<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Get all of Chris&amp;nbsp;Ballard's columns as soon as they\u2019re published. Download the new Sports Illustrated app (iOS&amp;nbsp;or Android) and personalize your experience by following your favorite teams and SI writers.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book\u2019s not much to look at.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Roughly the size of a &lt;em&gt;Reader\u2019s Digest&lt;/em&gt;. Only 134 pages long. You\u2019ve likely never heard of the author, Timothy Gallwey, even though the title\u2019s been in print for 40-plus years. The opening quote is from Maharaji; the back cover promises the ability to \u201CMaster &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; Game from the Inside Out!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And yet this is it, the book Warriors coach Steve Kerr swears by, the one he re-reads every off-season. It\u2019s a book he distributes frequently (\u201CI have like 10 copies because I\u2019m always giving them out,\u201D he says); one he says informed both his playing career and his coaching approach; a book that bonded him with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and provides an unexpected link to his current opponent, the Oklahoma City Thunder; a book some view as akin to a cheat code not just for athletics, but life.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A book about tennis.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em &gt;\"It does not mean not to think\u2014but to be the one who directs your own thinking.\" (page 131)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: This story was supposed to be about fiction. Novels, mainly. Kerr reads them during the season, exchanging recommendations with other Warriors staffers. It\u2019s a departure from our stereotype of the obsessed coach, crashing on an office couch after late-night film sessions, permanently moored on the low end of the work-life teeter-totter.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago I sat down with Kerr at the Warriors practice facility in Oakland to talk about what he reads (\u201CThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &amp;amp; Klay\u201D, \u201CThe Goldfinch\u201D, \u201CAll the Light We Cannot See\u201D, anything by Pat Conroy), his preferences (\u201Cactual books\u201D, not Kindle; WWII era stories), and habits (first thing in the morning; last thing at night). Soon enough, however, Kerr steered the conversation in a different direction. The book he really wanted to discuss was nonfiction, and somewhat obscure. \u201CHave you ever heard of the &lt;em&gt;Inner Game of Tennis&lt;/em&gt;?\u201D he asked.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s about the challenge athletes face in making the connection between the mind and body, Kerr explained, becoming enthused. He said he first read it as a player with the Bulls. At the time his role was to enter the game in short spurts, take a few jumpers and then sit back down. Make the shots and the night was a success. Miss and it was a failure. The stress, as you can imagine, was formidable.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022 MORE NBA: Four reasons the Warriors are on the brink of collapse&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chip&amp;nbsp;Engelland, one of Kerr\u2019s mentors, recognized this and recommended he read \u201CInner Game.\u201D Engelland had coached Kerr during summer leagues\u2014both went to Pacific Palisades High School in Los Angeles\u2014and discovered the book near the end of his own playing career, picking it up after returning from overseas, in hopes of improving his tennis game. Immediately, Engelland saw the practical application for hoops, and he employed the book\u2019s \u201Cnonjudgment practices\u201D\u2014more on those later\u2014while playing for the San Jose Jammers of the CBA. \u201CI was working it pretty good,\u201D says Engelland, now a Spurs assistant and the man responsible for remaking the shots of Grant Hill, Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard. \u201CFor me, it clicked.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, Engelland gave it to Kerr. Many players receive books from coaches and toss them in the back of their locker. Others flip through them, dutifully. Kerr read \u201CInner Game\u201D, then read it again, taking notes. He was hooked.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book\u2019s basic concept, which draws on Zen Buddhist principles, is simple: Our brains often screw up what our bodies are perfectly capable of doing on their own (or, \u201Cpotential minus interference equals performance,\u201D in Gallwey\u2019s terms). \u201CIf you ever watch a tennis player, a lot of them will talk to themselves. \u2018Oh, what are you doing!?\u2019\u201D explains Kerr. \u201C[Gallwey] was a tennis teacher and he was watching his student one day and thought to himself, \u2018Who is he talking to?\u2019 It\u2019s kind of weird if you actually stop and think about it. You\u2019re talking to yourself, right?&amp;nbsp; So does that mean there are two yous?