by: RGT Wealth Advisors

A Mid-Life Reassessment of Financial Needs and Goals

Peach Basket Parables: Louisville vs. UCLA,
1980 NCAA Championship Game

Before the Houston Cougars brought us Phi Slama Jama, the Louisville Cardinals were the Doctors of Dunk. The 1979–1980 Louisville team was led by the high-flying Darrell Griffith, who went by the name of, what else? Dr. Dunkenstein.

Griffith was heavily recruited in high school by top basketball colleges all over the country, but he
chose to stay in his hometown of Louisville. At the time, he promised local fans that he would bring them an NCAA championship. It took him until his senior year, but the Doctor delivered.

In helping Louisville win its first national title, Griffith played a role in cementing the great basketball tradition that coach Denny Crum had started back in 1971. Louisville had been to the Final Four once prior to Crum’s arrival in 1959, but it was Crum who came along and built Louisville into a perennial powerhouse. In thirty seasons coaching the Cardinals, Crum amassed 675 victories at a winning percentage of nearly 70 percent, making him a beloved basketball icon in Kentucky and across the nation.

It might come as no surprise that Crum cut his teeth under the tutelage of another basketball legend, UCLA’s John Wooden. Crum played at UCLA his final two seasons in college and later served in assistant coaching roles under Wooden for another eight years. He was part of three championship teams with the Bruins.

By the time he was hired for the head job at Louisville in 1971, Crum was no stranger to the NCAA’s biggest stage. He proved it when, in his first season, he led the Cardinals to the Final Four. Which team knocked them out? UCLA, of course. The next time Louisville made it to the Final Four was in 1975. And again, the Cardinals bowed to the Wizard of Westwood and his unbeatable Bruins. It seemed Crum’s mentor was becoming his nemesis.

Third Time is the Charm

In that 1979–1980 season, when Crum’s Doctors of Dunk were leaping over every opponent in their path, Louisville got yet another shot at UCLA. This time, it was the Cardinals’ first trip to the NCAA Championship game. And this time, they were the favorites.

Number two seed Louisville was heading into the game with a 32-3 record and hoping to cap off its stellar season with the only trophy it had yet to win. UCLA, on the other hand, was no longer the monster it once was. The Bruins had been lucky to get an eighth seed in the tournament after a mediocre (for them) 22–10 season. Wooden had retired after his last win in 1975, and UCLA was now helmed by the journeyman Larry Brown.

The Bruins might have been the underdogs that year, but they did not play that way. They matched the Cardinals blow for blow in the first half, forcing poor shots and careless turnovers. UCLA surged to finish the half up by two points. It seemed the basketball gods had cast a cruel curse upon Crum, and he would never defeat his alma mater.

A Well-Timed Wake-Up Call

Crum, whose normally calm and collected demeanor earned him the nickname Cool Hand Luke, was anything but cool in the locker room. He chose the right moment to explode, berating his players like an angry drill sergeant and going so far as to call them chokers. Whether it was a shrewd psychological ploy or simply a case of overwhelming frustration, only Crum knows. But he later admitted that the halftime chew-out had been so uncharacteristic for him that he felt the need to apologize to his players. Nevertheless, the speech achieved the attitude adjustment Crum was looking for. The Cardinals woke up in the second half, playing with greater focus and urgency.

Still, UCLA gave Louisville all it could handle, and the Bruins led by four with four minutes to play. That’s when Louisville’s superior talent and conditioning finally won out. They scored the last nine points of the game, including an eighteen-footer from Griffith to reclaim the lead once and for all. Dr. Dunkenstein’s twenty-three points earned him the Most Outstanding Player award, and Crum finally shook the Bruins off his back.

Color Commentary

• Louisville’s Doctors of Dunk are often credited with popularizing one of the most common celebrations in all of sports, the high-five.
• One of the Cardinals’ most frequent high-fivers was forward Wiley Brown. Ironically, Brown had only four fingers on his right hand as his thumb had been amputated at age four. He wore a prosthetic thumb developed by his doctors, but on the day of the championship game, the thumb went missing. Brown realized he had left it on the breakfast table at the hotel, and a team assistant was able to fish the thumb out of the garbage in time for the game.In 2013, Louisville overcame another player’s physical ailment en route to its third NCAA championship. Backup guard Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome compound fracture of his leg during the Cardinals’ Elite Eight victory over Duke. While Ware watched from the sideline, his team played brilliantly in his honor to take down Wichita State and Michigan for the title as Coach Rick Pitino became the only NCAA coach to win championships with two different schools.
• In 2013, Louisville overcame another player’s physical ailment en route to its third NCAA championship. Backup guard Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome compound fracture of his leg during the Cardinals’ Elite Eight victory over Duke. While Ware watched from the sideline, his team played brilliantly in his honor to take down Wichita State and Michigan for the title as Coach Rick Pitino became the only NCAA coach to win championships with two different schools.

