Tara VanDerveer: Redefining Excellence in Women's Basketball

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0:49I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. And helping me in this episode is Tara Vanderveer. Tara recently retired as the head coach of the Stanford University women's basketball team. She led that team for 38 years. She took over at Stanford in 1985 and quickly built the program into a national powerhouse. She led Stanford to three NCAA Women's Division I basketball championships in 1990, 1992, and 2021. She is a 10-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year. and has won over 1 ,200 games in her career. The most of any coach in college basketball history, men's or women's.

1:40Tara also served as the head coach of the 1996 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team. That team won a gold medal. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here is the remarkable, most winning Tara Van Der Veer. what happens a day after you retire let's see my email and phone blew up letters i got some amazing just beautiful letters from people probably honestly over a thousand of them and i'm still working on catching up writing people back emailing texting and then a lot of different opportunities to do things, whether it's books, movies, podcasts, speaking. And at first it felt honestly pretty overwhelming, but I'm going to be working part-time in the athletic department as an advisor to our athletic director and a coach's coach.

2:43And so I think I'll just get into that groove. And basically during the summer, I'm going to be working remotely, but I'm excited about a new role. I don't want to cause PTSD, but can you go through the basic seasons of a D1 college coach? The season ends and you take off and, or does recruiting start immediately and it's never, ever you're off? It's the latter. You are never, ever off. I would say, as an example, our calendar year was we would come back to Stanford. We would start with our team September 15th. So basically the coaches would meet in person around September 1st and just get everything ready for our players to come back because they'd been in summer school.

3:31And then we would start working out the 15th. We would do a team bonding exercise. Usually we started school maybe a week later and you're working out, you're doing some kind of workout with your team plus recruiting and all kinds of things, just starting up the school year, meetings. And then you have your whole season and you're also doing recruiting during your season. And then as soon as your last game ends, you're again doing recruiting, going to high school tournaments and basically all spring. And then so yesterday was our first day of basketball camp. We have basketball camp in the summer, recruiting in the summer.

4:14And even there are two dead weeks where you're not allowed to recruit. One is in May and one is in August. So those are your two vacation times, really. But it's become really 24-7, 50 weeks of the year.

4:32I saw something in your background that I found so fascinating. So can you explain your connection to Bobby Knight? Well, I went to Indiana University. I transferred there as a sophomore and I took Coach Knight's basketball class, which he taught the X's and O's and philosophy and things like that. And in his class, he said that anyone that attended his class had permission to watch their basketball practice. I don't think he thought I would come every day, but I did. and I watched every day of practice for basically three years. I loved it. I learned a lot. I didn't have any idea that I would be a basketball coach because really growing up, there were not basketball teams for women to coach.

5:19So I just really enjoyed watching practice. And I thought I majored in sociology. I thought I'd go to law school, but I just kind of fell into this coaching a little bit backwards. From the outside, looking in at Bobby Knight, all that I picture is him picking up chairs and throwing them across the court and abusing players and all that. But what's the real story of Bobby Knight? Because my other impression is that people who played for him loved him. He was great to me. He was very generous with his time and knowledge. And I watched their practices. There were times where he would raise his voice.

5:56I never saw him throw a chair or do anything crazy. But I think that the pressure on college coaches, I think he felt that. And I learned maybe some things obviously not to do, but my experience with him was always very positive. And I'm very thankful to have that opportunity to have been able to watch. And I loved watching Indiana basketball. It was really a different game than in a way. There's no shot clock. There was no three point line. The rules have changed so much that the game is really different. But I learned a lot and I loved it. Can you trace any of your coaching philosophy to his coaching philosophies?

6:35I would say that yes, I can. Not in temperament as much as he ran a very organized, quick practice and the use of your time in practice, how you go from one drill to the next, why you teach certain things, what the order that you teach them in, the importance of fundamentals and I learned a lot and I would just say there's no one that has had more of an impact on my basketball coaching than coach Knight. How would Indiana players practice free throws? Usually what they did they would do a drill where you're really going hard you're playing and then you would break for free throws and then you would do another drill and then you would break so that Your free throws was your water break and your chance to shoot free throws while you were tired.

