3 Things Hoopers Should Learn From Last Chance U - Podcast Episode 49

Foreign welcome to the Visenger Master Training Podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in listening. Whether you guys are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, wherever you guys listen to your podcast on. Thanks to you guys for being here, for supporting and of course you guys on YouTube as well who are watching, make sure you drop a like subscribe if you're new new podcast coming every Sunday. Like I always tell you guys, if you leave a review on Apple podcasts, I'll read that on the show. So again, make sure if you guys have not done that, go ahead, leave a review, let me know what you think. And this episode is gonna be a little bit different. So this past week I was watching Last Chance you on Netflix and you know, I've loved Last Chance you since it first came out. And it's been football for I think four seasons until this past season where they transitioned over to basketball. And even it was football. It was, I thought it was a great series and you get a great look at like what the, what the juco life is for different sports for football. And then we got a great look this year at basketball. And you really see to me what I saw throughout that as I was watching, I wasn't even planning on talking about this, but honestly, like I got a couple episodes in, I was like, hey, you know what, that could be something that maybe I talk about. Like there was a bunch of points that were made or that I saw throughout the series. I was like, you know what, I think that talking about this could be actually pretty helpful for players to, to realize, to think about. So I highly encourage you if you've not watched that show to make sure that you go check the show out. It's really, really good, really well made. Once you get started with it, you're gonna feel like you have to watch the whole thing. Like it's, it's, it's something you're probably going to try and binge in like a day or two. So just be prepared for that. But highly recommend that you guys watch it. Just to give you guys a little bit of a background on what, what the show is. So essentially they follow around a, a juco basketball team, East LA College out in California. And they just have a whole camera crew that kind of documents their season. So this was last year, the 2019, 2020 season. So they documented their entire season from beginning to end and they key in on a few different players. Obviously the head coach is pretty much the main guy. You see a lot of things in through his eyes or in his shoes. I should say you, you know, a lot of times we see kind of that coaching side of things. But then on top of it, there's a few players that they keyed in on as well. So there is their, their point guard, desean who was extremely talented, came out of high school and ended up walking on to UTEP as a guard and ended up red shirting that year, then didn't get a scholarship, so he ended up transferring to East LA to try and work his way back to the D1 level and get a scholarship this time. And then aside from him, there was Malik Muhammad, who's 6 9, athletic, big dude and kind of has his own issues when it comes to like grades and his overall like motor and like that was kind of a question mark throughout the show as well. And then there's K.J. allen, who's just an athletic freak, probably 6, 6, 6, 7. And it seems like every game that you watch of him, he's got, you know, two or three just ridiculous dunks and he's probably the most talented player on the team. And he, he's like really their main guy, I'd say, when it comes to just production. And he's a guy who has some grade issues and all that. And then there's Joe Hampton, who's kind of the most complex guy in the show. He's got some issues when it comes to just like how he handles adversity. Like emotionally he's prone to just like these, these outbursts. And you know, that's kind of, it's very self sabotaging when you see him. But he's incredibly talented. A lot of times guys have, guys will say like, yeah, he could be in the NBA right now, but because all the other stuff, that's kind of what's held him back. So they had a very, very, very talented team. Like all those guys and even more guys that they didn't really highlight too much during the show are extremely talented Division one level guys who for one reason or the other ended up at east la. So again, we get kind of a walkthrough of, you know, what life is like for those guys going through practices, games, how they have to repair all those things. And there's a lot of stuff that we got to see throughout the show that I think can be very helpful for players to learn and understand. So I want to go through three things specifically that I saw in Last Chance you that I think we should talk about. So number one is that a lack of mental toughness can derail physical talent. So There was no question when you saw this team that like. And even the coaches would say, like, yeah, if our guys bring it mentally, we are better than everybody. Like, we have better players, we have