Chapter-Ending Three Pointer

1. Identify previous financial setbacks and/or potential roadblocks in your personal or job situation.
2. Think about possible unexpected financial events that might help your family reach its goals.
3. List current economic or financial conditions that are beneficial to attaining financial objectives.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

Keeping Sight of Your Goals through Challenges and Opportunities

Peach Basket Parables: Connecticut vs. Butler,
2011 NCAA Championship Game

For many NCAA Tournament champions, the season leading up to the championship goes pretty much as everyone expected. They go into the season highly rated in the polls, and then they pretty much dominate from start to finish, beating up on lesser opponents as praise gets heaped upon their marquee players, shaking off the rare loss after an off night, and eventually winning their conference title or postseason tournament. Come March Madness, they are in peak form and ready for almost anything an opponent can throw at them.

That is not always how it works out, though. Some champions are not predestined from opening day to win it all. They do not waltz gracefully through the Big Dance. Rather, they trip and stumble their way to victory. Throughout the season, they fight internal battles that spill onto the court and into the box score. And they second-guess themselves all year, until somehow, with remarkable timing, they find a way to capture lightning in a bottle.

The 2010-2011 Connecticut (UConn) Huskies had that kind of a season.

Low Expectations

That season started off under a blanket of dark clouds over Storrs, Connecticut. The Huskies had failed to earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament the season before, and they started 2010 unranked in the national polls. Both snubs were ego busters for a school that had grown accustomed to winning. Though a relative newcomer to the roundtable of basketball royalty, UConn had become a regular national contender in recent decades. Coach Jim Calhoun, at the helm since 1986, had taken the team to the Sweet Sixteen twelve times over twenty years, winning two championships. Those teams included NBA-bound stars such as Ray Allen, Richard “Rip” Hamilton, Donyell Marshall, Rudy Gay, Caron Butler, Emeka Okafor, and Ben Gordon. In 2004, UConn became the first school in history to have its men’s and women’s teams win the NCAA Tournament in the same year. Come 2010, however, Huskies fans were desperate for something to believe in.

Deepening the gloom for them was the fact that the men’s program was under NCAA investigation for recruiting violations. Two members of the basketball staff had already lost their jobs, and rumor had it that the NCAA might ban UConn from all postseason play (though, as it turned out later, Calhoun and his program would dodge a larger bullet and incur only some minor sanctions the following year).

Despite a lack of fanfare surrounding the 2010-11 team, the Huskies shot out of the gate eager to disprove their detractors. They jumped out to a 10-0 start, including winning the Maui Invitational Tournament in November. But the momentum dissipated as UConn’s schedule transitioned over to Big East Conference play, which featured a steady stream of more powerful opponents. The Huskies finished the season a dreary 9-9 in the Big East, losing their last two games to finish in ninth place in the conference.

As the regular season was ending in early March, no one in their right mind picked UConn to go all the way. Then everything changed.

The Turnaround

Based on their regular season performance, the Huskies likely would have gone a second straight year without an NCAA Tournament berth. They did not deserve serious consideration. But teams that win their conference tournaments are automatically entered into the Big Dance, and that’s exactly what UConn did.

Kemba Walker, the Huskies’ All-American guard, caught fire and scored a tournament-record 130 points over a stretch of five games in five days. The late resurgence earned the Huskies a number four seed as March Madness began.

UConn won each of its first two games in the NCAA Tournament by more than ten points but had to fight tooth and nail to make it to the championship game, ousting Arizona by two points in a Sweet Sixteen matchup and beating Kentucky by one in a regional final. This Final Four was unique. It was the first ever to not feature a single number one or number two seed. Although UConn would ultimately face eighth-seeded mid-major Butler in the final game, its struggles were far from over.

Better of Two Bad

Butler University, a small school in Indianapolis with a fraction of the basketball clout as its goliath competitors, had nearly pulled off a shocking upset in the 2010 NCAA Tournament championship game, losing to Duke 61-59 when a last-second, desperation three-point shot barely missed what would have been a game winner for Butler. Now, for the second year in a row, the Bulldogs had accomplished the unthinkable and made it to the title game. Sadly for them, their dreams would be dashed yet again, but not because UConn played brilliantly.

The 2011 NCAA championship game will not be remembered for its crisp execution or spectacular shooting—far from it. Some reports called it the ugliest championship game ever played.