7:26And we would pretty much shoot free throws the same way in our practice, where you would go hard, you'd be scrimmaging, you're going up and down the court, and then you take a break and you're going to make 10 free throws at a basket. Then you're scrimmaging again or you're doing a really tough running drill so that when you're shooting your free throws, you're tired. Just the logistics of that. So you scrimmage and then you have obviously players on the court at Maples. How many baskets are there for people to be shooting free throws after a scrimmage? There's eight baskets. During practice, usually there's their two main baskets, and then you've got six on either side.

8:01And that's pretty much true. I would say most practice courts, the arena will have your main baskets. And actually in the old days, Maples, the baskets would swing down. So you'd always have eight baskets to practice on, which I loved. Because we would do a lot of shooting drills where you would divide up. You would go with a partner and maybe a manager and do shooting with a partner for five minutes and then come back and do another full court drill.

8:30So you explained the influence of Bobby Knight, but how would you describe the core of your coaching philosophy? Maybe that started with my parents. Both of my parents are teachers and I view coaching as maybe 40 public exams. You're coaching and teaching and you're a mentor for young women. And it's more than just teaching X's and O's, but it's getting to know them as people. It's really trying to help them navigate college and a competitive environment. And it's very challenging. I noticed that it took you about three years to blossom at Stanford. And do you explain that as finally after three years, it's the players that you recruited or finally they got the system or what took three years?

9:17Like you said, the first year, for the most part, if you're hired as a coach, the team is not very good because the coach in front of me at Stanford was fired. So they'd won five games the year before and it was a team that was really struggling. So we did my assistant coaches and myself, we worked very hard. And so the first year you don't have any of your own players. And the second year, your players are freshmen. And so in the third year, then we really had a great breakout season and went to the NCAA tournament. And then we got it going right away. And how do you recruit as a first year coach when you're five and five and 20 or whatever it was?

9:58I had coached at Ohio State and had success at Ohio State and had success at Idaho. So we knew the type of players that we needed. I had great assistant coaches who were excellent at evaluating players. And for Stanford, it's not just they have to be great players, but they have to be great students. The dean of admissions explained to me that, you know, Tara, the students that you recruit for basketball need to be able to jump through the same academic hoops as other admits. And so I think coaching at Stanford is the ultimate challenge. And it's even become more challenging with the portal and collective money and NIL.

10:35So do you think that the portal is improving the game or it's giving players options or it's ruining the game because it's giving players options? I think that players should have the opportunity to play where they want to play. And the portal basically allows them to transfer. I think that transferring, I would hope it would be after the season, but sometimes what's happening is if someone has a bad day, they just get mad and then they're like, I'm out of here. Which I think in some ways is hurting both teams and players when they're not developing the resilience and the competitiveness that would help them later on.

11:14But I think that, I mean, I transferred as a freshman. I realized I was not in a place I wanted and I transferred and got to play right away. The challenge now is not just the portal, but the combination of collective money, which is boosters at a certain school, will then call players and poach top players off of really good teams with very high incentive money to go to different places. And that's all legal and okay now. It is right now, yes. Yes. And but wouldn't a school like Stanford with your history and its infinitely wealthy alumni, wouldn't you benefit from the portal and that collective thing?

11:58I would not say that Stanford has benefited from the portal. First of all, the portal has, again, I think the NIL is a great thing for college students. The combination of the collective and the portal is not beneficial to Stanford. There are players that are great players at Stanford that are being recruited and poached by other schools at the direction of their coach, which to me is, it's quote legal, but it's not really legal because the coaches are not supposed to be involved, but they are. And I think it's something that teams are becoming stacked, which that's interesting too. But the money is just, I don't know, I think it's unsustainable.

