Mark Eaton’s corporate presentation is expertly written and delivered, enabling him to build a successful career as a speaker.
The former Jazz center has expanded his worksheet in a book, “The Four Commitments of a Winning Team,” being released this week. Eaton’s project, much like football coach Urban Meyer’s recent book, is designed for managers and employees — the audience for his appearances around the country.
In researching a story about what it is like to be 7 feet tall and expected to play basketball in this society, I once attended Eaton’s presentation to a corporate meeting in Park City. He was very impressive in that setting, and the book goes further in providing business advice, framed by his experiences in basketball and beyond.
Eaton’s story is a good one, how he went from being discovered working in a tire shop by a junior college assistant coach in California to having his No. 53 jersey retired by the Jazz as a dominant shot blocker and two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year. With a foreword from Jazz teammate John Stockton and material from Eaton’s interview with former Jazz executive Dave Checketts woven throughout it, the book captures enough Jazz history to make it worthwhile for basketball fans.
The weird thing to me is how in each of their books, Stockton and Eaton are willing to live with some mistakes in recounting games that I covered in the 1980s.
In writing “Assisted” in 2013, Stockton said he purposely relied on his memory for a more pure retelling, rather than doing the research. So he did some estimating and generalizing in his reporting. In the case of Game 5 of a famous 1988 playoff series with the Los Angeles Lakers, he mixed up the final sequence of events.
Similarly, my only criticism of “The Four Commitments” involves how Eaton takes license with some moments of his career. He basically creates a composite of two memorable games vs. Portland, presenting them as one contest. He describes a 95-90 road victory over the Trail Blazers in 1986, reporting how he blocked 14 shots and Karl Malone scored 37 points.
Eaton did have 14 blocks in a 127-122 win over Portland at the Salt Palace in January 1985, and Malone did score 37 points in a 114-105 victory at Portland in Game 2 of a first-round playoff series in April 1988. Where Eaton got a “95-90” score is a mystery; so is his account of “quieting 14,000 fans” at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, which famously listed Blazers sellouts of 12,666.
After listening to Eaton’s presentation to a group in Park City in 2016, I asked him about his telling of that story. He said the format of his speeches allowed him some liberties. A book seems different to me, requiring more accuracy.
Without mentioning former teammate Adrian Dantley by name, Eaton comes closer to getting the story right in chronicling a back-to-back set of games vs. Sacramento in 1986. He describes a teammate being happy about scoring 30 points and grabbing “double-digit” rebounds in a loss to the Kings in Sacramento, then being disappointed about his mediocre statistics in a win the next night in Salt Lake City.
Dantley had 45 points and six rebounds in the loss and 18 points in the win, so that story is plausible, although the sites were reversed.
Maybe I’m quibbling too much about such details in the context of Eaton’s career and what he has made of his life in and out of pro basketball. There’s a lot of good stuff in his book, including the story of how Wilt Chamberlain is the one who inspired the “Know your job” commitment, stemming from a conversation during a summer pickup game at UCLA. The other elements: “Do what you’re asked to do,” “Make people look good” and “Protect others.”
Eaton describes how Jazz coach Frank Layden once hired a bodyguard while rescuing forward John Drew from a crack house in Atlanta and placed him in drug rehabilitation.
Eaton also has done important things in his life, notably helping the community through his Standing Tall For Youth Foundation. He has thrived as a restaurateur in Salt Lake City after his NBA career and worked hard to develop yet another career as a speaker and author. He’s very good at it, overlooking some degree of exaggeration in his telling of a life story that’s already a big success.
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