How Lamont Paris got this South Carolina team to buy in to his vision, playing style
Three Saturdays ago, 11 of Lamont Paris’ buddies from Findlay High School came down from Ohio to Columbia to watch the Gamecocks play against Florida. To them, Paris is the same dude he was in high school: Goal-oriented and basketball-crazed.
The big difference? Paris showed them his phone a few hours after the March 2 win over the Gators.
“Dude,” he told Joe Rivera, who’s known Paris since they were second-grade classmates at Washington Elementary, “I have over 1,000 unread text messages.”
And that was before South Carolina made the NCAA Tournament, where the 6-seed Gamecocks will take on 11-seed Oregon in the first round on Thursday.
“He’s still the same person,” Rivera said, before adding the obvious. “He’s a lot busier now.”
Zach Norris was probably one of those thousand who fired off a text. The longtime basketball coach at Keenan High School has watched Paris’ squad this season with great admiration. Forget the wins. The wins are a product of the effort, of the drag-you-through-the-mud defense that the Gamecocks bring every game.
He shot Paris a message not long ago that read: “Coach, you have done a whale of a job.”
Said Norris: “I want to know how he gets his kids to defend — and all of them are pretty much grown men. How did he make that happen? … It’s unbelievable. And (it’s) like they’re the best friends in the world, too. They can talk to each other on and off the court.”
We are in an era of college basketball, driven by the transfer portal, where it’s impossible to simply divide teams into categories of experienced and inexperienced. Rather, there are teams that mesh and teams that don’t. Groups who look like they met each other outside the gym 10 minutes before tip and others who look like they’ve been playing together for 10 years.
South Carolina is the latter.
The Gamecocks are not just gritty/resilient/whatever other hustle buzzword you want to use. They are all those things, sure. But the defense makes them different. It makes them special.
They fight to get over screens. They are constantly chattering about switches and responsibilities. They help when they need to help. They follow a game plan. They do all the things coaches expect and don’t always receive.
And, as evidenced by Paris’ text messages, folks have taken notice.
“Honestly a lot of people have asked about it,” Paris said. “But more people have just acknowledged it. I can’t tell you how many people have acknowledged it — people who don’t coach.”
What Paris has done transcends industries because great leaders — whether in basketball, politics or business — are always on the hunt for better strategies, better tactics to create buy-in from those under them.
For Paris, it comes down to two things.
1. Honesty creates trust.
And it starts in the recruiting process. South Carolina is not in the transfer portal talking with 800 kids, telling them all they’ve got starting spots open and a chance for minutes. No. Paris goes after guys who seek the playing time he has available and who will fit into his system.
This offseason, South Carolina was straight up with B.J. Mack when he left Wofford. Perhaps he could’ve snatched more NIL money elsewhere, but Paris convinced him that his length and perimeter shooting were going to be a puzzle-piece matchup inside the Gamecocks’ system.
“It’s been the honesty that he had with us up front,” Mack said of Paris, “just telling us what he sees for the team, and then what our personal goals are lined up.”
During his first season in Columbia, Paris had to build trust through a vision. He had to tell his players about his system, about what he accomplished at Chattanooga, about what a similar player he coached at Wisconsin accomplished. When the vision comes to fruition, that trust, Paris said, “is emboldened even more.”
“Because they know you’re about them and you’re here for them,” Paris said, “then I think it’s pretty easy to get them to trust you and you’re telling the truth and they believe that it’s the truth.”
2. Paris focuses on teaching.
Paris is a numbers guy, a law-of-averages type. He has a belief in how he wants his basketball team to play, a conviction that if the process remains steady, everything will work out. An outlier of a game or a season won’t cause him to stray.
Or to worry.
It would be interesting to see Paris’ heart rate during a game just to see if it changes. Some coaches look like they’re gunning for an aneurysm on the sideline, their veins popping with every yelp and scream.
Paris sometimes comes off as an evaluator, his arms crossed as he simply watches the action in front of him, toiling with adjustments in his head. To him, that is trusting the process. Trusting his players. Trusting the preparation.
“If you’re in calculus class and you’re not understanding how to do something in your calculus class,” Paris said, “I’m not sure your teacher screaming at a different volume makes you learn it better.”
USC vs. Oregon game info
Who: No. 6 South Carolina (27-6) vs. No. 11 Oregon (23-11)
When: 4 p.m. Thursday
Where: PPG Arena, Pittsburgh
TV: TNT