12:44sustainable. And we do have very wealthy alums at Stanford that give money to libraries and laboratories and like the Door School of Sustainability. And just handing over a million dollars or$2 million to a basketball player doesn't seem rational, but that's what's happening. Okay. You mentioned the word recruiting four or five times already. So what exactly do you look for in a recruit? For someone at Stanford, they have to have the academic background, so they'll be accepted. So that will be something really important. If I see someone, if I'm out recruiting, that will be the first thing I want to know is I want to see their high school transcript.

13:27Are they in AP classes? What are their SAT scores, ACT scores? So that's coming back in. Then once, if in fact they're in the ballpark, Then are they skilled at basketball? Do they shoot the ball well? Are they athletic? Do they run the floor well? What is their strength? How would they fit in with the players that are already on our team? And then you just go from there. If you can check those boxes, then a lot of times, if they're interested academically, then you have a really good chance of getting them. Now it's a combination of are they interested academically and do you have collective money?

14:05Some of the top upcoming juniors and seniors in high school and women's basketball are asking for$100 ,000,$200 ,000,$300 ,000,$400 ,000 per year guaranteed. Those words pass through their lips. They literally ask for the money. Yes. No, they just say, this is what it will cost for you to recruit me. I'm interested, but that's what is happening now. Yes. I guess I could build a case that's good because basketball programs make money off the players but there's a part of me that says wow that just sounds like total commercialization of a sport. It's a whole new world, a whole new landscape. I don't know yet that there are very many women's fastball programs that do make a lot of money.

14:54The money for the most part in college athletics is in football. I would say 85 to 90 % of all the money that comes in is because of football. And for some of the top football quarterbacks, especially the marquee type players, their price tag is maybe one, two, three million per year. And I think that that's where the NCAA were hoping that in some way there's some regulation of this so that it's not just crazy wild west giving cash money in McDonald's paper bag, because that's what's happening. It's really out there right now. Wow. So, and obviously you've coached many winners and with your hindsight, can you sort of break it down?

15:42Is it talent? Is it attitude? Is it luck? What makes a winner? Well, I think individually, like you said, I have coached some amazing players, including 12 Olympians. But the great players that I've coached at Stanford or Ohio State, I would say in the very best players, it starts with discipline. They really see the end game. They're not trying to be an amazing player in one day because that's not going to happen. basketball is like steel cut oatmeal it takes you've got to cook it it's not instant oatmeal being a great student you're not going to do it in one day and the people that are great athletes they enjoy the process of getting better and they buy into improving they're very coachable they want to hear how can i get better and they really enjoy coming to the gym they put in extra time they're people that are really fun to work with like the very best players are your hardest workers.

16:38They're great teammates. Some of the best players I've coached just honestly, I just cry when they graduate. It's awful, but they're great teammates. They're leaders. They're disciplined, hardworking, and they just really want to be great. And they'll put in the time and make the effort. They're not going to just talk about it. They're going to, I call it though, like some people want the sweatshirt without sweating, but the great players want to sweat. And you can determine this in recruiting and scouting when they're sophomores and juniors? No, you hope to, you talk to their coaches, their high school coaches.

17:17And what's amazing is whether it's sometimes their high school coaches or sometimes like their parents, they're like, my daughter's the hardest worker ever. That's a red light for me, you know, because people aren't always realistic and they don't understand the commitment involved in a great college player. College athletics for whether you're a football, men's or women's basketball, if you're a great basketball player, like when I said we started September 15th, you're in the gym, you're committed at least five hours a day. Everyone is. You're coming to practice, you're going to the training room.

