NBA star Draymond Green has been suspended again, this time for throwing a wild arm at Jusuf Nurkić’s face during a game on December 12th. Green is a repeat offender of physical altercations, and has been suspended by the NBA several times in the past. For the current incident Green was initially suspended “indefinitely,” with more detail emerging yesterday that his suspension will require him to miss at least the next three weeks after beginning mental health counseling. While I am admittedly biased and a big believer of sport psychology mental health assistance, questions remain around the effectiveness of short-term counseling treatment (and related expectations) used with a chronic rule-breaker, Green’s willingness to take required counseling seriously, and the overall “quick-fix” approach used by many sport executives to seemingly slap on “counseling” to a problematic player with hopes that things will immediately improve. While most people reading this column will not be professional sport executives tasked with these kinds of decisions, similar challenges exist in interscholastic and youth sports when student athletes break rules and consequences are warranted. Counseling can be a vital part of self-improvement, but it’s not a magic fix, and meaningful results rarely happen overnight.
Setting up counseling to be most effective
There are a number of issues to consider when adding counseling as part of a rehabilitation requirement for athletes who break team/league rules, including the following:
- Aligning counseling up as a penalty. While we have come a long way in overcoming previous mental health stigmas, requiring an athlete to complete counseling is not the best entry into the realm of self-improvement. On the surface making an athlete complete counseling may seem like a good move, but the potential benefits of counseling are greatly reduced when the client sees no value in counseling, or views counseling as punitive and something he or she “has to do in order to play again.” As you might imagine, outcomes are often compromised when clients see no value and/or simply do not want to participate, and this has a direct effect on the likelihood for changed behaviors in the future.
- Forced counseling. People do not generally enjoy things they are forced to do, and this is true for athletes, too. When a sport administrator or coach requires an athlete to completer X number of counseling sessions in the way they might make a player complete 50 pushups, the experience is not framed in an inviting, healthy way. When counseling is most effective it is largely due to client openness, participation, and compliance, and those qualities are often missing when an athlete is told that he or she must meet with a psychologist — or else.
- Unrealistic expectations. Old habits are certainly hard to break, and this is especially true with many of the emotional issues athletes experience. In the current case of Draymond Green, he has an entire NBA career full of technical fouls, fights, and game ejections due to unruly behaviors — to think a few weeks of unwanted counseling will somehow fundamentally change him as a person may be a stretch. Obviously the goal of counseling is to help Green and athletes like him, but it is important that we do not view mental health assistance in the same way we might take an aspirin for a headache. Long, established habits and ways of thinking need time for change, as well as a client invested in improvement and not feeling forced to complete something that is seen as a waste of time.
Final thoughts
Counseling can be a fantastic piece of a rehabilitation program when it comes to athletes breaking rules and/or engaging in problematic behaviors, but it needs to be introduced in a non-punitive way where the athlete will be open to the process rather than upset he or she has to do it. In order to do this, sport administrators and coaches need to discuss counseling as a helpful tool rather than a penalty, to encourage players to take a healthy self-analysis through the process, and set future benchmarks for treatment unique to the athlete and his or her personality and previous problems with the issue at hand. Old habits are not magically fixed by sitting down with a psychologist for an hour, but instead come as a result of taking the entire process serious and realistically by getting buy-in, enthusiasm, and compliance from the player.
drstankovich.com
