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Mark Adams should be finished as Texas Tech men’s basketball coach, and the only variables are when that becomes official and how much it costs to do it. There is no other way forward. A preposterously egregious misunderstanding of what it means to be a college basketball coach made that decision for everyone.
We know Adams used a Bible verse about slaves serving masters in a conversation with an unnamed player, as Texas Tech outlined to the world on Sunday. Black players comprise 12 of 13 spots on the Red Raiders’ roster. The math and Adams’ suspension provide all the context. It’s unacceptably obtuse. While Adams apologized, there’s no walking back across that bridge, because the bridge is a pile of smoldering wreckage.
The school’s internal interviews conducted with players Sunday are unlikely to make the situation any better. What Adams said is repugnant enough, but what it says about what he believes only supercharges the urgency to move on.
There’s no do-as-I-say coaching in the year 2023. Players have to believe their coach has a personal investment in them as a human before they follow any orders.
The good coaches get this. The ones that don’t lose games and jobs. The ones who invoke ancient civilizations and racist classism may find themselves out of the business, period.
It’s astounding, really, to think anyone wouldn’t get it.
Visit programs around the country – or at least the ones that win – and the refrain is the same. Players will do what’s asked if they feel like they’re in something like a partnership. If they believe the person in the big chair has the patience and overall care level to explain the “why.” And this comes from the same scowly men who run as hot as F1 engines on the sideline. Some of the most intensely demanding people in the sport. They are hard on players after earning the trust to be hard on them. They understand what they have to give in order to get what they want.
Mark Adams was promoted to head coach after Chris Beard left for Texas in 2021. (John E. Moore III / Getty Images)
Then places like Texas Tech find themselves in predicaments like this, and you wonder if people in this business ever talk to each other about what works.
Mark Adams shouldn’t have said what he said. It’s bad and ignorant enough. He also shouldn’t have even contemplated saying it, if he had any grasp on the best way – the only way – to get the most out of a player on his team.
We’ll probably learn how deep the problems ran soon enough, well beyond one horrible choice in religious citations. In that way, the interpretation of Texas Tech’s wildly uneven 2022-23 regular season – which ended Saturday with a loss to Oklahoma State, its third in a row, completing a 5-13 Big 12 record – might land a little different. Maybe the players, for too long, had zero interest in doing anything well for a coach who they thought had zero interest in them.
The various influencers and decision-makers in the greater Lubbock area might want to participate in a little clear-eyed self-reflection, too, and examine their priorities in basketball coaches. There’s a bit of an outlaw ethos at a school with “Guns Up” as a credo. To an extent, it’s what a power-conference program in Lubbock, Texas, needs to survive and thrive. But the last two men to run this program have crashed, hard, due to personal failings. Due to a fractured comprehension of right and wrong. Their mistakes aren’t small accidents. They’re reflections of what their character was in that moment.
Texas Tech doesn’t need any more of that.
It needs a healer. Someone who can provide stability at a place that’s effectively devoted itself to two different basketball coaches in the last three years, only to be ditched by one and disappointed by the other. Someone aware of how the dynamics work in the most successful college basketball programs – and who can implement them without any erratic side effects. Any current player who decides to stay in Lubbock certainly deserves as much, and any player considering signing with the program deserves to see a sincere effort at a culture shift, if the idea of student-athlete welfare is more than a buzzword in a memo.
It shouldn’t be this hard. Not in 2023, not when there’s an example of best practices around one corner and a cautionary tale around the next. Toss Mark Adams into the second pile for now, and hope the people left at Texas Tech can understand what the former men’s basketball coach couldn’t.
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Mark Adams should be finished as Texas Tech men’s basketball coach, and the only variables are when that becomes official and how much it costs to do it. There is no other way forward. A preposterously egregious misunderstanding of what it means to be a college basketball coach made that decision for everyone.
We know Adams used a Bible verse about slaves serving masters in a conversation with an unnamed player, as Texas Tech outlined to the world on Sunday. Black players comprise 12 of 13 spots on the Red Raiders’ roster. The math and Adams’ suspension provide all the context. It’s unacceptably obtuse. While Adams apologized, there’s no walking back across that bridge, because the bridge is a pile of smoldering wreckage.
The school’s internal interviews conducted with players Sunday are unlikely to make the situation any better. What Adams said is repugnant enough, but what it says about what he believes only supercharges the urgency to move on.
There’s no do-as-I-say coaching in the year 2023. Players have to believe their coach has a personal investment in them as a human before they follow any orders.
The good coaches get this. The ones that don’t lose games and jobs. The ones who invoke ancient civilizations and racist classism may find themselves out of the business, period.
It’s astounding, really, to think anyone wouldn’t get it.
Visit programs around the country – or at least the ones that win – and the refrain is the same. Players will do what’s asked if they feel like they’re in something like a partnership. If they believe the person in the big chair has the patience and overall care level to explain the “why.” And this comes from the same scowly men who run as hot as F1 engines on the sideline. Some of the most intensely demanding people in the sport. They are hard on players after earning the trust to be hard on them. They understand what they have to give in order to get what they want.
Mark Adams was promoted to head coach after Chris Beard left for Texas in 2021. (John E. Moore III / Getty Images)
Then places like Texas Tech find themselves in predicaments like this, and you wonder if people in this business ever talk to each other about what works.
Mark Adams shouldn’t have said what he said. It’s bad and ignorant enough. He also shouldn’t have even contemplated saying it, if he had any grasp on the best way – the only way – to get the most out of a player on his team.
We’ll probably learn how deep the problems ran soon enough, well beyond one horrible choice in religious citations. In that way, the interpretation of Texas Tech’s wildly uneven 2022-23 regular season – which ended Saturday with a loss to Oklahoma State, its third in a row, completing a 5-13 Big 12 record – might land a little different. Maybe the players, for too long, had zero interest in doing anything well for a coach who they thought had zero interest in them.
The various influencers and decision-makers in the greater Lubbock area might want to participate in a little clear-eyed self-reflection, too, and examine their priorities in basketball coaches. There’s a bit of an outlaw ethos at a school with “Guns Up” as a credo. To an extent, it’s what a power-conference program in Lubbock, Texas, needs to survive and thrive. But the last two men to run this program have crashed, hard, due to personal failings. Due to a fractured comprehension of right and wrong. Their mistakes aren’t small accidents. They’re reflections of what their character was in that moment.
Texas Tech doesn’t need any more of that.
It needs a healer. Someone who can provide stability at a place that’s effectively devoted itself to two different basketball coaches in the last three years, only to be ditched by one and disappointed by the other. Someone aware of how the dynamics work in the most successful college basketball programs – and who can implement them without any erratic side effects. Any current player who decides to stay in Lubbock certainly deserves as much, and any player considering signing with the program deserves to see a sincere effort at a culture shift, if the idea of student-athlete welfare is more than a buzzword in a memo.
It shouldn’t be this hard. Not in 2023, not when there’s an example of best practices around one corner and a cautionary tale around the next. Toss Mark Adams into the second pile for now, and hope the people left at Texas Tech can understand what the former men’s basketball coach couldn’t.
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