Both teams came out cold. After a forgettable first half, UConn trailed Butler in the low-scoring affair 22-19. Then cold turned to downright freezing. Choose your most jaw-dropping statistic:

• Butler had one stretch of 13 minutes and 26 seconds in the second half during which it made only one field goal.
• The Bulldogs shot a woeful 18.8 percent from the field in the game, the worst shooting performance in NCAA Championship Game history.
• Butler made only three two-point field goals for the whole game. Butler could not throw the ball in the ocean, but UConn was not much better.
• The Huskies made only 19 of 55 shots, shooting 34.5 percent for the game.
• They were 1-11 (9.1 percent) from 3-point range, the worst ever for a title winner.
• Star Kemba Walker had 16 points, but they came on 5-for-19 shooting (26 percent).
• UConn’s final point total of 53 was its lowest scoring output of the entire season.

The 94 combined points by UConn and Butler were the fewest in a National Championship game since 1950 (and back then there was no shot clock, which usually meant fewer shots were taken).

You could credit good defense (which UConn did play), or blame the brickfest on frayed nerves. But the fact is neither team played like a national champion that night. Nevertheless, someone had to win, and UConn dragged itself to a 53-41 victory.

The general TV audience might have gotten more entertainment value out of watching paint dry, but UConn and its fans were no less ecstatic to claim their third title in twelve years.

Color Commentary

• Former UCLA great Bill Walton, who sat courtside at the 2011 championship game, once scored 44 points in a title game—more than the entire Butler Bulldogs team scored that night.
• In 2011, UConn’s Calhoun became the oldest coach (at sixty-eight) to win an NCAA basketball championship and one of just five to win three or more. The others are John Wooden, Bob Knight, Adolph Rupp, and Mike Krzyzewski.

Chapter-Ending Three Pointer

1. Identify previous financial setbacks and/or potential roadblocks in your personal or job situation.
2. Think about possible unexpected financial events that might help your family reach your goals.
3. List current economic or financial conditions that are beneficial to attaining financial objectives.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

Accumulating Wealth in Your Investment Portfolio

Peach Basket Parables: Indiana University,
Bob Knight, and the Motion Offense

In Indiana, the love of basketball has a name: It is called Hoosier Hysteria. It is not limited to the Hoosiers of Indiana University (IU) or the annual high school state tournament that goes by that name. The euphoria surrounding the game extends to other Indiana colleges such as Notre Dame, Indiana State, Purdue, Butler, Ball State (mentioned here as a nod to noted alum David Letterman), and Valparaiso, and it is palpable throughout the state at every level, from stuffy junior high gyms to the Pacers’ pro arena.

Hoosiers have reveled in basketball glory nearly as long as the game has existed. But in 1971, a man rode into town carrying a personality big enough to overshadow Hoosier Hysteria. His name was Robert Montgomery Knight, the brash former Army head coach who had come to take the helm at IU.

Skip ahead forty years or so, and Knight (now retired) has a well-deserved dual reputation as one of college basketball’s most successful and sometimes most notorious coaches of all time. He is considered successful because he won 902 Division I basketball games, eleven conference titles, three NCAA championships, one NIT championship, an Olympic gold medal, and a Pan Am Games gold medal, among other achievements. And he is considered notorious because Knight is as well-known for his fiery temper as he is for his coaching and teaching genius.

A 1976 People Magazine article summed it up in this headline: “Bobby Knight throws tantrums, kicks chairs – and wins basketball games.” In many respects, the volatile Knight was the antithesis of the gentleman philosopher John Wooden. Knight’s unofficial curriculum vitae includes verbally abusing referees, throwing chairs across the court, physically accosting his players and other coaches, and unleashing profanity-laden tirades against anyone who tested his patience.

He showed a particular disdain for members of the sports media, once calling their profession “one or two steps above prostitution.” In at least one news conference, Knight told a reporter, “All of us learn to write in the second grade; most of us go on to greater things.”

While you didn’t want to be on Knight’s bad side, his no-nonsense style and passion for basketball earned him a level of respect among his players and fans. And there’s still no denying that his impact on the game was monumental.

On the Attack

Perhaps it is fitting that Knight, with his often offensive public persona, played a major role in changing the way American teams play offense in basketball games. He is widely credited with developing and popularizing the free-flowing style known as the motion offense, which has since been emulated and adapted by coaches at every level of play.

Today’s basketball fans might think of the motion offense as commonplace, but it was innovative in Knight’s early years.

Most teams that ran any organized offense relied on one-off plays or a continuity offense, where players execute a repeating pattern of predefined movements. Each player sets up in the same spot every time, sets the same screen, runs to the same corner, and so on, until they wind up back where they began and the play starts over. These types of offenses have their advantages, but their biggest weaknesses are predictability and a lack of flexibility. If something’s not working, it’s hard to change.