better athletes. And our. I remember the. I think it was episode one or episode two, talking about Malik, who's six, nine, great athlete. They're like, there's plenty of guys who are great athletes in our conference, but they're 6 6, okay. There's plenty of guys in our conference who are 6, 10, but they're not great athletes. But nobody has a guy who's six, nine and a great athlete like we do. So they saw that our talent is so great that as long as these guys have it mentally, we're going to be able to win. But that was the big question mark throughout the entire series is they're just one, like one wrong, one bad referee call one, you know, coach saying something to some guy who doesn't like it. They're one of those situations away from just somebody imploding. And if that's going to happen, that's the only way that they're going to lose the game. And we got to see it, especially with a guy like Joe. You know, Joe was a guy who out of high school was at Oak Hill Academy, so one of the best schools in the country, highly recruited, goes to Penn State, gets hurt, ends up dropping out of Penn State and kind of going back, getting in trouble, getting arrested. And then he ends up at East LA trying to work his way back to the Division 1 level. And he's got all the physical tools in the world to be playing Division 1 basketball, playing high major Division 1 basketball, and then eventually going pro. And it just comes down to can he stay out of his own way when it comes down to that? The seas. The series starts off with watching one of Joe's outbursts during a game where the referee just kept on not calling a foul. And then he got called for a couple travels and which just set him off. So eventually he goes over to his coach and says, hey, coach, check me out of the game. I can't play. Like, I can't play at the refs are going to call this stuff. I'm not going to play. So gets subbed out, goes to the locker room, starts beating on lockers, throwing stuff, just losing his mind. And that's the type of thing that he allows to derail him. And, you know, again, hopefully you guys will watch the show. But he ends up going to. To. I believe it was Long Beach, Long Beach University or University of Long beach, whatever it is. And, but, but, you know, the Coach Mosley literally said, like, I got high major coaches calling about Joe, like, Joe could go play high major basketball, and he ends up not doing it. And I think a big part of it is because of his. His. His lack of mental toughness in those situations. So a big part of the show and a big part of what Coach Mosley tried to get through these guys was you have to be able to handle adversity. There was a lot of times during the show where, you know, Coach Moseley would make practice unfair. Like he call a guy out and he'd expect a higher level of a guy, and that might be something that maybe that guy never experienced before. You've got to think a lot of these guys when they were in high school were the best player that's probably ever gone to their high school, right? They were probably the best player in their state or the best player in their region or whatever. Like, you had guys who were coming, and they probably never were asked to be mentally tough because they were so much better than everybody else. But when you recognize that to get to that next level, to be as good as you can be, you have to have that level of mental toughness, and that really, you get a chance to see where that is. When adversity hits, when a coach does something that's unfair to you, right? When a ref makes a bad call, when something happens in a game that you don't have control over, that is where you get a chance to see that. So that's. That that was the big thing off the bat is are you able to first of all handle your emotions when things go wrong? Because if you're just, you know, kind of. Kind of going with the wind, and when things are good, you're good. When things are bad, you're bad, you're not going to be able to have that level of consistency that you're going to want to have, okay? And that's where it becomes like, man, we could lose games now because guys aren't able to stay steady the entire time. So if your goal is to win, then, you know, the saying is, don't get too high or too low. That's really what it has to be. You have to be able to keep your. To keep your cool and just, again, focus on those controllables, right? The things you can control, your effort, your attitude that you bring, you playing as hard as you can play, and then everything else, if you're better, if you're a better player than the other guy going against you, typically, it's going to work in your favor, right? So that's something that off the bat from the show was made very, very, very clear. So the other kind of aspect to that was Malik starting off the beginning of the show where he. The coaches would say, like, yeah, man, Malik is athletically just a freak. I mean, he's six nine, incredible athlete. And there's times when Malik just dominates, and then there's other times where we don't even know he's on the floor. And he has the