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to Gallwey, there are. One is your mind (\u201CSelf One\u201D) and the other your body (\u201CSelf Two\u201D). And far too often in sports, Self One is berating Self Two. We\u2019re constantly disappointed in ourselves (\u201CMy backhand sucks today! Hit a goddamn shot!\u201D). Here we have a remarkable physical machine, one capable of innately calculating and executing complicated sequences in microseconds, and we treat it with contempt. The question for the athlete, as Kerr puts it: \u201CHow do you get out of your own way? How do you stop the chatter in your mind?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kerr followed Gallwey\u2019s advice, endeavoring to stop judging his play and instead quiet his thoughts\u2014what many know as mindfulness. Forget what happened on the last two plays, what will happen if you miss this shot, and your weekend plans. Instead, concentrate on the seams of the ball, or the whack-thump of hit and bounce (in tennis), or the pattern of your breathing. Occupy your brain and it can\u2019t fret or chide (&lt;em&gt;Keep your wrist firm, move your front foot, grip tight&lt;/em&gt;!).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;MORE NBA: Thunder Road: How long until Durant and OKC reign?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s similar to how NBA players employ free\u2013throw routines, whispering mantras (like Karl Malone), repeating elaborate sequences (Jason Kidd), or humming the Counting Crows (like Dirk Nowitzki once did), all in the service of distracting themselves from themselves. (Tom Amberry, the man who set a Guinness record of 2,750 consecutive free throws made, at age 71, didn\u2019t even look up at the rim until the last moment). Now apply that concept to the entire game. For some athletes, this is natural. \u201CSteph [Curry] is great about that,\u201D says Kerr. \u201CI don\u2019t think Steph comes off the floor and says, \u2018What are you doing?!\u201D Similarly, to watch Klay Thompson shoot\u2014without hesitation, often disregarding past results and game situation\u2014is to witness a man at one with his body.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not so for the overthinkers like Kerr \u2013 those with a \u201Chigh care factor,\u201D in Engelland\u2019s parlance. Engelland traces Kerr\u2019s mindset back to high school and college when he was, \u201Calmost a mistake-free player.\u201D One turnover or missed shot vexed him. (Engelland says Grant Hill is similar, and he later gave the book to Hill, who consulted it regularly). To get out of his own head, Kerr tried Gallwey tricks such as pretending to be a different player for a day, thus allowing him to play with more freedom. Kerr chose Jeff Hornacek, the crafty Utah shooting guard (and now head coach of the Knicks). \u201CI loved his game because he had all those flip shots. I didn\u2019t have a lot of that,\u201D says Kerr. \u201CI realized, watching Jeff, I could be more loose and more aggressive and shoot some different shots, not just be a spot up shooter. And one of the ways I got to that was to show up to practice and go, \u2018F--k Steve Kerr, I\u2019m going to be Jeff Hornacek!\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kerr laughs, remembering it. \u201CAnd it was way more fun. It\u2019s the same concept as if you\u2019re ever on the scout team. I was always the shooter on the scout team and it was the greatest feeling of freedom because I had to be whoever\u2014Hersey Hawkins. &lt;em&gt;We gotta guard this guy, he\u2019s going to light it up&lt;/em&gt;\u2026Well, I\u2019m the guy! And I\u2019d totally get out of my own way. But then I\u2019d stop and think, \u2018How pathetic is that?&amp;nbsp; Why don\u2019t I act like that all the time?\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\"&lt;em &gt;Habits are statements about the past, and the past is gone.\" (page 74)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Around the same time that Kerr was discovering the \"Inner Game\", an energetic football coach from northern California named Pete Carroll was climbing the NFL ladder, first in New York and then San Francisco. An overachieving athlete himself, Carroll first read the \"Inner Game\u201D in his first coaching job, as a grad assistant at University of Pacific in the 1970s (that\u2019s also when he began reading the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book\u2019s message resonated with Carroll, who met Gallwey and kept in touch with him in the years that followed. When Carroll got the USC job, in 2001, he turned to the book\u2014and one of Gallwey\u2019s mentees, Sean Brawley\u2014to help craft his program. Today, he says the \"Inner Game\" underlies all his coaching principles. \u201CI wish more people understood about it,\u201D says Carroll by phone, after a recent practice. \u201CMindfulness has always been there in sports. It\u2019s just people understanding how to communicate the principles.