THE VOLATILITY OF THE RESULT

          In elite sport, winning has long become an obligation and, as if it were an axiom, losing through failure.
 
          Many years ago, when I started training, I had that same perception. Probably due to the absence of the understanding that experience provides. I made value judgments lightly, without knowing the facts, but with the security of feeling legitimized to do so. He didn't have the data, but he believed he had the knowledge.

          Later, when time passes, experiences accumulate, disappointments are more painful and greater than successes; all of them lived in the first person; I look back and think how daring my ignorance was. Still, to this day, there are times that I am that unconscious again. Although the traffic on that road is lighter and shorter.

          A few months ago I read a study that talked about control or the direct impact that a coach had in different sports specialties. In the case of basketball, it accounted for 30%, the highest of all the disciplines analyzed: soccer, handball, volleyball, etc. This explains the number of outside factors that influence the bottom line, both for better and for worse. And regarding this study, a couple of anecdotes came to mind.

          The 2001-02 season was running, I was an assistant coach at Los Barrios, a team from Cádiz that at that time was a LEB Oro classic. Initial expectations were high and the squad seemed designed to meet them. Nothing is further from reality. Our first lap was disastrous, we finished at the bottom with a lousy balance of 4 wins and 11 losses and the future did not look at all promising.

          The second round started in an unbeatable way, we won our first two matches and we appeared in Menorca with the purpose of continuing with our particular climb. That mirage did not last long, two of our players fought with a clean fist during the break. Scene that was repeated at the end of the game.

          The picture could not paint more black, located in the caboose next to three other teams and the team divided and broken in half. How could it be otherwise, the club decided to expel both players despite the fact that one of them was considered the best of the team. The following weekend, without adding anyone to our squad, we played against the leader, who arrived in Los Barrios with a single defeat. We got the victory and, after that unfortunate event in Menorca, we achieved a streak of eight victories and four defeats, remaining on the verge of the playoffs.

          Again in the Balearic Islands, although this time in Mallorca and the following season, an unfortunate event happened that had devastating consequences. Also with Los Barrios, but this time as head coach and leading the standings with a completely opposite streak to that of the previous year: eight wins and one loss. Which increased positively after our triumph in Inca.
After dinner, the players went for a walk around Palma and, when there were only two of them left, because the rest had returned to the hotel, a group of skinheads brutally beat one of our Americans.

          From that moment on, a commotion arose that we did not know how to manage either institutionally or sportily, which ended up leading to a dynamic that placed us in the last day of the league with the options of relegation, qualifying for the play-off or staying in no man's land. ; which was what finally happened.

          Those events so close in time, and happened at the dawn of my professional career, gave me a completely different perspective on the control that coaches have in teams. I could expand on some explanations that, for space, no longer fit in this post, but will surely be developed in future installments.