Coach Carter encourages everyone to work at their full potential as basketball players and as students. At the beginning of the movie Coach Carter hands out a contract to everyone on the basketball team. Telling them what they need to do to play on his team, if they don't sign or obey these rules, they aren't allowed to play. He also stands up for what he believes in even if that means risking his job for the sake of bettering his student's futures. Coach Carter believed that with the right schooling his players would be able to gain scholarships to go to college, he wasn't only worried about the present he was worried about the future too. This would give his players a chance of a better life. Coach uses an autocratic leadership style this is seen through almost all his actions, as he maintains order and discipline while also focusing on targets.
He taught five important values throughout the movie, that changed the lives of his players forever. They were discipline, respect, teamwork, courage, and humility. One example of when discipline was taught to the team was learned when Coach made the whoever was late so suicides or push-ups, this was also the punishment of someone who had a bad attitude. Respect was learned when he called his team using “sir”, which was unusual to them since no one had ever called them that. Teamwork was shown when one of the player's teammates came back to rejoin the team, he was told to do an unrealistically high number of pushups and suicide so his team asked if they could do the rest on his behalf. He also shows the team that it’s not all about winning, in the end, the team did not win the finals but the coach told them “you men played like champions, you never gave up” which Instills an “it’s not all about winning” mindset in their minds.
Coach Carter noted that the whole team had a passion for basketball and decided to make it the team’s goal to learn the value of discipline, confidence and hard work for them to become successful players. At the beginning of the movie, not much motivation can be seen by the team. But by the end of the movie they don't even care if they lost, it's about if they tried their hardest. In the movie, Carter came up with strategies that would instill the value of discipline in the team players. He taught them how to claim and expect respect from others until it was exploited. For example, he enforces the use of courteous words such as sir when referring to other people instead of using vulgar language. He accomplished this by ensuring that before a player enters the team, that he would have to sign a contract.
