The "FIST" - Jefferson West Basketball
by Matt Tinsley
August 19, 2008
The Fist
Our team is like the five fingers of a hand. Some hands have small fingers that easily come together as a fist. Other hands have very large fingers but, if they never come together as a fist, they probably won’t be as powerful as the smaller hand that does. In other words, if five talented individuals don’t perform as a team, they may not be as strong as five less-talented individuals who do.
Any one fist can break any one finger. Therefore, we must be a dominant team where all five fingers fit together into a powerful fist. There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. Think of each as a separate finger on the fist. Any one individually is important. But all of them together are unbeatable.
“We develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. All of us alone are weaker, by far, than if all of us are together.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to understand, but the hardest thing to achieve. In order to make this happen, we need to learn how to think as one.
The Fist is courtesy of Coach K at Duke University.