17:56You're going to watch film. You're allowed, quote, 20 hours a week, but that's just the time you're on the court. So you're on the court for 20 hours. And honestly, another 10 hours a week, you're getting treatment. You're maybe in the weight room. You're in the gym extra getting shots up, working on your skill to get better. And there's some huge motivation for some of these pro basketball player. And now for women too, they're very motivated. And at Stanford, they're also carrying an academic load. They are. And some of our players have graduated early. We had a set of twins, Lexi and Lacey Hull, who are fabulous, fabulous basketball players and equally fabulous students competing with each other in engineering, which they got their master's degree in four years.

18:48It was during COVID also. and like 389, 399. It was just incredible, great points. I had a professor say to us coaches, I've learned more from Lacey than she's learned from me. They're just, they're amazing athletes and students. And we've had a number of those. That's the extreme. They're just fabulous, but others are equally good. And where are they now? Lexi is playing professionally in Indiana. She's in the WNBA. And Lacey is in corporate America, living in Austin, Texas. Can we switch gears now to Olympic basketball? Because you've been a coach, you've already coached players who played in the Olympics.

19:32So how does that differ? I mean, how does that even work? For me, it worked differently than anyone else. In 1992, the USA men's team was the dream team and won a gold medal easily. The women's team did not win a gold medal, got a bronze medal. And the 1996 Olympics were in Atlanta, the next quadrennial, and USA Basketball basically said, hey, we want to win a gold. So we're going to put in a year-long training and we're going to ask a coach to leave their job for a year and train our team to win a gold medal. So I was the coach in the 96 quadrennial, which I left Stanford for a year. And we trained and traveled all over the world and played a total of 52 games before the Olympics.

20:25So we traveled over 100 ,000 miles. We went to Russia. We went to Australia. We went to China. We played in tournaments. We played college teams all over, barnstormed college teams. And then in August of 1996, we played in Atlanta and won the gold medal. And so those, the members of that team, they basically took a year off academically too? No, they were professional. They were paid. Oh, excuse me. Okay. They took a pay cut. They took a pay cut to play for USA Basketball. Some of them earned 200, 250. Now, again, this is over 25 years ago and USA Basketball paid them$50 ,000 to take a year off and not play in Europe, not play in Italy or Russia, where they were paid over$200 ,000 because there was no professional women's basketball in the United States before the 1996 team.

21:24And when USA Basketball is involved in this, are you picking your team or are they handing you the players and saying, Tara, take it from here? How does that work? They picked the team. I did not. You don't have any say in it. I might say something, but I had no vote. Wow. And is that true today? Yes, I think it is pretty true today. And who is USA Basketball that picks this? How do they do it? They have a committee. So this year's committee is someone like Dawn Staley, who was a former coach, Bethany Donovan, who's a Stanford basketball player, but she works for the WNBA. The head of the, it used to be Carol Cowan, who I worked with.

22:07They have a USA basketball representative. Simone Augustus is a former USA basketball Olympian. And I think there's a couple other people, and I can't remember right off the top of my head who's on the committee. Okay. Jason Elf, I'm an outsider and I just don't understand. So I read all this controversy. Caitlin Clark is not on the Olympic team. She should be. She shouldn't be. Like, how does that work? The Olympic team is not necessarily picked the Olympic year. The team trains together and works and plays games four years leading up. So it is an interesting, positive dilemma, I think, with the Caitlin Clark controversy because she has, through her college record-setting great career that she had at Iowa, she is really, for a lot of people, the face of women's basketball.

23:00And so it's hard to understand how come she's not on this team. The problem is other people have put in a lot of time, and they're really good professional players, and people don't know about them. I think that there's an argument that she should be on the team. She is good enough, but it's what I call musical chairs. There are probably 50 players that are good enough to play on the Olympic team, but only 12 chairs. And she's one of the people that is good enough. The controversy, I think much more than Caitlin Clark was when Nekka Ogumike was left off. And so Nekka Ogumike played for four years, was hurt in the spring before the Olympics, and she was left off, but she was healthy by the Olympics.