ability to be that guy that's dominating games, but he tends to play down, and he tends to not be able to bring it at all times. And because of that, you know, they were hoping at the beginning of the show that Joe would actually be able to take over Malik's starting spot because Joe had his own issues. He wasn't able to do that. But both those guys were kind of held back by that. Two different issues where Malik. The question mark was like, okay, how bad does Malik actually want to be great? Like, how is Malik just playing because he's big and athletic? Or does Malik want to be really, really great at this game right here? You know, the. The. The question becomes, are you coachable? You know, those two right there, Joe and Malik, that was really the question mark with the team off the bat. Like, are those two coachable? Those two willing to take criticism? Can those two handle themselves when things go against them? And the first two episodes, the. The. The answer was around was a resounding no. At least that was how it appeared. And as those guys eventually started to mature a little bit, they handle coaching better, especially Joe. Joe was able to kind of get over himself and kind of. And he got better with his outburst. Because Joe would have times, even in practice, where, you know, a coach would say something to him. Joe wouldn't get the ball. He'd be posted up and teammate wouldn't see him, and he'd literally just storm off the court out of practice while there's college coaches on the sideline watching, and he just go in there, lose his mind in the locker room one time, he was. You know, there are a couple times where he was, like, about to quit, really. And those guys got better. They were able to handle a little bit better as the playoffs rolled along. And at the end of the day, they couldn't be beat because they were able to hold on to that. That mental toughness. So that's one thing to think about right there. Coach Mosley was Who. First of all, I really, really like coach. Coach Mosley. I thought that he was really all about his players. And I thought, you know, with. With a lot of last chance, you. So far, like, I like the last two coaches, the coach for the. The season four, and then the first two coaches were like, they, They. I mean, they both just had different personalities who. And. But I felt like these last two and Coach Mosley especially, were just all about their players and getting them to that next level. So I thought Coach Mosley was great, but Coach Mosley recognized that where it's. Honestly, for us, it's less about the. The talent part. It's more about just the physical part, like, or the. The. The mental part of it, right? So he'd have times in practice where he's just trying to. To get guys to go off because he's got. Those are learning moments for them. Like, can I trust you? When we're in a game and it's tied and a ref makes a bad call, right where we need you in the game. But, you know, if you're allowed to just mentally check out, if you've never experienced that adversity, then we're going to lose those tight games. So there'd be times where he kicked them out of practice. There was one practice at the end of the year during the playoffs where he didn't like the effort. You guys have turned the ball over. So he literally just stopped practice. And he said, you know what, guys? Let's go home. If we want to go home, that's fine. And the other guy's, okay, guys, we'll get it together. He's like, no, we're going home. Because now it's the playoffs. If you come out and that's how you perform, you don't get to say, oh, we'll try it again next time. No, you. You lose the playoffs, it's over. So there were a lot of moments in the series that illustrated stuff like that, which, again, why you guys have to check this thing out. Okay. Another thing. Point number two that I want to make about this show is that the. The. One of the main points that was made with desean and. And Coach Mosley was that leaders are always necessary, but not always liked. There was a conversation that those two had. I want to say it was episode six or episode seven, where they're in the weight room and Coach Mosey's talking to DeSean. He's like, Listen to Sean. Like, you know, you as a leader, like, they're not always going to like, you you know, desean, like, you and I, if I wasn't your coach, like, you'd want to hang out with me. Like, I'd be like, we'd be cool. And Deshaun was kind of laughing it off, but he's like, listen, me, as the head coach, like, I'm. I'm responsible for holding you guys to a certain standard, okay? And sometimes that requires me to be, you know, a little bit in your face, a little bit on edge with you guys, and that's in order to get the best out of the guys that are on the team. And, you know, desean was really the leader of that team. He was the captain, and he was one of their. Their second year, their sophomore starters. And so everybody really looked at him. There was a. A. There was a sequence during. I want to say it was episode five or six, where there was. In practice, and DeShawn was. There