Reflection On Coach Carter Movie: Opinion Essay

Coach Carter Movie

a) How Does The Movie Make You Feel?

What I feel about this movie is how strong effort that Coach Carter made to build the great basketball team. This movie is showing us about morals. It is fulfill with true life examples of choosing right over wrong and living a good life the right way. From the movie, Coach Carter uses his strong moral compass and passion for the game to help influence these young boys. He creates a united culture within the team that fosters changes in behaviour, perception and personality expression. These changes help to create a strong organizational commitment to the team, and eventually leads to a very successful basketball season for them. At the beginning of the movie, the players are seen as having no respect toward each other and the people around them. However, in the middle of the movie, the movie portrays high level of teamwork between these players where they took the back of one of their teammates by volunteering to do the punishment on his behalf just to have him on the team again.

B. Identify Any 4 (Four) Issues / Problems Revealed In The Movies.

1) Social issues

There are many social issues portrayed in Coach Carter Movie. First that we can see is the basketball players use impolite language. They always called each other as “nigger” and “dog”. On the first day in gymnasium when Coach Carter introduced himself and distributed the contract, they didn’t respect the coach. They not only not pay attention to the coach but even called him a “nigger” and “dog”. Timo Cruz tried to beat the coach as he didn’t satisfied with the contract but luckily he managed to avoid and push him towards the wall. Besides, there is pregnancy of teenagers. Kenyon Stone tried to manage his life with pregnant girlfriend, Kyra. Kyra is having a baby. She planned to stop her study and not further her study in college. Kyra also mentioned that her cousin already had two kid s at the age of 19 only. This conflict is relieved in an insultingly simplistic way as Kyra decided not to have the baby by abortion. All this had spoiled their bright future. We as a teenagers and students, we are responsible to study and have to try our best for our better future. In addition, Timo Cruz had involved in drug-dealing activity. He had obscure relationships with his cousin, Renny involving money being passed underhand.

2) Stereotype issues

In this movie, there are several issues stereotypes are formed in Coach Carter movie. This inequality can see in the representation of black students in a low class, urban setting in the movie coach carter. The audience witnesses how poor, black students are categorized by the media as dumb, insignificant high school students and overlook the fact that basketball provides them with a ground for equality and advancement to college. In the coach carter movie, stereotype of black basketball players as terrible students and that they have no hope of going to college. The film depicts that student have a better chance of getting killed on the streets or going to prison than getting into college. The players’ coach persuades the students and their families to believe in his system, dedicate themselves to his system, and they can and will achieve a college scholarship and defeat the predisposed stereotype. Through this film, we see the presence of social class and inequality in our lives. This film do not put the white race in bad light. The minority race is always struggling and frowned upon as inferior.

3) Resistance to applying change problems

In this movie, this attitudes can be seen in the film when Coach Carter informs the team and their parents that the boys will not play unless their grades are at a certain standard. At first people were angry and complained to the principle. Coach carter had to face criticism when he made the decision to close the gym and forfeit a basketball game because his team were not going to classes and maintaining good grades. Eventually the school board and the parents fight back against Carter’s actions. The board eventually votes 4-2 to end the lockout, the dissenting votes being the school’s principal and the chairman of the board. Carter is on the verge of quitting, but when he arrives at the gym to pack up his things, he finds the players sitting at school desks in the gym, with their teachers tutoring them. It shows there were elements of confusion as people did not understand why Coach Carter was doing this to increase their student result. This shows some classic psychological attitudes towards change. Resistant attitude are sometimes adopted because of ‘fear of the unknown’.

4) Conflict in the team problems

In the coach carter movie, the conflict of attitude problem occurs between Coach Carter and the basketball team. The nature of the conflict is intra group conflict because problem happen within the members of a group or in the team. Since there are conflicting values within the group they fight. Coach Carter demands respect, discipline and academic progress from his team. The team is too ignorant and preoccupied with their own personal activities to honour their contracts Coach Carter gave them. Coach Carter believes in honouring deals but the team at the beginning thinks otherwise. They think all that matters is winning in basketball. Coach Carter refuses to give up on them so he drags it on. This creates a rift between the coach and team in the movie. We can see is the basketball players use impolite language. They always called each other as “nigger” and “dog”. On the first day in gymnasium when Coach Carter introduced himself and distributed the contract, they didn’t respect the coach. They not only not pay attention to the coach but even called him a “nigger” and “dog”.

c. The Message of This Movie

The movie ‘Coach Carter’ gives us a good understanding of how a basketball coach goes about bringing in a ‘lifetime’ individuality for all the players. In the movie, Carter was appointed as the coach to develop a winning team, but he sought to do that not only by teaching them basketball skills but also making them learn ‘life skills’. At the end he creates an ‘undefeated team’ who plays the state championship, but more importantly they all get admission into good colleges for furtherance of their career.