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gallwey was always an unlikely guru. The captain of the tennis team and an English lit major at Harvard, he was teaching tennis while preparing for life as an academic when he stumbled upon a coaching epiphany: he wasn\u2019t as important as he believed. Specifically, he noticed that if he stopped telling players what to do and instead demonstrated a move and told them to mimic it, without verbal instruction, the coaching was more effective. It was no different than how children learn. Babies crawl until, one day, they walk. A nine-year-old will watch a new dance move at a party for hours, mimic it and, by the end of the night, master it, without any formal \u201Cinstruction.\u201D Compare this to the regimented, 1-2-3-4, do-this-do-that approach to classic ballroom dance instruction.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;MORE NBA: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Giant Killer: Draymond Green dares you to define him&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When \u201CInner Game\u201D came out, in 1972, it was aimed at tennis fanatics. Sales expectations were conservative. It\u2019s now sold over a million copies, spawned six more \u201CInner Game\u201D books\u2014covering skiing, golf, winning, music, work, and stress\u2014and, as of this writing, was the top instructional tennis book on Amazon. Gallwey makes a living traveling the world speaking to corporations like IBM and Anheuser-Busch. To conduct a Nexis search on him is to encounter a staggeringly wide application of \"Inner Game\" principles: up pop research papers in, among others, &lt;em&gt;Medical Problems of Performing Artists&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;American Music Teacher&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Administrative Management&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality&lt;/em&gt;. Even something called &lt;em&gt;Quick Printing&lt;/em&gt; magazine, which as you might surmise is for people who run printing shops, wrote about the \u201CThe Inner Game of Printing.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone bought in, of course. A 1978 &lt;em&gt;Washington Post&lt;/em&gt; review of one spin-off, \u201CInner Skiing\u201D called it, \u201Can excellent example of American pop-psychology schlock in the post-guru era,\u201D while noting, \u201CAn objective review of the book is almost impossible, because it's entirely subjective and ephemeral.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, Al Gore gave it to aides during his 1984 Senate race, hoping to improve their focus.&amp;nbsp; Itzhak Perlman is reportedly a fan. Unsurprisingly, Phil Jackson\u2019s on board (and in turn helped shape Kerr\u2019s perspective on mindfulness). Billie Jean King referred to it as her \u201Ctennis bible.\u201D Paul Westhead listed it as one of his two favorite books, with \u201CCatch-22\u201D. A 1983 &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; story called the book, \u201Cthe first to introduce the importance of mental training to the public,\u201D noting that 10 years later sports psychology had become mainstream (at the time, Bill Buckner was seeing a hypnotist; and this before his infamous miscue).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;More recently, Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins credits \u201CInner Game\u201D for spurring him to his 2007 NL MVP season, after his girlfriend ordered him the book. \"It gets me out of my way,\" Rollins told the &lt;em&gt;Philadelphia Daily News&lt;/em&gt; in 2008. \"It is like therapy, almost. It simplified &lt;em&gt;me.&lt;/em&gt;\" Seahawks defensive end Lawrence Jackson, who received the book from Carroll, went so far as to tell writer Reeves Wiedeman, in an excellent feature story: \u201CI don\u2019t want to compare it to the great works of the Bible. But it\u2019s been extremely important.\u201D Jackson was particularly struck by the analogy of a cat waiting to leap at a bird: the cat doesn\u2019t think about it, it acts purely on instinct. As Jackson told SI: \u201CThere\u2019s a deeper dynamic there.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To read the book today is to note vestiges of a different era, including nods to the stigma of groovy West Coast self-improvement (Gallwey argues that the book is not about self-improvement but rather realizing potential already present). A later chapter discusses whether competition is healthy. Does it encourage negative traits? Should we all move to yoga or surfing? Should we even be competitive?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;MORE NBA: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guarding Steph: The only man who can lock down Curry&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acolytes of the book focus on the broader messages, not the specifics. Engelland no longer gives the book to players, preferring to pluck analogies and specific lessons (\u201CIt\u2019s a different era now,\u201D he explains, noting that \u201CThe Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph\u201D, a book by former MLBer Shawn Green, translates better with modern players). For the right athlete, one who comes in for a conversation, Carroll says he might drop \u201CInner Game\u201D in their locker. Other times he passes along a chapter or a passage. He long ago stopped using the actual language of the book in practice. \u201CI don\u2019t talk about it with the team,\u201D Carroll says. \u201CWe don\u2019t tell them about it, we just do it. We incorporate it into everything we do.