was. They were running like a press break. He didn't flash back when he was supposed to. So Coach Mosley stops, goes off on him about doing it. Right, okay. Deshawn's kind of like rolling his eyes, like, okay, whatever, coach. And then, you know, a little bit later, they're doing the drill, and desean is kind of like. He doesn't. You know, he kind of like quits on a play, and his. The guy who. That he was supposed to box out goes against the offensive rebound. And. And then again, Moses stops practice again and says, hey, you know what? And he used that experience, hey, listen, desean, like, you might be good enough where you can just turn it on during a game. You may have the talent where you can just be like, hey, you know what? I don't need to go in practice. I don't need to go hard in practice. I don't need to go hard in this drill, because when the game gets here, I'm going to turn it on. I'll be okay. But not all of your teammates are the same way, okay? The. The. The guy who's behind you, the freshman who just got here, who doesn't start, who doesn't play that many minutes, if he sees you practice like that, where you're kind of, you know, day by day, like, oh, I don't need to try on this drill because it doesn't matter to me. Well, that's how he's going to think it's acceptable to approach it. He's the captain doing that. So it's a lot of lead by example. Right? And that means that being a leader is not always going to Be the fun thing or be the popular thing. Sometimes you have to be the guy who says stuff to guys that. That isn't always, you know, the cool thing. There was another situation, like I talked about earlier when coach kicked him out of practice. Guys in the locker room, like, what's the deal with Mosley? Why is he so mad? Like, what do we do? Like, and the. Sean was the one who. Who stepped up and he said, listen, guys, we had a bad practice today. We kept turning the ball over. It was badly. We got to be better than that because if we lose, we're out. And you could tell at that moment that, like, it would have been much easier. Like, yeah, you know what? Mosley, like, he's in a bad mood today. Like, you know, that's what. What are we supposed to do? That would have been the kind of the way to go. And that was how most guys in the locker room did that. But desean didn't do that because he, as the leader, has to say, you know what? What can I do that's in the best interest of the team right now? And it was to say, guys, we've got to come back tomorrow and be better because we're in the playoffs now. If we lose, if we have a bad game, we don't come out and give great effort, then our careers are done. Some of us aren't going to get scholarships. Some of us are going to miss opportunities for coaches to be at our games, and then what are we going to do? If we only make it to the second round of playoffs, we might not. That coach, that was going to be the next round, he's not going to get to see you, so you might not get that scholarship offer now. Okay? And that's what it all comes back to, right? How Coach Moseley is so intense with the guys, how he demands so much of them is because if they don't win games, then you don't get a scholarship and you don't leave and you don't get to play basketball at the highest level that these guys all want to do. And so that's something that's. That's important to. To recognize. And as you know, with the Sean, like, being that leader, you have to be held to that higher standard, okay? You have to be a guy who the coaches say, listen, there is going to be certain guys who might have a bad practice. You can't, though, okay? There's. I forget which coach I saw that said this. This isn't part of this show. But I. It was some Division 1 coach. He. A press conference said that, you know, there's three guys who can't have a bad practice. The head coach, your point guard, and your best player. Okay. DeShawn being the best player on the team, you can't have a. A bad practice. Right. Desean. You know, obviously there's other guys who might be, you know, better athletes or bigger, whatever, but desean is like kind of the guy who they. The whole team looks to. So if you're the leader of the team, then you're held yourself. You're held to a higher standard. And I think that's one thing. While I get questions from guys asking how they can be a better leader, you have to hold yourself to a very high standard, and you have to expect a lot of yourself more than you would expect from your teammates if you want to be able to hold them to a certain standard. I think that was one thing that desean got better at as the season went on, and I think that's something we could see. And again, that that kind of plays into so much of them. Winning games was obviously about their talent, but it also came down to developing mental toughness and the leadership that they had coming from desean. Okay. And other guys who started to step up in that department as well. Joe became a better leader as he became, you know, more. As he was able to control himself a little bit better and become more of a team. First guy, Malik