Jay Wright had four core values at Villanova. But the real key was how he implemented them

Peak newsletter | A version of this story first appeared in The Athletic’s weekly newsletter covering the mental side of sports. Sign up here to receive the Peak newsletter directly in your inbox.

Sometimes, core values arise out of necessity.

Before Jay Wright won two national championships and made four Final Fours at Villanova, he was a 30-something first-time head coach at Hofstra. Wright took over a basketball program in 1994 that had won just nine games in each of the previous two seasons, and his early years weren’t much better: He won 10 games his first season, nine in his second and 12 in Year 3.

The problem wasn’t effort. Wright knew his players were giving him everything they had; they were checking the intangible boxes he asked of them. His teams just didn’t have enough talent.

“It made me define: What are we really trying to do here?” Wright, now 64, told me.

In other words, he had to decide on his core values.

It’s one of the most important decisions for any coach (or any leader), but also one of the most challenging. Coaches spend years accumulating ideas from mentors and peers, but then the day comes when they’re the one in charge. The ideas all sound good in theory — think about how many times you’ve heard a leadership philosophy that made you go, Hm, I really like that.

But core values can’t be copied and pasted. They have to be authentic and true, because the hard part as a leader isn’t just identifying them. It’s actually implementing them, enforcing them and carrying them out day after day after day.

When Wright thought about his core values, he asked himself these questions:

When I go home and watch our team that I’m responsible for, how am I going to evaluate them?
What can we really control, and what can I live with as a leader?

Brett Gunning, an assistant with Wright during those early years at Hofstra, put it another way: “That’s the No. 1 challenge for coaches. To say: What is it that I’ll be at peace with, win or lose, when I go home so I can go to sleep at night snoring like a baby?”

I like that. It’s the Pillow Test. When you lie your head down at night, what core values will allow you to feel content?

Wright knew his values couldn’t be about wins and losses; that wasn’t realistic or fair, to his players or to himself. His team might play a perfect game and still lose because of talent.

So he settled on four tenets that were always within his team’s control:

1. Play hard.

“We wanted to play hard every time we stepped on the floor.”

2. Play together.

“We wanted to think of each other and think about how our actions affected each other.”

3. Play smart.

“We wanted to learn how to get better every day.”

4. Play with pride.

“We wanted to have pride in our program and play for the name on the front of our jerseys, not the back.”

Wright’s core values aren’t unique on their own. Every coach in the country talks about wanting their team to play hard and smart and together. But that’s only part one of the process.

The really hard part comes next. Because once you decide on your core values, you actually have to stand for them.

Wright wanted his core values to show up every day, in everything his team did. But first, he had to actually define each of his principles on a granular level.

So when he talked about playing hard, he meant:

Sprinting back on defense
Running down the court hard on offense
Staying in a defensive stance

Playing together meant:

Making a quick outlet pass to start the fast break (rather than making a big show that you had come down with the rebound)
Setting a screen for your teammate
Making the extra pass for a teammate to have a better shot

Playing smart meant:

Tapping a missed foul shot back to a teammate
Keeping your hands back when an opponent drives the ball (rather than fouling)

And playing with pride meant:

Running to help a teammate up if they were down on the court
Demonstrating a positive attitude when subbed out of a game: head up, giving teammates high-fives and pounds

Then Wright wanted to assign scores to those values so he (and his players and staff) could quantify their actions every day.

That’s how he settled on “attitude points.”

During practices and games, Wright had his staff chart them. Just like one made free throw was worth a point on the scoreboard, helping a teammate off the floor or sprinting back on defense was worth one attitude point.

“We would divide those points by minutes played, and we would show numerically what type of job you were doing with your attitude and your commitment to our core values,” Wright said. “To show our team that our attitude and our mental approach and our core values were more important than the points and rebounds.”

Each game would have an “attitude winner” — the player who accumulated the most attitude points. And regardless of whether Villanova won or lost, Wright would show a highlight video of that player’s “attitude” plays, set to the player’s music of choice.

“It was always to emphasize that that was what’s important to us and that’s what we controlled,” Wright said. “That that was really what we were playing for.”

As Wright often told his players: “We practice to create habits that will make us successful in the most difficult situations.”

At Villanova over the years, Wright’s teams became more talented. Shoot, three current New York Knicks starters played for him in college. Wright knew there were times his team could win on talent alone — they were just better some nights — but he didn’t change how he evaluated their performance.

In 2016, Wright had one of those really talented teams, loaded with those Knicks starters: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges.

In the Elite Eight against Kansas that year, Villanova’s players couldn’t hit a shot. They made only four of 18 3-pointers and shot just 40 percent overall — the kind of cold night that has sent many a talented team home in the NCAA Tournament.

But Wright’s players battled hard on defense. They ground out tiny wins on offense — a hustle put-back, a tip-in — and knocked off Kansas 64-59.

“It was an ugly, sloppy win,” said Ryan Arcidiacono, a senior captain on that team. “But how do you win those ugly games? When you revert back to your habits each day.”

They leaned on their core values. One week later, Villanova won the first of Wright’s two national championships.