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\"&lt;em &gt;The focused mind only picks up on those aspects of a situation that are needed to accomplish the task at hand. It is not distracted by other thoughts or external events.\" (page 84)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\u200B\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When two \"Inner Game\" devotees meet, the connection can be immediate and powerful, like finding a long-lost friend you didn\u2019t know you had. This is what occurred in August 2014, when Kerr visited Carroll in Seattle in hopes of gleaning coaching wisdom. Both are California guys at heart, more laid-back than disciplinarian. Both had been giving out the book for years; Carroll to Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and others, and Kerr to teammates and friends. Still, neither had any idea the other was a fan. \u201C'The Inner Game of Tennis' was just about the first thing we talked about,\u201D says Kerr. And that was that. Says Carroll: \u201CYou don\u2019t meet that many guys that are that tuned into it. It\u2019s fun to find one.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the course of two days, Kerr sat in on coaching meetings, watched practice, and lost in a friendly hoops shootout in the meeting room with Bryan Walters, the Seahawks\u2019 resident champ. In Carroll, Kerr found someone who\u2019d gone all in with \"Inner Game\" principles\u2014the Seahawks coach wrote the Foreword to the latest edition, appeared on the cover of &lt;em&gt;Mindful&lt;/em&gt; magazine in 2014, and says he keeps in touch with Gallwey regularly. When Kerr returned to Oakland, he brought with him some of Carroll\u2019s coaching practices (including playing music during practices and spontaneous competitions).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, as a coach, Kerr focuses on observation, not judgment. He tries to reduce verbal instruction, recalling how it only confused him as a player. \u201CThink of any sport,\u201D he says. \u201CLet\u2019s say golf. \u2018I gotta keep my head down, I don\u2019t want to sway, I want to keep my shoulders upright, I want to keep my swing inside and on impact I want my hands slightly forward.\u2019 At what point are you going to be like, \u2018Holy s---, I just told myself 17 things, how am I going to do all those things?\u2019 Whereas if you just watch a golfer and don\u2019t say anything and just try to mimic his swing, it condenses everything into a more meaningful moment.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022 MORE NBA: Craig Sager: Always focusing on the bright side&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sitting courtside after practice, Kerr provided an example called \u201Cthe silent 10\u201D, an exercise he happened to use that day. He instructs Warriors players to run the team\u2019s plays for 10 minutes, five-on-zero, going up and down the court. The catch: no talking allowed. Hand signals only. \u201CIt\u2019s bizarre, because usually there\u2019s chatter, everyone yelling on the floor, people off the court talking,\u201D says Kerr. \u201CNow, players have no choice but to be fully engaged.\u201D To call out a play called \u201CStrong Elbow\u201D, Curry needs to flex, then point to his elbow. Everyone must pay attention. \u201CIt\u2019s incredible the level of focus you achieve,\u201D says Kerr. \u201CBy the end, it\u2019s like this Zen moment. It\u2019s the most we\u2019ve gotten out of practice in the last month, really.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watch the Warriors and you\u2019ll see other Inner Game ripples. Engelland notes how Curry and Thompson move on so quickly after a bad play\u2014\u201Ctheir delete buttons are phenomenal.\u201D Some of that\u2019s natural, obviously. \u201CBut,\u201D says Engelland, \u201CKerr encourages it with all his players.\u201D The advice is especially valuable when it comes to shooting. Similarly, Carroll says that in football the ones who really respond are, \u201Cthe guys that have the hand-eye coordination\u2014the catchers and the shooters and the throwers and the swingers.\u201D &amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When he sees an opening, Kerr gives the book to his players He prefers not to identify them because, \u201CI usually give it to players who are struggling.\u201D Other times athletes come to him. Kerr\u2019s daughter, Maddy, is a volleyball player at Cal and friends with members of the men\u2019s basketball team. Last season, one was struggling and asked about, \u2018That book your dad talks about.\u2019 Kerr passed along a copy. \u201CThe next week he hit the game winning shot and told Maddy, \u2018Tell your dad thanks, it put me in the best frame of mind,\u201D says Kerr, smiling at the memory. \u201CIt totally helped. It was huge.