PIC No. 117: Pails in Comparison (June 29, 2026)
• Title: Lessons From the Bench: Unlocking the Impact of Bench Players on Teams and in Organizations
• Author: Brandon H. Bakke
• Publisher: Brandon Bakke (March 16, 2026, 236 pages)
• Management Bucket #9 of 20: The Team Bucket
• YouTube Podcast #05: Lessons From the Bench (7 minutes)
Welcome to Issue No. 117 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
"You Never Know When a Coach Will Call on You"
In my eNews for April 15, 2026, I mentioned that Lessons From the Bench deserved at least two reviews—maybe three!
REVIEW #1: “Healthy and Successful Teams Need the Bench” (Read my review here.)
REVIEW #2: Listen to the AI-generated summary of my review posted here on YouTube, “Podcast #05: Lessons From the Bench” (7 minutes).
Plus…what better timing to remind you about this book than during the current FIFA World Cup 2026 games. (The Round of 32 started yesterday, and while I am happy for my Canadian friends, I empathize with my South African friends. Oh, my.)
My wife, Joanne, and I have watched almost every World Cup game—prior to this knock-out round—and we have every future game on our viewing schedule. Everyone is talking about these games, including Peggy Noonan in her recent Wall Street Journal column, “The Tartan Army Takes America: World Cup visitors learn what our country has to offer—and remind us of it at the same time.”
And trust me—once you read Bakke’s book, you’ll gain a much deeper appreciation for bench players, whether in basketball, football (soccer), baseball, and most importantly—your team at work.
So why read this book?
REASON #1: Have you ever read a book on how to coach bench players? No? (Me neither.)
PODCAST #05: Lessons From the Bench(John Pearson's Buckets Podcast). View this AI-generated summary of John's review of the book, “Lessons From the Bench: Unlocking the Impact of Bench Players on Teams and in Organizations,” by Brandon H. Bakke. Click here.
REASON #2: The “stars” on your team would not be the stars—without the faithfulness, support, encouragement, and hustle of your bench players. Example: Brandon Bakke writes, “You never know when a coach will call on you. I’ve seen it countless times, both as a player and as a coach, when the bench player wasn’t listening and therefore couldn’t capitalize on a spur-of-the-moment opportunity placed before him.”
CASE IN POINT: When Bakke was a bench player for Jerry Tarkanian’s Fresno State Bulldogs, he spoke up during a time-out—with seconds remaining in a game—and said to Coach Tark, “Coach, they are going to Laettner us.”
Basketball zealots will remember this from the “now iconic Duke-Kentucky NCAA tournament finish when Christian Laettner famously caught a full-court pass from Grant Hill and buried the shot at the buzzer.” (Watch the two-minute video from 1992. Oh, my!)
What happened at Fresno State? Read page 105.
Stay tuned for Review #3—maybe during the MLB World Series!
[ ] 27 Coaching Books! (Honest! Check out the mini-reviews.)
Read my reviews of three more coaching books—recently reviewed in Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews (Issue # 676) and over at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog:
[ ] BOOK #25: Ten Marks of a Coachable Leader, by Gary P. Rohrmayer. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
[ ] BOOK #26: Coaching the Other Way: How to Effectively Coach and Be Coached, by JD Pearring and Brian Burman (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
[ ] BOOK #27 (Read Part 1 of 2): Good Coach Bad Coach: Build A Practice Where You Belong, by Simon Harling (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
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NOTE: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Pails in Comparison Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 100+ blogs posted (between 2022 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.
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