Book Review: Aspire Higher by Avery Johnson

JaaJoe.com ^ | March 31, 2008 | Cisco

[mosesgunner]

Book Review: Aspire Higher: Winning on and off the Court with Determination, Discipline, and Decisions. Written by Avery Johnson with Roy S. Johnson. Published by HarperCollins, 2008.

On page four of his book, Avery Johnson tells the story of a young player that he recently had in training camp that was very good at numbers, but not so good at basketball. Avery's assessment was that the guy “needed to be on Wall Street, not in the NBA.” He summed up his assessment of the potential player by saying that “Basketball wasn't his gift – numbers were.” Unfortunately, a similar assessment of Avery Johnson must be made: Writing isn't his gift – basketball is.

Avery's current position as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks does leave me with a dilemma when the Mavericks play. While I am a great fan of Avery because he represents to me all that is good in the NBA, and I am always quietly rooting for his personal success, I simultaneously despise the asinine owner of the Mavericks and wish that they could lose every game. Regardless of Mark Cuban's existence in the equation, I have always admired Avery both for his playing, and now for his coaching, and I purchased his book because of that admiration. But Avery should stick to coaching. His writing simply is not of a quality that justifies the killing of trees.

Roy Johnson, editor-in-chief of Men's Fitness magazine, is the co-author of the book. One would assume that a purported journalist such as Roy Johnson was needed to co-author the book in order to add a degree of polish and writing style that might be missing from the skill set of your average NBA coach, but in the case of Aspire Higher, one's assumption would be wrong. Roy Johnson failed miserably in this endeavor. I must admit ignorance of any of Roy Johnson's other journalistic endeavors, so I am not certain as to whether he is just a horrendous writer, or if his “co-authoring” was limited to proverbially urinating on Avery's proverbial leg and telling him it was proverbially raining. Regardless of Roy Johnson's actual role in “co-authoring” this book, I would advise all retired athletes who are aspiring authors to steer clear of the co-authoring skills of Roy.

Avery is ostensibly an humble person, so his propensity for associating with egocentric twits such as Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones is puzzling. No one would fault Avery for having Jerry Jones as an acquaintance, but allowing him to write the foreword to his book bespeaks more than an acquaintanceship and signifies an approval of Jones' egocentricity. It is understood that the foreword of a book is often written by a famous person in order to generate additional interest in the book. For the average Joe, a foreword written by the egomaniacal Jones can only serve to generate less interest in the book. And true to his egomaniacal ways, in Jones' meandering, bloviating foreword, he uses the words “I” or “me” fifty-eight times while magnanimously referring to Avery only forty times.

As the book jacket states, Avery is “a sought-after motivational speaker,” and therein lies the problem. Avery has taken his motivational speeches and put them down in writing and the inept Roy Johnson has allowed him to do so. Seldom does a speech translate well to the written page. A few notable exceptions would be speeches that were given by the likes of Winston Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt, and I doubt that anyone would confuse Avery's oratory skills with those demonstrated by either of those two individuals.

Avery's motivational speaking is extemporaneous, that is, he does not have a written speech, but instead has an outline with several important points, and throughout the speech he will refer to the important points and then demonstrate the points through the use of whatever stories or analogies come to mind. You can see this same extemporaneous method used in Avery's writing as he even goes so far as to use the old Southern Baptist evangelist mnemonic device of alliteration of the main points. Avery's main points are determination, discipline, and decisions, and his sub-points are standards, systems, stand, and savor along with competence, character, class, cooperation, caring, and communication.

Extemporaneous speech-making generates audience interest because it is supported by gestures, body language, and voice inflection. But Avery's use of this same extemporaneous method to write his book yields a stream-of-consciousness writing that is at times interesting, but is mostly just boring or downright irritating. I enjoyed a great number of the stories he tells, simply because I am a great fan of the NBA. But while reading the book, I often found myself being tempted to skip over the stream-of-consciousness writing in order to get to the next story.

There is one statement that Avery makes in the book that does call into question Avery's credibility, if not his intelligence. In Aspire Higher, Avery states that Michael Vick is not a bad person, but is rather a person who made bad decisions. Either Avery was not thinking clearly when he wrote that wrong-headed sentimental drivel, or he just does not think that there are any bad people in this world. A person makes a wrong decision when they decide to attend a dogfight, and then realizes after witnessing the cruelty that they will never attend a dogfight again. A person is a bad person when they are personally involved over several years in the training of dogs to kill each other for their own personal, sadistic pleasure. Avery definitely needs to get his head screwed on straight about this issue.

Several years ago a book called Success is a Choice was written by Rick Pitino. Shortly after the book's publication, Pitino was relieved of his duties as the head coach of the Boston Celtics. After watching the Nowitski-less Mavericks get manhandled by the Golden State Warriors last night, I am a bit fearful that Avery will likewise be relieved of his duties at the end of this season because I highly doubt that Dallas will make the playoffs. The similarity of Pitino's and Avery's circumstances leads me to suggest that maybe basketball coaches need to focus on coaching and forget about writing inferior books.

I can not recommend the purchase of Aspire Higher in hardcover form for anyone. But I am a fan of Avery Johnson, and so I have to look for something good to say about his efforts. I would suggest that there are enough good stories and practical life concepts in the book, that if and when it is published in paperback, it would be a good gift for an aspiring junior high athlete.