Joe Mazulla says he uses AI everyday to help coach his team “I use Claude everyday for coaching thoughts. I love Claude. I’m all in on Claude. It was beneficial in the offseason for my personal development and where I wanted to take things psychologically for our team.” “I’ll throw in last year’s practice plan and be like, was this efficient? Because you don’t know in the present moment if it was an efficient practice plan or if it was an efficient use of your time. If you throw in, here’s our halftime process, how can our halftime process become more efficient? We watch film sometimes and it’s a reactive film session because we’re watching film of plays that already happened, not of plays that may happen.” Radio Host: “But it is going to kill all of us, you do know that? It’s coming for all of us.” “Something is coming for all of us. I just went to confession Monday so I’m in good shape.” “I think it’s more just helping organize, helping become more efficient, helping understanding. I use it a lot just for conversation and riffs on, ‘Okay, here’s what I’m wrestling with. What does this look like from a psychological perspective? What is the research and the data?’ You can quickly get so much research and data on things. Are you verbalizing things? Can they be verbalized in a much more efficient way?” “Like I talked about with practice planning, it really helps you test your processes that you think are efficient. Is our halftime process really the most efficient way to watch film getting ready for the second half? Is our pregame process the most efficient way to make sure our guys have retention of the game plan, understand what we need to do, and are in the right space mentally and psychologically?” “As a coach, you develop these processes and rituals that you think give you the best chance to win. I think a platform like that tests your efficiency. Is this really the best way? How we watch film on a practice day, is the way we watch film, the template of each clip, the best opportunity to build retention and understanding? What does it look like to have the most efficient film session you can? What type of questions are you asking when you’re going through film? Do I ask the right questions to check for understanding and build retention?” “I think it just really tests your processes. You may think you’re doing something the right way, but there’s definitely a more scientific or more efficient way of going about how to do things, and I think that gives us a platform that allows you to do it. Really, it was over the last year or so. Every offseason, and really this offseason, it was like, ‘Okay, let’s test all of our processes. Is our pregame film process the right way? Is our halftime film process the right way? Is our film room set up for learning the right way? How should our film room look?’” “You’re constantly testing. You always ask, ‘Where are we getting better?’ I think the best way for coaches to get better is in the processes of how they go about doing stuff. Are they the most efficient way? It also helped with combining sports. I’ve always talked about soccer being a passion of mine to watch, and I got into a little bit of handball this year. So I was able to say, ‘Tell me the similarities between soccer, handball and basketball. What elements of play are involved in all three of those things, and how can that work in a five-on-five setting?’” “To me, it tests your process. It tests your efficiency. It tests what you think you may know and how you can do it better.”

Byron Scott says that Kobe Bryant would lift at 4am, come back and make 500 shots, do a full practice, then work out again at night, and says Kobe told him he did that because over the course of five years the gap would become impossible to close for his competition “There’s three people in my lifetime that I admired on how hard they worked: Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Kobe Bryant. His was legendary. Kobe, as far as he never worked out just once a day. He would get up at 4 in the morning, or he’d say, ‘Meet me at the gym at 4 in the morning,’ and he would work out for two, three hours lifting because he knew he had to get stronger, had to get bigger.” “Then he would go eat breakfast, and then he’d come back and he’d make 500 shots, so he’d be there another two hours. Then he’d get ready for practice. He’d go through a two-and-a-half-hour, three-hour practice like it’s nothing. Then he’d go have lunch, chill out for another hour, then he’d come back at night and work out again.” “And it was crazy to me because his method of it was scientific. He was like, ‘B, if I work out three times a day and all these other guys who are so-called great players work out just for practice, they just work out that one time a day, over a five-year period they can’t catch me. I’ve worked out that much. I’ve worked on my body, I’ve worked on my footwork, I’ve worked on my shot, so five, ten years from now they can’t catch me. They’re that far behind.’” “I never thought about it until he explained it to me. I was a guy that in the summertime, go to the gym, lift weights, go to the track, run for two hours, then go play — and that’s equivalent to three times a day. But I never thought of it or put it in the type of method that he was talking about.” “I just thought it was ironic that a young man got it that quickly. He understood that if I worked out harder and longer and more than the guy who’s supposed to be on my level, sooner or later he won’t be on my level anymore. Kobe was extremely intelligent. He just said, ‘Scientifically, if I do this, you can’t catch me.’ And he was right. It worked.”

