Rick Barnes, Texas, and player vs. team success

Sometimes there is a downside to being consistently good.

People start to ask why you never broach greatness. They wonder when the next step will occur. They are only satisfied with good enough for so long. And that is exactly what Rick Barnes is experiencing right now.

The Texas head coach has ushered in a new era in Longhorn basketball. No longer is hoops just something Texans do to take their mind off the football-less doldrums of winter. But in his 13 years at Texas, he's turned the hoops program from something to keep them busy into something that they actually follow. Its a golden era for hoops in Austin. Barnes hasn't missed an NCAA Tournament in tenure with the Longhorns. He's consistently competing for Big 12 titles, he made a Final Four, and he churns outs NBA players at as high of a clip as any coach in the country.

But his recent lack of on-court success is starting to get noticed. His Final Four came in 2003. His last Elite 8 came in 2008. The past two seasons have started so promising -- in 2010, the Longhorns spent time at No. 1 in the country and in 2011, Texas was on pace to have a record-setting defense -- and finished in disaster, as UT failed to make it to the second weekend of the tournament.


Barnes, perhaps justly, has earned the reputation of being a recruiter more than a coach; of being a guy that simply rolls the ball out on the court and lets his team play. Lute Olson had the same reputation. Jim Calhoun did for a while as well. Its enough that the Star-Telegram brought up Barnes' comments in a March, 2010, ESPN the Magazine article. In that ESPN article, Barnes said that as much as he would love to win a national title, he's obsessed with trying to get his players to live out their NBA dreams. "I'd give up a national title for all of our guys to be able to live their dream," he said.

He clarified those comments with Mike Jones on Wednesday:

"I was asked, 'Would you rather guys go to the NBA or would you rather win a national championship,'" Barnes said. "Obviously, my response was you'd like to do both. I was pinned down again and asked to pick one or the other."

"So, now they're asking me do I want to be selfish on my behalf. Think about it. If I had said I would rather us win a national championship than have one of our players ever get to achieve his dream, I'd be done in coaching. Everyone would say, 'You don't want to play for him because he doesn't care [about player development].' I was asked a question I couldn't really answer a smart way."

Given the opportunity to clarify, Barnes responded this way:

"If you asked me in the end would I want us to win a bunch of championships and our players not succeed -- I wouldn't want to do that. But on the other hand, if you could guarantee that every player you coach could have a chance to live out his dream -- and I'm not just talking about basketball, but life -- and that means your guys aren't going to win a championship, what would you take? I'd have to say I would want our guys to have a chance to live their dreams. Does that mean I don't care? That's not what I'm saying at all. Because I'm smart enough to realize if these guys live their dream, we're going to keep putting ourselves in position and one day it is going to come together, and we're going to win it. We do this for a lot of reasons. But if I didn't have the desire to win it, I wouldn't do this."

Personally, I don't think that Barnes needed to clarify his comments.

I think that his initial answer was perfect, and I hope that its the way every coach in the country feels.

The idea that Barnes doesn't want to win a national title is foolish. Of course he does. You don't get into the coaching profession -- one that requires endless hours on the road, long nights breaking down film, days and weeks away from your loved ones, and the ability to suck up to a 16 year old and his family -- without the desire to win. Obviously, there are some folks that are strictly in it for the paycheck. And there are some folks that do it simply because they love coaching and they love the game.

But at the end of the day, a coach is still a competitor. They are going to want to win as much as possible and on as big of a stage as possible. Its like being a doctor -- some practice medicine because they want to own a big house and a fancy car and some simply love being a doctor, but at the end of the day every doctor in the world is going to do their damnedest to help, sometimes even safe the life, of their patients.

For Barnes -- and for coaches in general -- the bigger issue is that they are coaching student-athletes. And since these student-athletes are not professionals and are not allowed to make money until they leave the amateur ranks, the role of a collegiate coach is that of a teacher.

The Longhorn players are basketball majors, and Barnes is their professor. His role is to make them the best basketball players that they can be and to help them find individual success and happiness. The fact that he has been successful in producing pros is a major reason why he continues to land top-flight high school talent, and sending three players to the first round this year -- including Tristan Thompson at No. 4 and Cory Joseph at No. 29, both of which were a surprise -- only helped that fact.

Barnes' job at Texas is to produce pros. If he's doing his job correctly, then along the way he is going to have some very good teams, wins some conference championships, and compete for Final Fours and national titles.

But he shouldn't put his success as a coach over the future success of his players, and he certainly shouldn't do it in a public forum.