- Coach Craft
- Posts
- The Relationship Tree
George Raveling has had the most extraordinary life.
He coached Iowa, USC, and Washington State, where he was the first black head coach in the then-Pac 8.
After Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, he turned and handed the typewritten pages to Raveling. He owned the speech for nearly 60 years before gifting it to Villanova University.
Raveling was Bob Knight’s assistant coach for Team USA at the 1984 Olympics, where the team won a gold medal.
Alongside Mike Lombardi, he is the co-founder of The Daily Coach, the newsletter that is sent to over 40,000 inboxes every morning.
Among his disciples, Raveling includes coaches like Shaka Smart, Buzz Williams, Jay Wright, Doc Rivers, John Calipari, Mike Dunlap, Paul Hewitt, and Leonard Hamilton.
And the foreword of Raveling’s autobiography is written by Michael Jordan, where Jordan claims “My relationship with George is what made me feel comfortable signing with Nike. If not for George, there would be no Air Jordan.”
In What You’re Made For, Raveling reflects deeply on his extraordinary life and is most fond of the people he has met along the way. In sharing his wisdom, he writes more about relationships than any other topic.
In particular, this passage stood out to me:
When you commit to a relationship, you’re making a decision to accept both the best and the worst aspects of the other person. But it doesn’t stop there.
When you enter into that relationship, you also inherit all of the other person’s relationships, both positive and challenging. This expansion of your network, or what I like to call your “relationship tree,” can be enriching and complex.
It’s through this relationship tree that we grow not only as individuals but as a collective unit. The branches of our lives intertwine, offering new opportunities for connection, support, and growth. But they also bring new challenges that require patience, understanding, and communication.
The strength of a team, especially a family, lies in its ability to navigate these complexities together, supporting one another through the highs and lows.
People talk about their personal life and their professional life as if they are two separate entities. But the fact of the matter is that we only have one life. It’s all connected, whether we want to admit it or not.
How we live our lives at home affects how we show up at work. The quality of our work life affects how we are as a spouse and a parent. So, I tried to live an integrated life as much as possible.
The key line that warrants reflection from all coaches is this one:
When you enter into that relationship, you also inherit all of the other person’s relationships, both positive and challenging.
There is no such thing as a clean slate. You don’t just sign a new player, you also sign all of their relationships, and the dynamics that underpin those connections. You adopt 20+ years of previous experiences with power figures in their life, whether they be coaches or teachers or parents or priests. They aren’t just skeptical of your gameplan, they’re skeptical of you being just another person in their life asking them to just trust you. How many people in their past have told them they have their best interests at heart, only for it to be revealed later down the line that that is not true?
When you’re not seeing the growth that you want from a player, my recommendation is to look to the trees — your relationship trees. The answer to unlocking that player’s potential often lies in the intertwined branches of their life.