When one enters into organization, we are bound to performance norms which determine an individual’s input and output within the working group. The individual will likely perform a set of roles and duties as expected by members of the group to ensure his or her overall task is accomplished. It can be seen in the movie where Coach carter set this performance norm for his players. For example, in the movie, Carter’s son Damien, is a good student who attended and played basketball at the private school St. Francis, quits the private school which against his father’s wishes and transfers to Richmond High School to play basketball on his father’s team. Carter only agreed after Damien signed a contract stating that he will maintain a GPA of 3.7.Senior role-holders also need to be perceived as being fair in treatment of all staff, without any special “rules” for some. This ensures commitment.

Besides that, real teamwork is all about mutual accountability. Team members of units in organizations must take collective ownership. For instance, despite the team’s winning record, Carter realizes the players are becoming arrogant and many of them are not living up to his academic requirements. Carter take initiative solving the problem by putting a rule. Later, the team won in a tournament but the team get poor grades. So, Carter cancels basketball practice, forfeits games including the most important game of the season, and makes the team spend practice time in the library, being tutored by some of their teachers. Coach Carter also wanted the players to get into good colleges and avoid from getting into bad company after school. So, he wanted to instill in the players, discipline and sense of responsibility for duties. Discipline also plays a huge role in the development of an individual and it also affects the organization in the long run. Not just that, A good manager should never lose sight of the bigger goal and should always take corrective steps for that – even if that means loss in the short term.

The movie also gives us a good understanding of concepts of Value Exchange and Performance Management. Value Exchange is the exchange of value between an employer and an employee. The value being exchanged is at two levels which are employer where satisfying employee needs through appropriate investment and second is employee where exhibiting profit maximizing behavior. At the philosophical level, Value Exchange is a belief about how organizations must reallocate resources to optimize the value of customer, employee, supplier and investor relationships. Meanwhile at tactical level, Value Exchange identifies the specific investments required to promote and sustain profit-producing customer, employee, and supplier behaviors at an individual level. Plus it focuses on the simultaneous challenge of acquiring new customers, as well as improving their profitability and retention levels.

d. Four Suggestions In Minimizing The Issues Occurred In The Movie based On The Topic.

For the second issue which is stereotyping, stereotype is an unconscious element therefore it is difficult to avoid, thus it requires effective strategies to minimise its application. The first strategy is to implement diversity awareness training. The management need to educate employees about the benefits of diversity, sensitivity to equality and to also block inaccurate perception. The second strategy is to build meaningful interaction. Employees need to build many contact hypothesis which they need to build close and frequent interaction with each other. Lastly, decision-making accountability is also one of the strategy to minimize stereotyping biases. With that, making people feel accountable for their decision will motivates them to consider objective info rather than stereotypes.

Moreover, to boost up the building of organizational commitment is by justice and support. The leader must to make sure that they can apply humanitarian values fairness, courtesy, forgiveness and moral integrity. Firstly, must to share the values is one of the key to build the organizational commitment. Creating and implementing shared values is important for all organizations.. The employees belief their values are congruent with the organization domination value with is motivated the people to stay. In this movie, we can see that Coach Carter want to make sure that the players can boost up their grade step by step and not focusing only on their games. Hence, coach Carter try inject these kind of value on them to make sure that the team can balance this value in their life.

For the last solution regarding the issue of resistance to applying change problems is by communicating. The highest priority and first strategy for change. Communication also can improves urgency to change.. Organizing also requires effective communication with others about their job task. Similarly leaders as managers must communicate effectively with their subordinates so as to achieve the team goals. In this movie we can see that, the basketball team need to be communicate with each other. Even though they are having problem or critical issues, they still need to communicate. Coach Carter also must communicate with the players to make sure that that team received and follow the order. A good communication can give a big impact towards the team.

Conclusion

Based on the movie, we have studies on how a leader can manage well in the basketball team. In the organization, a good leader can influence to build up a good team. Hence in this movie we can say that, Coach Carter as a good and motivated leader that always focus on the priority of the team.

References

1. Coach Carter. (2019, May 09). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coach_Carter
2. Coach Carter. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393162/plotsummary
3. Watch Coach Carter | Prime Video. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Coach-Carter-Samuel-L-Jackson/dp/B000HZEE64