23:45And so to me, that was much more of a controversy. But people don't know the name Neko Ogumake, the household name that Caitlin Clark is. I think that there is merit to the argument that Caitlin Clark would bring great attention to the women's basketball team and the Olympics. So that would be a reason to include her on that team. and for the marketing and promotion of women's basketball for one person when, you know, who's your 12th player on the team? Maybe why not have Caitlin Clark who would bring such a great notoriety? I think the first question at the press conference when the USA team goes to Paris will be, why isn't Caitlin Clark on the team?

24:28So she'll, she will generate a lot of enthusiasm, but she won't be there right now. And what do you think USA Basketball is going to say when they're asked that question? I think what they've said is basically there's players that are more experienced. And in some ways, I think that USA Basketball has hurt itself not having younger players, not developing younger players for those big moments. On the Olympic team that I coached in 96, we had, for the most part, I would say 10 new players as opposed to this year's team, maybe has five or six new players. I'd have to look at the numbers exactly, but I think it's good to have young, enthusiastic, and to teach them the way it is to understand the pressure of playing with USA on your jersey.

25:17And what motivates someone like you who's so successful at Stanford to take a year off to do this? Is it just patriotic duty? You know, I think it was just another challenge. And I had coached the younger teams coming up and I was ready to do it. I've been prepared and groomed to do it. And then it was different. It was hard to leave Stanford for a year. I think our program suffered at Stanford, not the year I was gone. My assistant coach did a fabulous job, has the winningest percentage at Stanford and was awesome. But our recruiting suffered after that. And it's when you go away, you take a year off.

25:56Basically, it really takes time to get it back going again. And it did. When you walk into the athletic director's office and say, I want to take a year off to coach Olympic basketball. Does the AD say, oh, hallelujah, Tara, such a great opportunity. Absolutely. There was probably mixed. They worked with USA Basketball and it worked out, but I had to resign. Basically, I've, quote, retired twice.

26:31So now looking forward at women's basketball, Caitlin Clark and this rivalry and stuff, is it just a great time for women's basketball? I think it is a great time for women's basketball. But then I've thought it's always been a great time for women's basketball. Since the Olympics in 1996 and 1997, two basically pro leagues were established, the ABL, which since has folded, but the WNBA. And in the Bay Area, now we're going to have a pro team in San Francisco. Joe Lacob is the owner of the Warriors and the Valkyries. It's very exciting. I think it's a great time for women's basketball. The television ratings are way up.

27:16For the first time ever in history, the women's television rating was higher than the men's television rating for the NCAA basketball tournament. And I think that's a lot to do with Caitlin Clark, and they call it Clarkonomics. She has impacted television ratings, selling of gear, the sellout crowds, but then exposing more people to women's basketball. I think it's a really, really good thing. Did you try to recruit her? I saw her play. She's a great high school player. But again, I think she was pretty much set on staying in the East Coast or Midwest. And this may be an insensitive question and you can punt on it.

27:54But do you think if she were black, it would be the same phenomena? I would hope so. There are some great young players. Juju Watkins is a superstar coming up and might break Caitlin Clark's record. I would like to think that we live in a world that appreciates excellence, no matter their gender or color. I'm realistic. The fact that she is white and she's from Iowa, I think she did generate a lot of enthusiasm for women's basketball. But I think there are other players out there who are getting known and followed in a similar way that Caitlin is. That level of basketball, men's or women's, is the difference between Caitlin Clark and someone who's beneath Caitlin Clark in standings and all that?

28:40Is it just like an infestimally small difference or is it head and shoulders above everybody? She's a superstar college player in the same way that Kelsey Plum, who graduated from Washington, and that's the record that Caitlin broke, Caitlin Clark. These are extraordinarily talented players. There is a big difference between the extraordinarily talented players, the Olympians, the NBA All-Stars. There is a difference in the same way that Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Steph Curry is a phenom. And Kaitlin Clark is a phenom in her own way, too. I would just say this about Kaitlin Clark. What's so amazing about her is not her three-point shot.