The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players

The pro-basketball coach and popular motivational speaker presents his recipe for leadership, personal growth, and control of shifting dynamics, showing how to forge strong groups that can work together to create success. 225,000 first printing.

In the 1940s, mathematician John von Neumann developed "game theories" utilizing models taken from games of strategies and chance. In the 1980s, basketball coach Riley ( Showtime ) called on these ideas and others to craft his own theories about motivation, selfishness, teamwork, complacency, winning and "choking" that have lead to NBA championships and "Coach of the Decade" honors. Here he outlines his theories, and recounts his successes and infrequent failures with the Lakers and the Knicks in a superb, candid study. Yet Riley also maintains that his concepts work in large and small businesses. He provides vivid examples of how the "winner within" each of us can adapt his ideas to all types of team play, whether in the sports arena, in daily life, or in the marketplace. This book should have wide appeal among sports fans, coaches and people looking for realistic managerial practices useful to non-experts.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Winning, if demanding, prescriptions for success from one of the NBA's best coaches. Drawing on his experiences in and out of professional basketball, Riley (Showtime, 1988) takes a hard-line approach to personal growth. By his anecdotal account, achievement is more reliant on cooperation, diligence, positive thinking, preparation, resilience, respect for authority, and other bedrock virtues than on tricks of the trade. Not too surprisingly (in light of his vocation), the author puts a premium on teamwork, notably on its highest manifestation--unselfish willingness to subordinate individual goals to the good of a group. Using object lessons learned during his near-miss as well as championship seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks, Riley provides cautionary insights on withstanding pressure, the perils of complacency, the frustrations of playing not to lose, and the roles to be played by superstars and lesser lights. Having spent time in the trenches (e.g., as a no-name coaching assistant), he values and commends apprenticeship as an opportunity to develop skills--and perception--in arenas where physical or intellectual gifts are merely starting points. He also endorses occasional, calculated outbursts of ``temporary insanity'' as an effective means of jolting sports or other organizations in need of wake-up calls. Throughout, however, the writer and coach maintains an impressive sense of proportion, to be seen in vignettes of a family friend who survived a racking bout with breast cancer; the combat vet responsible for getting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., built; his own father-in-law (a WW II submariner); and others whose triumphs have little to do with athletic glory. Engaging, down-to-earth advisories from a master of the game. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Riley, the coach of the New York Knicks and the author of Show Time ( LJ 8/88), combines popular trends in business management, including team-building, with highlights from his two-decade association with professional basketball to produce a readable and inspirational guide for any coach, manager, and team member. Riley provides glimpses of the role played by the emotional side of basketball in winning and losing. He interweaves these experiences, mainly from playoff and championship games, with sound management principles and examples from the business world to illustrate his team-building leadership philosophy. Along the way, he tells some wonderful basketball stories. This book will appeal to a wide audience. Recommended for all public and secondary school libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.
- Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.