By Alex Nicoll
Staff Writer
After a storied 16 year professional basketball career, capped off with the retiring of his black San Antonio Spurs No. 6 jersey being retired, ESPN analyst Avery Johnson has a new-or rather revived-passion in motivational speaking.
“I started in motivational speaking at Southern University,” Johnson said. “I would go out into the community and represent our university in many different areas to alumni boosters. I also talked to other schools and I was apart of the Big Brothers Little Brothers program so I gave many speeches there as well.”
Seniors and juniors at Coppell High School heard him first-hand on Oct. 2, when he came to motivate the upperclassmen to follow his “energy plan”. Opening up the assembly with a monologue that talked about our own country’s energy crisis, he transitioned into his own thoughts.
Touching on the broader topic of becoming better people, he delved into how students can change, with the biggest idea coming from what he calls his three E’s. These e’s concern how to handle the influences in your life.
The first E stands for eliminate, as in eliminate friends that are detrimental to you and serve as bad influences. The second E stands for entertain friends that, as he put it, are not beneficial to you less.
“You hang out with these guys once a week?” Johnson said. “Change it to once a month instead.”
The last E Johnson addressed is to engage with those in our lives and support healthy relationships. Some of his ideas are to start studying with other achievers and hard-workers and let them influence you.
An imposing figure despite his small 5-foot-11 stature, Johnson commands a respect and attention that was evident in the gymnasium, even to the point where he would call out students who were being disruptive or unfocused.
This all wrapped back to his major point that he left the students.
“I want you to follow my C-plan,” Johnson said. “I want you to have strong character, be people of morals, integrity and consistency. Make sure you compete at a high level whether it is academic or athletically. You have to be coachable too whether is is a parent coaching you, teacher coaching you, or an actually coach coaching you. You have to care about what you are doing.”