A motion offense is far less rigid. Players are given the freedom to read the defense and choose the action that will give them the best chance to score. Rather than stick to a defined path like a trolley car on rails, they move like fluid along the path of least resistance. Pass and screen. Drive and dish. Flash to the high post. Curl and flare to the elbow. Take what the defense gives you. Options, options, options.

To the untrained eye, the motion offense might appear completely random. But there are rules (Knight’s rules) that players must follow. These dictates include an emphasis on proper spacing (always be fifteen feet from the next guy), timing (hold your Spot for two seconds then move on), and constant movement (never just stand and watch).

Aside from its limitless adaptability, the beauty of the motion offense is its ability to utilize the strengths of all five players on the floor simultaneously. Unlike set plays designed to get an open shot for a particular player, in the motion offense, the ball can get to the basket in any number of ways. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The Perfect Season

Bob Knight’s three championship teams at Indiana provide a case in point. His rosters were not built around individual offensive juggernauts such as Wilt Chamberlain or Lew Alcindor. Knight recruited intelligent (if not supremely athletic) players who understood that a solid screen or a perfect pass could be just as valuable as a pretty jump shot.

As Knight perfected his system, IU improved its record every season through his first five years as head coach. In 1974-1975, the Hoosiers finished the regular season 29-0. But they entered the NCAA Tournament without their best player, Scott May, who had broken his arm just weeks earlier. They made it to the Elite Eight before falling to Kentucky.

That loss, however, was only the intermission in what Knight eventually called “a two-year quest.” The next season, with May back in the lineup alongside co-captain Quinn Buckner, the Hoosiers were literally unbeatable. They started and finished the regular season as they had the previous year, waltzing past most opponents and narrowly escaping defeat a few times. Come March, they entered the NCAA Tournament at full strength, again with an undefeated record.

The dominant Hoosiers sailed through all but one of their five tournament games, winning by an average of thirteen points, and ousting Big Ten rival Michigan by eighteen in the championship game. The Hoosiers had won their third national championship (Knight’s first) with a record of 32-0. It wasn’t the first time a college basketball team had a perfect season (Wooden’s UCLA Bruins did it four times), but as of 2013, no one has done it since the 1976 Hoosiers.

Knight’s innovative motion offense does not deserve all the credit, of course. Indiana also had a lock-down defense, usually man to man. But one thing is for sure: Those Hoosiers had the offensive freedom, flexibility, and diversity to pile up the points, no matter what their opponents threw at them.

Color Commentary

• At the 2013 Final Four in Atlanta, the seventy-fifth NCAA Tournament, more than 250,000 fans voted to name the 1976 Hoosiers the greatest tournament team of all time.
• Until recently, Bob Knight, with 902 victories, held the record for the most victories by a men’s coach in NCAA Division 1 history. In 2011, the record was broken by another famous coach, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (featured in chapter 9). Where did Coach K play his college ball? Army, where his coach was Bob Knight.

Chapter-Ending Three Pointer

1. List your age, portfolio time horizon, and liquidity needs, and describe your risk tolerance in terms that make sense to you.
2. Consider whether stocks, mutual funds, separately managed accounts, or a combination of them are appropriate.
3. Spend time understanding the basics of long-term portfolio allocations and how they impact volatility.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

Essential Elements of Successful Financial Strategies

Peach Basket Parables: Kansas vs. Oklahoma,
1988 NCAA Championship Game

We have discussed the story of how the Kansas Jayhawks lost to North Carolina in the 1957 NCAA Championship game, so it’s only fair to give Kansas its due by putting the Jayhawks on the winning side of one of these parables.

As many college basketball fans know, the annals of Kansas are full of happy endings. Like North Carolina, Kansas has been among college basketball’s traditionally elite programs for most of the last century, in no small part because of the influential legacy of James Naismith, who invented the game of basketball in 1891 and was the Jayhawk’s first official coach.

Following Kansas’ loss to the Tar Heels in 1957, however, thirty-one years went by before the Jayhawks made another trip to the NCAA Tournament’s final game. Strangely enough, that game was played in Kansas City, like Kansas’ previous title-game appearance all those years earlier. Despite the fortunate proximity to their home campus for the 1988 championship game, the Jayhawks were considered underdogs.

Kansas had not had a terrific season. It had started off a shaky 12-8 and finished the regular season with a solid but less-than-sensational record of 21-11. Seeded sixth in its NCAA Tournament regional bracket, Kansas managed to reach the Final Four without playing any powerhouse teams.

