Ted Lasso, Monty Williams and the Coaching Revolution

“I don’t assume all coaches are macho dickheads.”

How’s that for a start to my first column at PHNX?

It’s a quote from one of the latest episodes of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. It’s also a pretty damn good summation of how Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams has turned the status quo of coaching on its head over the last two years with his approach to leading professional athletes from the outhouse to the penthouse. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Ted Lasso — first of all, shame on you, and second, get to watching — the show is about a good-natured football coach from the Midwest who takes his own homespun quotes and positive attitude to the UK to coach a futbol team. Along the way he turns skeptical athletes and fans alike into believers by genuinely caring about them, connecting on a human level and helping them tap into their abilities. 

Sound familiar?

The quote is said by Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, the team psychologist, while explaining to Ted that his assumptions about her profession are just as bad as the ones made about his. 

For years we’ve been led to believe that the prototypical coach at any level is the one who yells constantly, screams obscenities, and whose idea of a good motivational quote is “drop and give me twenty.” 

Their motivational speeches, at least in television and film, in most cases come from a place of anger, fear or personal brokenness. Al Pacino’s “inches” in Any Given Sunday, Tom Hanks’ “there’s no crying in baseball” from A League of Their Own, and “sweep the leg” in The Karate Kid are just a few examples. They’re all portrayals of coaches or mentors who have a win at any cost mentality and can’t separate the athlete from the person. 

Lasso and Williams are kindred spirits. They are both men that shun the common perception of their profession in favor of one not concerned about bravado and machismo. They care about their players, their personal wellbeing and their long term success. They’re also men who love a good saying.

Well done is better than well said. 

Even Woody and Buzz got under each other’s plastic.

It’s a get to not a got to.

I believe in hope. I believe in Believe.

Reps remove doubt.

Everything you want is on the other side of hard.

Be curious. Not judgmental.

You know what the happiest animal in the world is? It’s a goldfish. It’s got a 10 second memory. Be a goldfish.

Don’t get happy on the farm. 

If you weren’t an avid fan of the Suns or the show, you wouldn’t be able to tell which came from the mind of a Hollywood writer and which came from the mind of an NBA veteran coach. 

In a time where for the better part of the last two years we’ve been locked in situations that either emotionally or actually physically divided us, there is a reason that people around the world have gravitated towards Lasso and locally have gravitated towards Williams. 

It’s hope. 

Both men provide a view of the world that isn’t about highlighting the things that make us different but rather uplifting the common humanity in each of us. It’s why Ted Lasso has been one of the biggest surprises in television and why the Phoenix Suns were one of the biggest surprises in basketball. 

Despite positivity being their hallmark, both Lasso and Monty have faced criticism from the keyboard warriors and talking heads of the interwebs. 

Lasso has faced backlash about its happy go lucky approach, the fact that it was based on a commercial and even that one of its characters is so attractive that he may even be CGI (I’m not kidding. Google it.) 

Williams faced criticism for visiting the Milwaukee Bucks’ locker room after they won the NBA Championship defeating his Phoenix Suns. 

In both cases most of the backlash is more about people looking for attention by being a contrarian than anything of actual substance. 

Sure, we’re led to believe that nice guys finish last. Hell, it’s practically written in our national subconscious. But it isn’t always true.

Plenty of coaches, and people for that matter, are ‘macho dickheads’ but Monty Williams and Ted Lasso give me hope that as we face large challenges, we don’t actually have to be.