Patience is a funny concept in sports, where careers are short, injuries loom, firings occur with numbing regularity and every team in every league is selling the snake oil of imminent excitement.
Hear the word "patience" from a coach, and the mind immediately translates it into "I've run out of excuses."
The Gophers basketball teams open their regular seasons on Tuesday at Williams Arena. Both have reason to plead for patience, and they might provide two instances of "patience" being used properly.
One team will openly beg for it. One might be ready to make it pay off.
Lindsay Whalen is perhaps Minnesota's greatest athlete. She is, at least, the state's grandest winner. She made the Gophers unexpected winners before leading the Lynx to four WNBA titles.
Ben Johnson won two state championships at DeLaSalle, played for the Gophers, then followed a much more familiar path for a college coach. He worked like mad, becoming a fixture in gyms around Minnesota and the basketball world, shaking hands and slapping sweaty backs.
Both are Gophers alums. Both received their first head coaching jobs, despite relatively thin résumés, from the University of Minnesota. Both are charged with improving in-state recruiting in an underrated basketball hotbed. Both are young people with tough jobs.
Whalen is 39. Johnson is 40. They have waded into one of the country's toughest basketball conferences. If Whalen starts winning this year, she will be, in a way, justifying the hiring of Johnson.