While the following excerpts from a San Antonio Express-News article deal with basketball, the same principles apply to baseball players of all levels.
A week after returning from Los Angeles, where he had attended the 1996 Wooden Award ceremonies, Wake Forest junior Tim Duncan called his coach to tell him of a decision that would change Spurs history. Duncan, whose poker face is as big a part of his game as his bank shot, was characteristically succinct when he told Dave Odom he planned to return for his senior season.
Or, put another way, forgo the NBA draft that summer and postpone signing a contract that would pay him big bucks.
Odom, in San Antonio to coach in a college all-star game being played in conjunction with the Final Four, recalled that phone call Thursday.
"When he told me he was staying, I told him, 'OK, tell me why,'" Odom said. "Then he told me, 'I got to thinking about it last night, and I asked myself why should I try to do today what I'll be better prepared to do next year?'"
To hear Odom tell the story 12 years later, he was hardly surprised by Duncan's decision.
"I expected him to stay because I knew the kind of young man he was," Odom said.
A year later, Duncan won every major individual award after playing in the NCAA tournament for the fourth consecutive season.
...
Odom said Duncan was an "unpolished diamond" as a freshman.
"He had skills, but not the knowledge on how to get better," Odom said. "He came up to me and said, 'I'm a ball of clay, coach, and I want you to mold me.' He never, ever resisted our coaching. He was like a sponge."
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