was the same way. Where you see these guys start to step up in that department, all of a sudden those close games, like those games that you win, There was one game where it was real, real close. They didn't play well. I think they shot over 14 from three in the playoffs. And coach Mosley after the game was like, those guys won that game because they like each other, because those guys get along, and because those guys are together, they found a way to win it. If that's a team where you got. You don't have guys who are leaders, you don't have guys who are mentally tough. You lose that game. But that's why I say, guys, it comes down to more than just the physical talent piece of it. So the last point I want to make about Last Chance U is you have to be good. You've got to be good. This was a point that was also made later in the season. But there, you know, one thing coach Mosley would. Would say to the guys a couple different times, that it takes everything. So there'd be times where it seems like he was asking them to go above and beyond. He was asking more than maybe they thought they even had themselves. But it was always about finding that next level because it takes everything. And one of the things that one of the assistants, Coach Rob, what he said is, like, there's 1700 scholarships that are awarded every year. So 1700 spots. And you think about, okay, juco players, high school players, transfers, all those guys are fighting for 1700 scholarships every single year. So it's very, very, very, very hard to get a scholarship. And that was something that these guys had to understand as well. You know, there was a conversation that, you know, that Coach Rob had with the guards. So he kind of had their position group meetings, and he talked with the guards where he would say, hey, you know what, with our bigs, you can have, like, you can have a bad offensive day, right? You don't necessarily have to bring it all the time because, listen, you're six foot nine. You can go get a couple blocks, get a couple dunks, you had a good game, get some rebounds, cool. But if you're a guard, you don't have that luxury of being able to just use your physicality to make an impact, okay? You've got to bring it every single time. So for a guy like Malik or a guy like Joe, they might have some, you know, some mental issues, some mentality issues that are going to be overlooked by some college coaches because of the physical gifts that they have. But if you're a guard, you just. You. You don't have that. You don't have that. You don't have that leash. So you have to be on point with everything. That was what he said. You have to be on point for desean. Like, you can't be a head case. You have to have it up here because if you don't, then they. There are thousands of guards that are 6 foot 2 that want to play Division 1 basketball, okay? There's a lot less guys who are 6, 8, 6 9, great athletes, right? They're. You know, the. The point Coach Rob made is that every team at a Division 1 level has a dude who's 69 athletic and can score. So that means that every team needs a dude who's 6 9, athletic and could defend. So Malik's gonna play at that level, and it doesn't really matter the issues he has. He's that good, gifted, okay? Joe is really the same way. Like, there. There are. No matter what. No matter what issues Joe has, he's so talented that coaches need him at that level, okay? If you're Desean coaches can find guys who are 6 to 180 pounds. They can find guys like that, and it's not going to be that big of an issue. So what else do you bring to the table, right? Do you bring everything? Are you the full package? We talk about the mental toughness. We talk about your ability to be a leader. That was where I thought desean really set himself apart. There was one scene where he. I forget which game was. They might have been the playoffs, actually, where desean comes off the floor. I think he got hurt, but he got. He gets up, goes to the locker room, throws up in the locker room, and the camera's documenting this whole thing. So he's probably in there for a minute, just throwing up, comes back to the end of the game, checks in, and they win the game. Like, that sort of toughness is what you have to have at that size to play at the next level to get to where you want to get to. That was the point that was really hammered home and illustrated, you know, and another point coach Rob made in the locker room is they're looking at stats for the guard group. And he says, you know, that's going to happen, you guys, the next level, there's going to be somebody playing in front of you, and you're going to be like, if I played more, I do that. But that's not an argument. You don't ask for four more minutes. You go tell somebody what you did with the opportunities that you had. Okay? So this kind of goes for everybody, right? If you're. No matter what level you're at, you are given a certain amount of minutes, and it's up to you to do the most you can in those minutes. And because, again, the coaches are just trying to win, one of the things they said is, like, you