In Reply to: Re: What's your assessment of what happened to him? posted by Cachorro on December 16, 2025 at 08:49:41
Unfortunately, this is also a criticism: CONFIDENCE! Dent is clearly struggling with it. This is just my opinion, based largely on what I’ve seen with players like Andrews, but Cronin doesn’t seem to excel at building his guys up. His players consistently speak highly of him, so he must take a different approach behind closed doors than he does publicly, but I'm not sure they're compartmentalizing the public criticism.
Players often say they want to “hear the truth,” but the reality is they usually don’t, at least not all the time. I’ve worked with kids my entire life, and in my opinion, these guys are still kids. A good coach is constantly building his players up. Confidence is an enormous part of sports. I’ll always believe Kobe was as great as he was, not simply because of his skill, but because of his confidence. He had no business doing some of the things he did, but he did, because he believed he could.
The caveat is that we're all different. What works for some doesn't necessarily work for others. I think that's why Cronin talks about getting the "right" guys.