The '83 National Championship run of the NC State Wolfpack is being remembered and lauded as one of the top 10 greatest feats in all of sports. As a Tar Heel fan I think that may be a little extreme, but it could be a chapter in the business book SWITCH.
SWITCH is one of the hot books written by brothers Dan and Chip Heath. It is a tremendous book about how to create change when change is hard. Valvano had to change the mindset of the Wolfpack who went into the ACC tournament with an injured Derrick Whittenburg and a 4th place regular season finish. How did he do that? He did that with that old sports cliché, “Just one game at a time.”
If the Pack stewed about facing Michael Jordan and Ralph Sampson, they could have been overwhelmed, but instead he implored his team to just win the next game. And then he broke it down even more simply, “Slow the game down and hit your 3’s.”
Famed UCLA Coach, John Wooden, often spoke about making small improvements every day. Eventually that improvement will build confidence and that will snowball. Valvano was a master at shrinking the change. Imagine the confidence they had with this style of basketball as the beat the Tar Heels and Virginia.
Just like the authors of SWITCH teach us, Valvano found the bright spots; they had heart, played smart and could shoot 3’s. He got his team to imagine the destination by shrinking the change and focusing on one game at a time. And finally he scripted the steps by slowing the ball down, shooting 3’s and fouling the other teams.
The Cardiac Kids as they were called captured the hearts of all basketball fans. Even when they told Valvano that he had no chance to beat Houston and Hakeem Olajuwon, he replied, “I will tell you has no chance of winning, UCLA and Kansas because they are not here. But we are in the finals so we do have some chance of winning.” Back in 1983 Coach V was finding the bright spots!
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