In this coaching monologue, the speaker addresses recruiting leaders who struggle with time management, sharing his own journey of change around 2013. He introduces the phrase “go Rick Barry on your time management” as a metaphor for adopting unconventional, countercultural strategies. The speaker explains who NBA legend Rick Barry is—highlighting his 1978‑79 free‑throw record (≈95% success) achieved by shooting underhanded, a technique few others have sustained. Barry later coached other poor free‑throw shooters, but many lacked the courage to adopt his method publicly. The speaker uses this story to illustrate that true success often requires breaking norms, having the guts to implement odd‑looking practices, and focusing on results over perception. He ties the metaphor back to time‑management coaching, urging leaders to rethink their habits, embrace counter‑intuitive tactics, and prioritize effectiveness over conventional expectations.
Chapters
But the recent conversation I had was around time management. So in time, this is one thing that most recruiting leaders struggle with. So if you struggle with this, welcome to the club, because I struggled with this for most of my career until about 2013 when I started doing some things differently. And so it's a conversation that I start a lot of my coaching with when I'm beginning with someone as a new coaching client. And we look at their idea around how they're managing their time. So in the conversation I was having with them, I was having this— laying kind of the framework that they're going to have to manage their time differently. And I came to the end of that coaching session by making this statement. I said, you need to go Rick Barry on your time management. Now, because I do all of my coaching live, I could see the look on their face, and the look on their face was, you know, it's the look on my 6-year-old's face whenever I use a big word and they have no clue what it means. It was, I have no clue what you're talking about. So let me give you some context around that statement, I need you to go Rick Barry. Why I make that statement is because, for those of you that aren't familiar, With who Rick Barry is. Rick Barry was an NBA player, and in, in 1978, Rick Barry actually set a record for the percentage of free throws that he actually hit. Now, most people don't remember Rick Barry for setting that record, which was like almost 95% of his free throws that he hit in 1978 to 1979. They don't remember him for that record. What they actually remember Rick Barry for, and where most people go, oh, I get it, Is because Rick Barry shot his free throws underhanded. And in the history of the NBA, he's like the only person that has regularly— there have been a few people that have tried it, no one has stuck with it. So most people will reflect back on that underhanded free throw shooter and go, yeah, I know who you're talking about, right? What's interesting is that, look, I've done a bunch of research on Rick Barry, and one of the things that I know is that Rick Barry has actually coached, he's actually tutored Other bad free throw shooters after leaving the NBA. Now, in an interview, one of the things that they asked Rick Barry was around that. Like, people had kind of known in NBA circles that he's taken a handful of really bad free throw shooters and he's tutored them. When they've interviewed him about this, he wouldn't actually say who it was that he worked with because they never actually had the guts. The people that he coached never had the guts to go back to their team and to go back into regular season and actually shoot underhanded free throws. Now, why is that? Well, the reason why it is is because it's kind of weird. Like, if you've ever seen that, it looks a little odd, like however you want to describe it. I kind of laughed because in a newspaper article someone was asking about this and his son, Canyon Barry, who was shooting 85-86% of— hitting 85-86% of his free throw shots, which is actually extremely well. The NBA average is somewhere around 75-76% year over year. In a moment where his son, who was at Florida shooting underhand free throws, Rick Barry happened to be sitting behind a fan. And after Rick's son Canyon actually hit the free throw, the fan made this statement, that's embarrassing. And Rick Barry said to the person, why is that embarrassing? Isn't the— isn't that basketball going through the hoop? And the fan goes, yeah. And Barry's response was, what's so embarrassing about making free throws? Right? It's like, it doesn't make sense. So what I know and why I say— why I use Rick Barry as an example in my coaching is this, is that to a large degree, if you're going to be successful, you're going to have to be counterculture. You're going to have to go against the grain of what is normal.
