Some Quick Additional Thoughts About Dusty May's Teaching

Follow up to Rustin Dodd's feature of Dusty in the Athletic.

A couple of quick thoughts about this profile of Dusty May by Rustin Dodd, focusing on some of the work Dusty & I did together.

First, I’d like to echo and perhaps emphasize a bit more the point in the article about Dusty’s mentality. He’s a rare combination of traits that often manifest in opposition: both competitive and humble; top-tier at explanation of his ideas and arguably better at listening to others; driven for success and thoughtful about the people with him on the journey (example: I did a session for his coaches in which we studied video of them working with players; he insisted that i use video of one of his assistants as the positive example instead of video of him.)

What Rustin says about his hunger to learn is true… he reads constantly… always listening to podcasts…. It’s in his mindset.

Message there to the up-and-coming in an age of cognitive offloading… he is a cognitive on-boarder. Want to be like Dusty? Start with his reading habits!

But he’s also an implementer. I’ve worked with a lot of teams at the professional level in at least six sports and while most people recognize that teaching better could be the source of a potent competitive advantage, operationalizing that advantage requires sustained focus on small often unsexy details.

There’s also some risk involved. This sounds so simple but Dusty was so willing to video tape himself doing his job and send it to me. Most people are really reluctant to do that. Especially coaches (ironically). And can I say Dusty is also the single most generous coach I’ve ever worked with about allowing me to share his video with aspiring coaches). Humble confidence.

But attention, diligence, follow-through: that’s the barrier for a lot of the teams I work with. At some, every time I come through there’s another expert on another idea: chaos theory; diaphragmatic breathing; generational theory (how young people today are different) lessons in leadership from special forces. There’s value in many of them. I applaud teams for always trying to learn. But the key is also to make some bets and turn the ideas into daily culture-changing action. To focus on everything is the same as to focus on nothing.

Dusty implements, in part because as Rustin points out, he’s just hungry to know what works and how. But that’s the real strength. If the choice is A) distraction by novel sexy and new or B) sustained focus on core principles and key bets, many people struggle to focus on B and not A. Especially when B is detailed and technical and complex. Dusty goes B.

Last point. Tip of the cap to Rustin who really took the time to understand and capture the substance of many of the things Dusty & I talked about. Sorry if its cynical but pleasantly surprised to find a journalist focusing on substance and detail rather than…

Well anyway, I appreciate it.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7167858/2026/04/03/dusty-may-michigan-basketball-leadership-teacher/