The Jayhawks championship opponent was a different story. The Sooners from University of Oklahoma (OU) were a number one seed, and for good reason. Their roster included three future NBA first-round draftees: Mookie Blaylock, Stacey King, and Harvey Grant. They had finished the season 35-4 while garnering national attention for their up-tempo, high-scoring style. They had scored 100 points twenty times that season, including a remarkable 151 in one game, and had crushed twelve opponents by 30 points or more. Most importantly, they had beaten their conference rivals, the Kansas Jayhawks, in both regular season meetings.

No one had expected Kansas to reach the championship game, let alone win it, which was just fine with Coach Larry Brown. He had devised a game plan that he believed could at least keep his team close-perhaps just close enough to pull off a shocking upset. Unlike UNC’s unrelenting strategy of smothering Wilt Chamberlain thirty-one years earlier, Brown’s game plan was a symphony of complementary components, which the Kansas players executed-if not perfectly, at least well enough to work.

• The first priority was getting through OU’s vicious full-court press, which was notorious for forcing turnovers and creating easy baskets for the lightning-quick Sooners. Brown’s predesigned play broke down the press and led OU to call it off in the second half.
• Brown substituted players regularly to prevent fatigue against OU’s blazing speed. He made forty-two lineup changes to 0U’s twelve.
• Kansas’s defenders pushed OU’s dominant big men out of position, forcing them to catch the ball far from the basket, out of their comfort zone.
• To take OU further out of its running game, Kansas slowed the pace in the second half, waiting until late in the shot clock to attempt high-percentage field goals. The fact that the Sooners had been forced to retreat from their full-court press played right into Brown’s hands.

Against the odds, the Jayhawks hung around. It was 50-50 at halftime. When the Sooners took a five-point lead with twelve minutes left, Kansas did not panic. Brown, who had expressed complete faith in his star, Danny Manning, put the ball in his hands and let him go to work. In a grind to the final horn, Kansas won by four points.

The box score showed that Kansas shot a sizzling 71 percent from the field. Manning scored 31 points and grabbed eighteen rebounds. The championship team would come to be known as “Danny and the Miracles,” but the basketball media did not hesitate to credit Larry Brown for his masterful performance as orchestrator. Houston Chronicle Sports writer Eddie Sefko, who called Brown’s game plan “flawless,” summed it up: “It was like a hodge-podge of obvious ingredients that Brown mixed into a potion nobody else could conjure up.”

Color Commentary

The basketball community is a small world, especially for a frequent mover like Larry Brown. In the 1960s, Brown had been a standout point guard for the North Carolina Tar Heels, first under Frank McGuire and then Dean Smith. He had also coached two seasons at UCLA in the post-John Wooden years. The Hall of Famer has also coached ten different professional teams (he is the only coach in history to win both an NCAA title and an NBA championship). As of this writing, Brown is back in the college ranks on the high side of seventy, coaching Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Chapter-Ending Three Pointer

1. Specify your three most important financial planning goals/dreams.
2. Determine which types of retirement accounts are available to your family.
3. Consider the risks you need to insure and whether you currently have coverage.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

Sizing up the Forces that Stand between You and Your Financial Goals

Peach Basket Parables: North Carolina vs. Kansas,
1957 NCAA Championship Game

If Indiana has a rival for the right to claim itself as “most basketball-crazy state,” North Carolina would have to be in the mix. Three NCAA championship-caliber programs are located within thirty miles of each other in North Carolina: North Carolina State in Raleigh, with two titles; Duke University in Durham, with four trophies; and, of course, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, boasting five championships (all as of 2013). Since the NCAA Tournament started in 1939, these three schools have won about 15 percent, approximately one out of every seven, of the championships played. Students and local residents still bathe themselves in blue or red and camp overnight to score tickets to games.

It has not always been that way. UNC was voted national champion in 1924 before there was an actual NCAA Tournament, and it made one Final Four appearance in 1946. Basketball fever did not really grip the area completely until March 23, 1957, when the Tar Heels made their debut NCAA Championship Game appearance.

Led by Coach Frank McGuire, the Tar Heels finished the regular season undefeated and were ranked number one in the nation, but the odds were stacked against them in the title game. Only a day earlier, UNC survived a grueling, three-overtime semifinal game against Michigan State. In those days, there was no day of rest between semifinals and the title game, so the Tar Heels had to be fatigued going into the final. Their opponent, a 24 ̶ 2 Kansas team, had easily defeated San Francisco the day before, allowing them to rest their star players in the second half.

