(01-25-2024, 11:40 AM)BillBradley Wrote: In the NYT article, Tara said: "Know that if your senior leaders are unhappy, your whole team will be. . . .".
Leadership is of the utmost importance in all team sports and it's a very, very difficult thing to teach. We've all heard the expression "natural born leaders". I don't think Haley was a very good leader, and let's be clear - the 2022-2023 team was Haley's team. We all have our opinions, and that's mine. You can be a great player (she was), a great friend (she was), and even a great teammate (she probably was). That doesn't mean you are a great leader. If Betts or Nivar or Prechtel or whoever else on the team were unhappy, your team leader needs to take part in addressing it. I think this is where Haley stumbled. My guess is she 1) wanted to be everyone's friend 2) liked to commisserate instead of solve and 3) perhaps enjoyed the attention and drama a little too much. In the end, it turned into a bunch of talented players who weren't on the same page, and you could see it on the court. Desperate to win, but they weren't together.
All that said, I don't think Haley is to blame for her team's underachievement. I look at it more like it was a maturity thing and a skill void vs. her being toxic. I do believe she cared a lot for the team and the program.
Tara has taken some of the accountability for last year, multiple times in interviews. I would have liked Haley and Lauren to own up to some of it, too. That would have been the mature thing to do. Even something like "I feel badly about how things went...". Instead, they just tell each other how great the other one is, giggle about secrets...just rubbed me wrong, especially given how it was such a terrible experience for Lauren. Listening to them talk is an indication of why they couldn't get through the problems last year.
please remind me how tara has "taken some of the accountability." i don't recall anything that had to do with team mood and chemistry, only that it was hard to give 6 posts playing time (which is blaming the roster, not her own actions). did i miss something?
how do you know haley didn't try to talk to tara and kate about it, but got shut down? lauren is saying here the coaching staff didn't support her and has said previously that she was depressed last year, and this year's ucla coaching staff addressed her depression directly and helped. lauren doesn't in any way say she was unhappy with team chemistry last year - quite the opposite. both haley and lauren take great care not to go into detail about what displeased them about the coaches, but that doesn't mean nothing happened.
lauren has said publicly that she was depressed last year. haley very occasionally looked and acted unhappy. that could be haley's not being a leader. it could also be displeasure with some unkindness by the coaches, which she is gracious enough not to mention. i don't know which and don't see how other folks can know it's haley's fault rather than the coaches' fault (or, yes, nobody's fault).
speaking of support, everyone talks about tara, but what about kate? a favorite player in the early 90's. a smart and accomplished woman with multiple advanced degrees. but she sure has a cool, even stern demeanor on the bench. maybe she's warm with the players in private. does anyone know?
p.s. thanks for your post saki. lauren implies in the interview that it was lack of support from the basketball staff. she says loved her teammates, but she needed support. haley asks if it was just lack of playing time. lauren shakes her head and says, "don't get me started...""