The Pyramid and the Players

Over the years since completing the Pyramid of Success, I would ask players to come in a couple of weeks before practice started to review it with me, to go over what it meant and how it applied to the team and themselves. I did this particularly at UCLA at the beginning of each new season.

What’s surprising is that nearly every player told me later that although they didn’t understand it all while they were students, the Pyramid of Success has been very meaningful to them as adults. I’m very pleased by that.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told a reporter he actually thought the Pyramid was kind of corny when he first saw it (you may also think this). But by the time he graduated, it had begun to make a little more sense to him. It was only later, he said, years after he had left UCLA, that it had its greatest effect on him.

Perhaps that’s as it should be, because the Pyramid of Success is about life more than about basketball.