\u201D &amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\"&lt;em &gt;Forget should\u2019s and experience &lt;/em&gt;is&lt;i&gt;.\" (page 91)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sam Presti\u2019s eyes widen behind small, thin-rimmed spectacles. \u201CSelf One and Self Two! I love that book!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is last week, before Game 2 of the Western Conference finals, in the tunnel outside the visiting locker room at Oracle Arena. In the weeks after my first conversation with Kerr, I\u2019d gone in search of other NBA devotees, curious if the Warriors were all reading tennis tips at night. I received a fair amount of blank stares. GM Bob Myers knew of it but hadn\u2019t read it. Same went for assistant GM Kirk Lacob, who says he rarely reads books anymore (but did, he noted, finish the equivalent of 90 book\u2019s worth of online stories on the Pocket app last year, putting him in the top 1% of users). Harrison Barnes said Kerr recommended \u201CInner Game\u201D to him and that it was on his reading list for the playoffs (last year, on Kerr\u2019s recommendation Barnes read \u201CThe Mindful Athlete\u201D, by George Mumford, a counselor to Phil Jackson). Jud Buechler, Kerr\u2019s old teammate with the Bulls, hadn\u2019t read the book but recalled, \u201CThat was Steve\u2019s book. He always had it with him.\u201D Warriors assistant Bruce Fraser, Kerr\u2019s best friend, read it a while back but didn\u2019t have the same connection as Kerr. \u201CSteve is cerebral and he\u2019s an overthinker,\u201D Fraser explained. \u201CI think the Inner Game of Tennis speaks to that type of person. The one that almost gets in their own way. That\u2019s not me so much.\u201D (Engelland agrees: \u201CIt\u2019s not for every personality.\u201D)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I read the book, some of it struck me as vague. Other suggestions felt impractical. How would I just \u201Clet\u201D my body take over in tennis if it wasn\u2019t already proficient? Still, much of it caused me to pause and reflect. Like Kerr, I underlined passages and scribbled notes in the margins. In particular, a late discussion about the value of competition struck a chord. Never feel bad about playing hard against someone, Gallwey writes, because the true value of competition is not in satisfying the ego (for its needs are bottomless), or trying to reach perfection (unattainable) but in trying to reach one\u2019s potential in any given moment, for that is the ultimate reward. And, in putting forth your best effort in a match or games, you are directly helping your opponent reach his. It\u2019s the ultimate process over outcome argument. (For what it\u2019s worth, I also tried out the strategies, endeavoring to quiet my mind in rec league hoops games, coach my daughter\u2019s soccer team using demonstration, and live in the moment. To an extent, it worked. I did feel calmer. I enjoyed the moments more. In the end, it reminded me of the line in the movie &lt;em&gt;Bridge of Spies,&lt;/em&gt; when Tom Hanks\u2019 character asks a Russian spy \u201CAren\u2019t you worried?\u201D The spy responds: \u201CWould it help?\u201D)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now here was Presti, the Thunder's GM, another believer. His enthusiasm was contagious. \u201CI\u2019m always re-reading it,\u201D he said, becoming excited. \u201CIt\u2019s a tremendous tool for experiencing life as it comes to you, not looking ahead or behind. We miss what\u2019s right in front of us.\u201D Like Kerr, Presti received the book from Engelland, when he was in San Antonio, and he reads it so often that he\u2019s created a Word document with favorite passages\u2014his own Cliffs Notes. Presti also gave the book to his staff to read, as well as Thunder reserve Nick Collison (though he doesn\u2019t think Collison&amp;nbsp;has read it).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presti said he distinctly recalls the first time he saw the \"Inner Game\" in action, in 2003, when he was a recently-promoted assistant director of scouting with the Spurs. It was Game 6 of the Western Conference finals between San Antonio and Dallas. Down 15 in the third quarter and desperate, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich turned to a seldom-used, 37-year-old who\u2019d played only three minutes in the series to date. The veteran came in and calmly hit his first three-pointer\u2014his first trifecta in over a month.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watching, Presti had an immediate reaction. As he says: \u201CI remember thinking, \u2018That\u2019s the book! That\u2019s the 'Inner Game!\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the minutes that followed, the veteran hit another three, and another, eventually finishing 4-of-4 from behind the arc to lift San Antonio to a series-clinching victory, in what would be the final defining moment of his playing career.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That veteran, of course, was Kerr.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/nba/2016/05/26/steve-kerr-pete-carroll-nba-playoffs-inner-game-tennis-book>