DeAndre Haynes
Assistant Coach
On one of our days off last week, Coach
Sendy, Mike McKee and I went up to watch the Cavs practice. Sendy goes every
year, but this was my first time going.
Personally, I watched Kyrie Irving and a
couple of the new guards they have, just to see how hard they work during
practice. I came back and talked to all of the guards about how hard Kyrie was
working in practice. It was his leadership on the floor, the way he worked
during the drills. He didn’t go through the motions. He sprinted on every cut.
Seeing it personally up close was
beneficial because I saw the effort and how hard they were working. I played
against Jarrett Jack in high school, and it’s cool just seeing him as a veteran
in the NBA and seeing his improvement. I always thought that they’re in the NBA
and probably don’t practice hard because they made it, they were going hard in
every drill. Our players really have to work had to get to that level, or even to
the overseas level.
What I learned overseas, and I learned in
my time here too, was how to work hard. You can’t take a play off. You can’t
take a drill off. They weren’t just going through the motions. Having played
overseas, I know that if you’re not going to work hard, they’re going to bring
somebody else in to take your spot. Here, we bring you in for 4 years.
Overseas, you have a 1-year deal and if they don’t think you’re working hard,
you get fined or you get cut. There’s no taking plays off and understanding
that is necessary to understand what it takes to be a champion.
My biggest takeaway was the amount of
energy they brought to their practice. They really worked hard and were
constantly communicating. One thing that we brought back to our players is that
we’re trying to teach them to be vocal. I feel like their coaches didn’t have
to say anything to them at all. They were just really loud and in tune to what
was going on. When they were doing a defensive drill, you couldn’t even hear
anything in the gym because of how vocal they were on the floor.
Mike McKee and I both had our pen and pad
so we can take what they do and use it to make our program better. Every drill
that they did with the point guards and bigs, I wrote down myself. I like to work
with all of our players. I came back that day and worked out Blake with some of
the drills that Andrew Bynum was doing. I watched the drills Kyrie Irving was
doing and want to work on those things with our point guards.
I was that surprised me was to see that
they don’t miss shots. It was amazing. I think Kyrie Irving only missed like 1
shot the entire time we were watching him play. You have to be in the gym and
put in the work.
Watching them at that level means a lot
to me. I needed to see it for myself because I can do a better job of working
with our guys and making sure they know what they have to do to make it. I
think that if our guys could have gone up too, they would have taken a lot from
it like we did.
