Below is an article from ESPN.com on the late Wake Forest coach, Skip Prosser. This serves as a great question to young basketball players, aspiring to be great and achieve at a high level. As a coach, you can ask yourself the same question...are you a 3 to 6 coach or a 6 to 3 coach? If you want your players to commit, be dedicated, work hard and buy into your teachings, then you must serve as a good example. This is a great thing to always keep in mind. Are you putting in the time necessary to allow yourself and your team to achieve greatness? Effort, Energy, Execution equals Excellence!
A photo hangs near the front door in Josh Howard's Dallas-area home, a shot of Prosser and Howard from an ACC tournament game with Josh in full emotive mode. "You can see the look on my face like I'm wanting to win," the Mavericks' small forward says. "And the look on his face is like 'Calm down.'" Howard likes to look at the photo every day when he wakes up and to think about the distance the two men traveled together. "I just try to keep his memory alive," Howard says. "That was my guy."
Josh Howard was a unanimous choice for ACC Player of the Year in his final season at Wake Forest.Howard was among the players Prosser inherited when he took over the Wake Forest program in 2001. And though he was friends with West, having played a year with him at Hargrave, Howard didn't initially share the former Xavier standout's appreciation of Coach. "With any new coach, you're going to have guys that rebel," Howard says. "I was one of those guys."
Prosser never forgot his days as a high school history teacher in Wheeling, W.Va. Before every practice, he would read something, be it a philosophic aphorism of Ralph Waldo Emerson or a newspaper story Prosser felt was instructive. And though he was known for treating every player equally, certain sayings he would repeat when addressing specific individuals.
Howard might have been Wake's best player in Prosser's first year in Winston-Salem, but the coach thought he could be better. "Are you a 3-to-6 player?" he'd constantly ask Howard about the hours he was willing to invest in the game each day. "Or a 6-to-3 player?" Howard admits he was one of the last guys to practice and the first to leave. He wasn't devoted enough to the game. He says it came down to a matter of trust, of knowing Coach and his teammates had his back. "Coach taught me how to trust. I had trust issues when it came to playing like I wanted to play," Howard says. "I remember him sitting me down in the office after my junior year and telling me I was going to have to lead next year's team. That showed me he saw something in me."
J-Ho's senior year couldn't have gone much better. Behind his 19.5 points and 8.3 rebounds per game, the Deacons won the ACC regular-season title by two games. Prosser was named ACC Coach of the Year, and Howard became the first player to be unanimously selected ACC Player of the Year since David Thompson in 1974-75. He also became the first person in his family to graduate from college.
But the coach-player connection didn't stop after Howard was drafted by the Mavs and became an All-Star last season. A product of a single-parent household, Josh says he saw Prosser as a father figure. He valued the phone calls from Prosser. Not just the preseason wishes of good luck that Coach would make to all his NBA players, but the monthly calls when the two could just rap. That's why Prosser's unexpected death was so hard on Howard. "I'm still tripping that, you know, he's gone," he says. And it's why Howard decided to make the grand gesture of giving up some space on his right arm to honor his guy. While West is true to his school with an "X" tattoo on his left arm, Howard had "trust" inked on the inside of his right wrist and "Skip" on his right biceps. "I know Coach was the reason I got to the NBA," Josh says. "I'm always playing for him. He made the biggest impact on me."
The Miller Center, Wake Forest's practice facility, is awash with Skipisms. In the basement where players collect their clean practice unis a sign reads: "Playing time is not like Halloween. Just because you have a uniform doesn't mean you're going to get any candy." On the steps that lead to the floor a sign on the first landing asks Howard's favorite question, "Are you a 3-to-6 player?" while a sign on the second landing asks, "Or a 6-to-3 player?" And near the entrance there is a simple reminder: "The gym is the best place you'll ever be."
Words can't quite capture what Skip Prosser meant to Paul, West and Howard or to the game itself. But they do have a power all their own. In the end, Prosser's words are still heard in Winston-Salem, where this past season the Deacons had two players make the ACC's all-freshman team. And next fall, Prosser's final recruiting class will enroll. Considered to be a top-five class, it includes two 7-footers and one of the nation's best small forwards, Al-Farouq Aminu. "My dad wanted desperately to take a team to the Final Four," says Mark Prosser, an assistant coach at Bucknell. "I think they'll have the talent in a year or two to do that. The foundation is there. It will be their team. But he had something to do with it, and he'll be watching."
Until then, three of his favorite players will carry the banner in the Mavericks-Hornets series. They'll battle it out in the first round without receiving any pregame call from Coach, knowing he would have tried to catch a couple of the games in person. They play for New Orleans. And Dallas. And yet, still, they play for Skip.
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