Written by Talent may not always have character and attitude,
however attitude and character will always contain some level of talent.
Bill Sweetenham (elite swim coach) swimmingscience.net 23 October 2017
Take a deep look at the eyes of coach John Mosley in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Basketball series as they meet the camera lens head on. The extent to how much Mosley cares for his athletes is palpable and for the more perceptive viewer Mosley’s eyes look masked in pain from his personal struggles developing into a young adult from a trouble adolescence. The Netflix series follows Mosley’s journey as the newly appointed Head Coach to the ELAC basketball team, which by all accounts is a team of big characters and attitudes. The trouble is they are all at a stage in their young lives where they lack guidance on how to react positively to adversity and instead are very much led in their actions by emotions detrimental to their growth and athletic performance. These guys are drowning in the desire to get out of their current habitats, but are being swallowed up in the frustrations of life as their talent fights to shine and stay on top.
Anyone who has ever coached athletes where every day they wake up to a complex mental challenge to survive and live with moral rectitude, will understand how this can be the hardest arena to put yourself in to coach. It can be a thousand times more exhausting; heartbreaking and frustrating than it is rewarding.
At the time of the series Mosley was still relatively inexperienced as a Head Coach, yet his ‘think out of the box’ tactics on teasing out the talent in his players displays the insight of a veteran. All his methods literally emit a neon sign of ‘I will never give up on you and I will do whatever it takes to get you to a better place’. Here is a coach who truly values nurturing and even more importantly has the empathy to deliver the care needed especially to the more troubled players on his team.
A great show to witness players who are undoubtedly big on personality and run high on emotion and how much of a formidable task it is for a coaching team to pinpoint the talent within and nurture that talent to shine with minimal mistakes day in day out. I believe Sweetenham may be right to believe that natural aptitude is always born from our mental outlook and unique personalities, but it takes a coach with remarkable intuition to truly see the talent waiting to be brought to fruition – especially with young athletes struggling to learn how to navigate the chaos of their internal emotional battles.