On top of all that, the location for the tournament final was Kansas City, a thousand miles from Chapel Hill but merely forty miles from the Kansas Jayhawks’ campus in Lawrence. By a cruel twist of fate, the NCAA Championship, which is always supposed to be played on a neutral court, had become a virtual home game for Kansas, with screaming Jayhawks fans flooding the arena and nary a speck of UNC’s powder blue.

Kansas also boasted a not-so-secret weapon in its ranks—a seven-foot-one sophomore center who had taken the game by storm during an era when seven-footers were extremely rare in pro basketball. He averaged thirty points and eighteen rebounds per game, blocked shots almost at will, and was deemed by the media as the most unstoppable player in the country. The goliath’s name was Wilt Chamberlain.

The cards might have been stacked in favor of Kansas, but McGuire had seen them play. He had taken notes, and he had a plan for his Tar Heels.

Mind Games

The coach’s strategy started with the opening tip. Spectators were befuddled when UNC’s Tommy Kearns, just five-foot-eleven, made his way to the center circle for the jump ball against Chamberlain. The rest of the considerably taller Tar Heels readied themselves in a zone defense.
From the first possession, the UNC zone suffocated Chamberlain. They triple-teamed him near the basket, doing all they could to deny him the ball and collapsing on him when he did get his hands on it. With one defender in front of him, one behind, and a third swooping in from the side, the frustrated Chamberlain was consistently forced to pass it outside or put up a difficult shot.

Of course, UNC’s Chamberlain-centric strategy left the other Kansas shooters wide open much of the time. But McGuire was willing to take the risk. All tournament long he had watched the Jayhawks struggle from outside. Unquestionably, Wilt the Stilt was Kansas’ bread and butter, and McGuire was going to make someone other than Chamberlain beat the Tar Heels. By halftime, his plan was paying off—Kansas shot only 27 percent from the field in the first half, and UNC led 29 ̶ 22 at the buzzer.

Kansas recovered in the second half, however. As UNC tried stalling to hold onto the lead, the Jayhawks forced turnovers and clawed their way back. The Tar Heels’ star Lennie Rosenbluth fouled out, and at the end of regulation, the game was tied at 46 ̶ 46.

Outlasted, Outsmarted

In overtime, the Tar Heels continued to hound Chamberlain relentlessly, just as they had done for the forty minutes of regulation, but the game moved at a snail’s pace. Each team scored only one basket and then tried to run out the clock or hold the ball for the game-winning shot. The strategy didn’t work for either team, and the first overtime ended at 48 ̶ 48. The pace slowed even more in the second overtime with neither team scoring, and for the second time in two nights, the Tar Heels headed into triple overtime.

This time, UNC went on the attack, scoring two consecutive baskets, although the Jayhawks rallied back to take a one-point lead. With six seconds left in the third overtime, UNC’s Joe Quigg was fouled and went to the line for two free throws. He made both to put the Tar Heels back in front by one.

The final play of the game was typical of what had gone on all night. Kansas, still trusting in Chamberlain to save them, attempted a lob pass to the big man in the low post. The Tar Heels were ready for it. Quigg deflected the pass. Little Tommy Kearns (the guard who had gone up against Chamberlain for the opening jump ball) came up with the stolen ball and threw it high in the air to run out the clock. UNC had slain the giant to take home its first tournament championship.

It was the first and still only time the NCAA title game went into triple overtime. And it is hailed by many as one of the greatest games in college basketball history.

Color Commentary

One especially noteworthy Kansas alumnus watching the game that night was a diehard fan of Jayhawks basketball, having played on the 1952 championship squad before becoming an assistant coach after graduation. The young man was reportedly devastated by Kansas’ heartbreaking loss to UNC, which is understandable if you know the competitive fire of Dean Smith, who was that Kansas alum. In an interesting twist of fate, Smith would later be hired by McGuire to be an assistant coach at UNC and go on to serve as head coach of the Tar Heels for thirty-six seasons. In that time, he won two NCAA championships and eventually ended his career as college basketball’s winningest Division I coach with 879 victories. He went down in history as one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time.

Chapter-Ending Three Pointer:

1. Prepare a realistic savings plan for the next five years.
2. List the three biggest concerns out of your control that will keep you from reaching your goals.
3. Consider and record your reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 ̶ 2009 as it affected your financial planning strategies.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

Financial Planning Begins with a Look in the Mirror

Peach Basket Parables: UCLA and The Wizard Of Westwood

No book that includes a college basketball game premise would be complete without mentioning John Wooden. Most longtime basketball followers know Wooden’s story well. Start with the fact he is generally regarded as the greatest coach in college basketball history. He coached the UCLA Bruins to seven consecutive NCAA championships (1967–1973) during a stretch in which they won ten titles in twelve years. At one point, his teams won eighty-eight consecutive games, a men’s basketball record at that, as of 2013, still stood. Despite his incredible .813 winning percentage over twenty-seven seasons at UCLA and the truckload of trophies, Wooden’s basketball success is not his only claim to fame.