Kyle Shanahan explains why some of the 49ers’ most innovative offensive ideas had nothing to do with coaches being geniuses, and says great leaders have to be willing to change their system when they discover what their great players can uniquely do “One thing I’ve learned over the years, anytime I’ve changed the offense up, it’s never just been a dream that you have where you come up with some random idea.” “Scheme changes are usually because of a player. You get a unique player and you’re like, ‘Man, I haven’t done this, but I think this guy might be able to do this. Let me try it.’ Then he does it, and it’s something you haven’t done before. Someone sees something new, and then you can put 10 things off of that. It just kind of evolves.” “Other things that will have you change offensively are based off of what defenses are doing. There are plays I would have never run seven years ago because I thought defenses were good at stopping them.” “Then they start paying attention to other things, and now it’s like, ‘Wait a second. I used to hate this stuff, but defenses don’t pay attention to it anymore.’ Now all of a sudden I like it, and it becomes part of your offense.” “When you get different players, they change things. George Kittle, when he got here, could do some things different than I’d done with tight ends in the past. So you start asking tight ends to do different stuff, which evolves your offense.” “Deebo was a unique receiver. Some of the things we could do with him in the run game, we evolved our offense with that. It wasn’t that we were just geniuses coming up with all these receiver runs. It was because we had a different receiver who could do those runs.” “When Christian got here, we started doing things with the running back that other people hadn’t done. It wasn’t because we’re geniuses or anything. It’s because we had a running back who was capable of doing it. When those things happen, that’s when you really can evolve your offense and be different.”

Kobe Bryant says when he shifted from player to CEO he sought to hire curious people and stopped caring as much about how many hours they worked, and started caring more about the quality of their work “I expect excellent work. We all do. I don’t care if you’re here in the office at 6:00 a.m. and you leave at midnight. If the work that you do is average, this is not the home for you.” “Conversely, you cannot be in an office at all and have excellent work, this is the place for you. I don’t really care if you’re here.” “There are a lot of guys that get in the gym and work hard, work hard, work hard, work hard—but then they can’t transition that to 7:30.” “The important thing is curiosity first. I want curious people. People that ask questions, that want to figure things out, figure out new ways to do things. That’s the most important thing.” “Then from that curiosity, having a determination to see that curiosity through. If you figure out this is a particular course of action that we feel like we should be taking, has it been done before? No? That’s exciting to me. Let’s figure it out.”

Joe Mazzulla says his goal as Celtics coach is to be forgotten “If the people around you didn’t do what they do… I wouldn’t do anything. The thing I reflect on the most is… I think you have to be willing to be forgotten. I think that’s kind of my main goal.” “I want to be forgotten about. Because that means after you… It was better. I think that’s what it means to be a Celtic. However long you play, coach, work for the Celtics…” “Your job is to keep it exactly where it’s at or bring it better. You cannot bring it down. If you leave and it gets worse, that’s your fault. If you leave and they win, and they forgot about you, you did your job.” “I talk about that every day with the staff. Our job is to one day be forgotten about because you did your job. It became about something bigger than you.” “It’s a burden and a love for being with the Celtics… But it’s a responsibility. I think we could take that into our daily life. Can I leave it so much better that they don’t remember me because the next person came and was better?”

Drew Brees believes he would not have made the hall of fame if it weren't for a film session in 2003 where Marty Schottenheimer told him to stop making excuses “I’ll never forget a film session in 2003. I was coming off a tough game. As we watched the tape together, Coach asked me the question…” “‘Hey, why didn’t you throw to this receiver?’ ‘He was wide open.’ My response was… ‘I couldn’t see him.’ The tape paused. There was a moment of silence. Coach glared at me and said… It’s your job to see.’” “You reach a point in your career when you stop making excuses. It’s usually a moment or an event where you flip a switch. Or make a very conscious decision. And it becomes part of your being. Coach was right.” “And never again would those words or thoughts come out of my mouth. I would need to find a way to play the game a little bit different. Even if it was in a way that had not been done before.”

Stephen Curry explains how he used gratitude to process being underpaid on his 4 year $44,000,000 deal while winning MVP's and titles early in his career “It’s all intentionality. It sounds so freaking cheesy and cliché because I’m talking about it right now, but this is exactly how I thought.” “I talked to my wife about it right before I signed. I had to tell myself, one, let’s keep perspective here. $44 million for four years.” “More money than my pops ever made in the league. I’d been around the league for 16 years watching my dad play. I knew how far the league had grown from when he played.” “That’s good money. Support my family. Got a lot of security. I just want to be healthy.” “Let’s focus on that, not what you’re leaving on the table or what you could have made. Don’t count anybody else’s money. At the end of the day, when you sign, that’s your decision. You’re going to rock with it.” “I tried to set that foundation for my mindset right then and there. Never renegotiate with myself afterwards. Never second-guess.” “Never come back to that moment like, ‘Oh, I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.’ Because that’s not how life works.” “I had to be really intentional about it. It sounds so simple and fairytale because it did work out. But I give myself credit that that was the perspective I made sure I had.” “I didn’t want to let anything distract me from what could have been, what I left on the table, or what other situation could have been out there. I was still taken care of. I was still good.”