I still want to be part of the basketball board?
• 28:54
  Larry Shyatt: Yes.
• 28:55
  Larry Shyatt: Do I would I still consider a consultant here and there if it fit?
• 28:59
  Larry Shyatt: Yes.
• 29:00
  Larry Shyatt: But what I missed, or maybe what they missed, I couldn't get it back, but I sure could do something about it during these years.
• 29:09
  Larry Shyatt: And that's what we've tried to do the last uh six years.
• 29:14
  Nathan Whitaker: That's great.
• 29:14
  Nathan Whitaker: And you know, you and Fran did a powerful session a couple of a couple of years ago, uh, where you talked about some of those things, some of the things where you as a young coach, now you get a little older and you look back and you think, hmm, some of the trade-offs, some of the things I thought were no-brainers really should have been a brainer.
• 29:31
  Nathan Whitaker: I should have been thinking about that a little harder because I missed some things I didn't have to.
• 29:35
  Nathan Whitaker: Um well, thanks.
• 29:36
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate that.
• 29:37
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate you taking the time, and I appreciate all that you do for others and for your including me and and my family and so many of these things.
• 29:45
  Nathan Whitaker: So thanks so much.
• 29:47
  Larry Shyatt: You got it.
• 29:47
  Larry Shyatt: Please, a special shout out to that smile, Lynda.
• 29:51
  Larry Shyatt: I know she's fighting and she'll keep fighting, right?
• 29:56
  Nathan Whitaker: Thanks.
• 29:56
  Nathan Whitaker: Yes, absolutely.
• 29:57
  Nathan Whitaker: Thanks so much, Coach.
• 29:58
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate it.
• 29:59
  Nathan Whitaker: You got it.
• 30:00
  Larry Shyatt: Take care.