Go Sports Life

O'Brien refused to live in the past.  Perhaps, that, more than anything, explained his string of successes.  All those championship banners on the wall were good for intimidating opponents, but banners did not win games.

Pg 77

Sometimes he tries too much.  But when I coach, I try to do too much.  I'd rather have a guy who's an attacker rather than a guy who's not sure of himself.

Pg 145

O'Brien then turned to Ricardo "Robby" Robinson, the final senior on the squad. "I want you to have this," he said, handing over the team's massive tournament trophy.  "Ricardo comes to every practice, works hard, doesn't say anything, isn't concerned about playing time."  He surveyed the seniors standing around him, and pointed to each one.  "You got MVP, you got All-Star, you got the championship trophy, you got money."  When he got to Spot, he stopped before adding, "And you got injured."  O'Brien laughed, and Spot did too, but there was hurt in his laugh.

Robby, on the other hand couldn't have been more pumped.  The kid was a study in contrasts, with the "Fear No One" and python tattoos that he'd had inked into his arms and the collection of nineteen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures that he kept in his bedroom in their original boxes, next to the stack of utility bills he paid every month. 

Robby shared an apartment in Mattapan with his older brother, a rapper hoping to make it big, but they led largely separate lives.  Robby paid his share of the bills with the government benefit check he had been splitting with his younger sister since his mother's death during his freshman year.  He had learned how to stretch the money, which he would stop receiving after high school.  After paying the gas heating bill, half the cable bill, and his car insurance, he usually had about fifty bucks left over each month for food.  Like George, Robby had just received an acceptance letter from Salem State, but he was more excited about Radford University, a Virginia school he had stumbled across while surfing the internet.

Robby walked out of the locker room, clutching his new hardware, grinning.  "I leave trophied up.  Coach says I play hard and I never complain."

Pg 146

Although O'Brien told people all the time that his record of getting kids to college meant more to him than all the state and city titles, he also knew that his whole program was built on winning.  For his boys, nothing succeeded like success- an experience mostly absent from their lives before O'Brien's arrival.  Many guys choose to come to Charlestown, and put up with his impossible demands on the court and in the classroom, because they knew they had a good shot of leaving with a championship ring or two.  If the wins stopped coming, O'Brien worried, so would players willing to put up with his rigorous expectations.

Pgs 159-160

No one ever helped a disadvantaged kid by feeling sorry for him and letting him make excuses.  Hard work beats natural ability every time.

Pg 167