From the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, May 26, 1997
"Basketball is a metaphor for life"
By Caroline Moseley
Meet the players: One is Pete Carril, Princeton's basketball coach from 1967 to 1996, who compiled a 514-261 record, winning 13 Ivy League championships. Now an assistant coach with the NBA's Sacramento Kings, he was recently elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Carril and Bill Bradley '65 are the only Princetonians in the Hall of Fame.
The other is Alumni Council Director Dan White '65, who joined the University staff in 1968, assuming his present position in 1980. Coach of Princeton's 150-lb. football team from 1968 to 1978 and of the freshmen for three subsequent years, he is also a prolific writer with eight books to his credit and more than a hundred magazine articles, many on Princeton-related topics and people.
Together, Carril and White created The Smart Take From the Strong: The Basketball Philosophy of Pete Carril . With an introduction by Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight, the book was published this year by Simon and Schuster.
Appropriate testimony
White, who wrote Play to Win: A Profile of Princeton Basketball Coach Pete Carril in 1978, conceived the recent project after almost 20 more years of watching Carril and Princeton basketball. "As it became clear that Pete was going to retire," says White, "I thought a book of Carril sayings and teachings would be an appropriate testimony to his career as teacher and coach."
White developed a book proposal, submitting it to several publishers without success. Then, after Princeton beat UCLA 43-41 on March 14, 1996, in the first round of the NCAA tournament, White's phone started to ring. "All of a sudden," he says, "publishers seemed to think the book might have some appeal after all."
For three months in the summer of 1996, White met regularly with Carril. "I asked him questions, and he talked," says White. "I transcribed and edited the conversations, always striving to maintain Pete's voice. It is, after all, his book."
He found Carril, a former high school social studies teacher, "a very involved author and a stickler for punctuation and grammar."
Carril's interest in the book was two-fold, says White. "He has strong feelings about basketball and how it's played. He thinks, in general, there's too much emphasis on specialization. He believes each player should be good at all the basic skills of the game, not just one or two."
In addition, "He felt that, as he might not be coaching much longer, he'd like to put some of his thoughts in permanent form for others to use."
The result is a volume of 186 "chapters," ranging in length from one line to several pages. Combined, they provide a narrative of Carril's life, professional advice on how to play the game of basketball, and--perhaps most important--an approach to life. As White says, "To Pete, basketball is a metaphor for life."
Any stone unturned?
The chapter entitled "Overcoming Certain Obstacles" reads, in its entirety, "A good mind has never handicapped a player."
Longer and more technical chapters concern "Defensive Fundamentals" and "Back-Door"--the latter describing an offensive play that became a trademark of Carril's Princeton teams. And in "Relationship Between Athletics and Life," Carril states, "There are some things you will do later in life that basketball can help you prepare for. How hard do you work and how much do you contribute to what your group is doing? As a player, can you say you've left no stone unturned to get the job done? You worked hard as a player and did all those extra little things to get better. Now you're a doctor, and you keep on working to get better.
"Sports do not build character," Carril declares, "they reveal character."
The book's title comes from Carril's father, a Spanish immigrant steelworker. "Every day, before he left for work," Carril writes, "[my father] would remind my sister and me how important it was to be smart. 'In this life,' he would say, 'the big, strong guys are always taking from the smaller, weaker guys but the smart take from the strong.' Then, as he was going out the door, he would point his finger at his head and say, 'Use El Coco.' That has been the theme of my coaching."
White thinks The Smart Take From the Strong is a book "anyone canread and find both entertaining and instructive." Basketball players, coaches and fans, says White, will respond to Carril's sports-related wit and wisdom, but all readers, White believes, will find inspiration.
"Pete's message is that everyone who works hard to develop his or her own talent can 'win.' It's all about character--and hard work."