Wooden is universally respected for his philosophical approach to coaching, most notably his Pyramid of Success, through which he instilled invaluable lessons in his players, lessons he eventually shared with the world. “What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player,” he said, and that was saying a lot because Wooden was a terrific player in his own right.

Born in 1910 and raised on an Indiana farm, Wooden starred in basketball at Martinsville High School. The arena had more seats than there were people in the town – and it was still full for most games. In college, he played for Purdue and led the Boilermakers to a national championship. He also played professionally for several years, once leading the (pre-NBA) National Basketball League in scoring.

Professional athletes back then also had day jobs, and Wooden found his passion teaching English during the day and coaching sports on the side. At one point, he passed up a high-paying opportunity with a traveling exhibition team to stay in his classroom job. Eventually he left high school teaching and began his career as a college coach in 1946.

Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Wooden would later earn the nickname “the Wizard of Westwood” (referring to UCLA’s Los Angeles neighborhood) although he was not particularly known as a master in-game strategist. Later in his life, he even acknowledged that making calculated changes during the flow of the game was not his strong point.

Most would say that Wooden’s greatest talent was his ability to maximize the potential of players by creating a near-unbeatable system of play. It involved impeccably organized practices and a knack for challenging players to challenge themselves, knowing how to get through to each one. He encouraged players to look inward and to understand and improve themselves before they presumed to contribute to the team. The first line of his widely followed Seven-Point Creed was “Be true to yourself.”

Wooden also demanded discipline, routine, and uniformity. He was not a tyrant; he wanted only to instill in his team the realization they could not control everything and therefore should take care to master what was within their power. He began each season with a lesson on how to put on your socks (allow no wrinkles) and shoes (lace ‘em up tight). They were not going to lose games because of blisters on their feet. Long hair and beards were not permitted on his team. He believed they caused excessive perspiration that could be a distraction at a critical moment.

As Wooden’s players grew into the mold he had constructed for them, he would come to know his team members as well as they knew themselves. He was then able to parlay their personal commitments into extraordinary results on the court. To this day, his pupils, including greats such as Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor (later to known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), credit Wooden for their success as players and as men.

Stick With the Game Plan

The Bruins’ long-term dominance on Wooden’s watch was not the result of high-tech training facilities or a brilliantly devised offense. He long insisted that the UCLA basketball dynasty was the result of sound fundamentals and a straightforward system – simple on paper yet difficult to execute without 100 percent effort from the entire team.

One of the best examples of Wooden’s winning formula actually came in one of his most notable losses, a 71-69 defeat in January 1968 to Houston that ended a forty-seven game Bruins winning streak. UCLA had not lost in two-and-a-half seasons and went into the game ranked number one. The second-ranked Cougars had not lost since UCLA defeated them the season before.

The matchup of the first and second-ranked teams featuring the two greatest college players at the time – Alcindor and Houston’s Elvin Hayes – was billed as the “Game of the Century.” It was the first regular season NCAA basketball game televised nationwide during prime time, and it was being played in what was then considered the ultramodern Astrodome, the world’s first domed stadium. More than fifty-two thousand spectators in attendance made up the largest paid audience ever to witness a basketball game.

The marquee stars of the evening were Hayes, a six-foot-eight forward, and the seven-foot-two Alcindor, UCLA’s imposing center. Thought Alcindor was the best player in the country and had been (and would be) nearly unstoppable all season, he played that night with a scratched cornea that had kept him out of the previous two games.

Nevertheless, Wooden knew his team. He knew its success was built around Alcindor. He was going to stick it within his system in place of any newfangled tactics designed to protect any ineffectiveness of Alcindor’s.

Alcindor, however, had one of the worst games of his college career while Hayes excelled, scoring thirty-nine points. UCLA lost by two points, and there was “pandemonium in the Astrodome.” Even though it was a regular season game, the next day’s headlines effectively crowned a new college basketball king, and TV stations around the country replayed the game every day for a week. UCLA players, most of whom had never lost a game, described feeling shocked and dismayed by the public dethroning.

Wooden knew, though, it was only a temporary setback. He knew his players, and they believed in the system. Rather than fall into a tailspin, the Bruins went undefeated the rest of the season and went on to win the NCAA championship. Along the way, they took their revenge, trouncing the Cougars 101-69 in a NCAA semifinal. On his website, Alcindor, now known as Abdul-Jabbar, calls it the most significant victory of his college career.

