What I would pay much more attention to are the few points where the player can inadvertently make a career decision. Most players end up back-tracking, though some actually enjoy this.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've always looked at my career as an athlete would look at his. I won't play forever. Some don't know when to walk away, but the smart ones do.
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
When I was a young player, I would look at players and think, he does this well, and try and pick up good points from them, or he conducts himself well, I'll pick up on that.
Game management, game decisions, adjustments, seeing things during games - it's all important.
Any time you're in the coaching business or managing in the minor leagues, when you see a player who has made it to the major leagues, you get a thrill out of that.
A career is a series of ups and downs, of comebacks.
There's a tacit understanding among clubs that a good player shouldn't miss out on the big break of his career or a chance at exponentially improved earnings.
I think any player at any position their rookie year, they're trying to figure out how to process all the information we give them, how to process what the defense is doing and then actually physically play the game and the position that they're playing.
Maybe I'm naive, but I subscribe to the idea that nobody is actually making strategic decisions about their career. Trying to do that would be like playing three-card monte on Canal Street.
Every decision you make in life, not just on the sporting field - a lot of time and energy goes into it. You think things through before you make decisions and you always think the decision you make at the time is going to be the right one.