know, there's a lot of talented guys in that team who are going to be Division 1 players who could play. But because you have so many guys who are talented, isn't that coaches necessarily anti the guy who's not playing, but he's just very much pro? The guy who is playing, you might have a guy who's really, really good, but the other guy ahead of him is just even better than him. So he gets the minutes. Okay, but when you get those minutes, what do you do with them? Because you're not always going to be in a position where you get to play 30 minutes a game. Right? Most guys aren't in that position. So you've got to make sure that you're able to play your role and make the most out of it. Okay? There is, you know, I think it was Gino auriemma from. From UConn women's basketball, talking about how, you know, people say role players are a bad thing. And it's. It's. It's really not. Like, when you think about it, every team needs role players. Some people's role is to play 30 minutes and shoot 20 shots a game. That's some people's role. Some people's role is to play 30 minutes and handle the ball and set up the offense. Some people's role is to play 30 minutes and, you know, rebound, post up, run pick and rolls, all that sort of stuff. And some people's role is to play seven minutes, go in there, defend, get your point guard, a break, run the offense, and then you're off. Some people's role is to play 10 minutes, go in there, crash the boards hard, get some rebounds, set some picks, and that's your role. Okay? But every role is important to a team. So that was something all these guys had had to learn. Because we saw with some interviews with these guys, the guys who didn't play, all of them are like, yeah, my entire life, I was the best player on my team. I never came off the bench ever. Always was the guy who played all the minutes. And then they get to this level where everybody's good and they have to adjust to that, okay? So one thing Coach Robbins said is that eventually your talent runs out. At some level, you're not talented enough to just do whatever you want anymore. And for some guys, it was the juco level, okay? For some guys, it was going to. It's going to be the Division 1 level. For some guys, it'll be the pro level, but everybody's going to hit that point at some point. So are you able to play your role and maximize yourself in the minutes that you get? That was one big thing that they made. And ultimately, again, for a lot of you guys are guards who are listening. You have to be the full package to make it to where you want to make it to. You have to have, obviously, the physical ability to. John was very talented physically, but you also have to have it mentally as a leader. You have to be a guy that separates yourself personality wise, right? If you want to be the guy again where you're competing for not that many spots, okay? And I think that was one of the best points of this show made, is that it takes everything. Really, what coach will say, it takes everything. And the less that you have when it comes to those physical gifts, the more that it takes to compensate for that. Okay, you know, I kind of went deep into this show again. I started watching it, I wasn't even thinking about making a video on it. But then I started seeing some of these reoccurring themes and I was like, you know what? This would be good to talk about. And I think there's some points that, you know, we can learn from. I can talk about. Like I said, guys, if you have not watched the show, make sure you go check it out. So much good stuff in it. And let me, let me know what you guys think as well, if you guys have opinions on the show, all that sort of stuff. So again, I hope that this guy helped you guys out those three points. Making sure, again, all about mental toughness. Mental toughness, or I should say mental weakness can derail physical talent. Okay, that's point number one to understand about this show. All right, number two, leaders are always necessary, but. But not always the guy who is light in the moment. Okay, you might have to be a guy who says something that's not popular as that leader. But ultimately, teams that win games have guys who are willing to do that, coaches who are willing to do that. When you have that kind of meshing of both, you get a team like this East LA team who won a lot of games and was a very, very talented roster that reach their potential because they had guys like that. And then number three, you've got to be good, especially if you lack some sort of physical component. You've got to make sure that every other aspect of your game is taken care of because you're going to need it. Separate yourself. So that's all I got for you guys today. Again, let me know your thoughts below. If you guys have any topics or anything else for the podcast or video whatever, drop that below as well. Like I said, guys, Apple podcast. Scroll down, leave a review, let me know what you think. I'll read it on the show and YouTube. Thanks. For you guys who are watching, drop A like subscribe as well. Talk to you guys soon. Peace.