Color Commentary

• John Wooden was the first person to be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame both as a player (1961) and as a coach (1973). He has many awards named after him, but the best-known honor might be the Wooden Award, given to the nation’s most outstanding college basketball players (one male and one female) each year.
• Wooden retired in 1975 immediately after winning his tenth NCAA championship (and the Bruins would not win another national title for twenty years). He remained a visible icon in the UCLA community and nationwide until his death in 2010, just shy of his one-hundredth birthday.

Chapter-Ending Three-Pointer

1. List the important lessons you learned about money while growing up.
2. Note the differences in perspective between you and your spouse regarding spending, saving, and investing.
3. Be aware of investment strategies you favor or dislike based on your past experiences.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights resevered. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

“Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball.”

 – Phil Jackson,

 Eleven -time NBA championship coach with

 the highest winning percentage in league history

March Madness Meets Money Management

This is a book about financial planning. It’s filled with ideas and insights to help you take control of your financial affairs and make possible the lifestyle you’ve always envisioned for you and your family.

Sometimes financial planning can be boring, and that comes straight from me, a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and Certified Public Accountant (CPA). I’m a guy who has made his living in this profession for more than thirty years. Before you drop this book and flip on ESPN, let me explain.

Although the words “personal financial management” probably don’t make you bristle with excitement, they are nonetheless critical to your well-being as well as that of your spouse and kids. Most adult professionals realize this already. They know planning is important, but they fail to do it well, because, frankly, they just can’t bear to spend hours poring over budget spreadsheets and stock charts and insurance contracts, or whatever they imagine when they think of money management. It’s not quite as daunting as they think.

The problem is a disconnect between professional money managers and everyone else. Too often, financial professionals rely on historical charts and esoteric language to make a point. The message gets lost in translation. Even though their own money is at stake, many people just don’t find financial planning interesting enough to devote the time and energy required to do so.

There is a way to change that, however, if we in the financial world communicate everyday terms and relate to our clients using language they not only understand but enjoy. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, from young professionals just starting in the world to multimillionaire executives and professional athletes. One thing I’ve learned is that most people like a good analogy. By using familiar examples, we can make complex topics more approachable and engaging.

As you’ve probably guessed, that’s where basketball comes into play in this book.

Why basketball?

Using sports terms to communicate is nothing new. Business people, politicians, and professionals of all ilks are called upon to build strong teams, bring their A game, follow through, and hit the proverbial home run.

A love of sports is ingrained in American culture to the point that even individuals who are decidedly apathetic toward sports still know what it means to drop the ball, strike out, or throw a Hail Mary. For those of us who willingly make sports a part of our lives, there’s a light bulb that turns on when someone compares an otherwise obscure concept to our favorite sport.

For me, that game as always been basketball – college basketball, specifically. Growing up in Indiana, I was predestined to be a basketball nut. If you’ve spent much time in the Hoosier State, you know that basketball isn’t just popular there. For a large percentage of the population, it’s like an obsession like football in Texas or hockey in Minnesota. I wasn’t a star athlete, but basketball spoke to me nonetheless. It still does.

As I’ve built my career guiding clients toward financial security, I’ve spent considerable downtime in the clutches of the NCAA basketball season, infatuated with the perennial drama that culminates in March Madness. I’ve often been struck by the parallels between these two worlds; they have so much in common. In basketball and in investing, there are star performers and reliable role players. There are good seasons and bad ones followed by rebuilding years. There are tried-and-true strategies, and there are desperate measures. Always, there is the clock ticking overhead.

Make no mistake: simple sports analogies are no substitute for in-depth financial knowledge backed by research and experience. But if you speak the language of basketball, this book can help you approach your financial affairs from a familiar, perhaps more inspiring perspective.

© 2014 Chuck Thoele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

by: RGT Wealth Advisors

For the next few weeks known as March Madness, we will be posting excerpts and articles from Managing Director Chuck Thoele’s book – Bulls, Bears & Basketball. It’s a book about financial planning infused with tidbits and relevant stories from the world of college basketball.

 

It’s filled with ideas and insights to help you take control of your financial affairs and make possible the lifestyle you’ve always envisioned for you and your family.

 

As Chuck puts it, it’s a book for college basketball fans who love the March Tournament yet still need money management the other eleven months of the year.

 

“You don’t have to be a basketball fanatic to get something out of this book. If you’ve ever enjoyed playing or coaching basketball or even just watching the game as a casual observer, you’ll find something to like. And you’ll walk away with a new perspective on money management.”

 

We’ll be adding blog posts for the duration of the tournament. Stay tuned for the first item “Pregame Warm-Up” and be sure to follow us on Twitter all March Madness to get #BballFinance tips from Chuck’s book.