The value of keeping the team intact: NBA edition

Drowned out by the overwhelming amount of fan and media attention that accompanied the recent decision by basketball's LeBron James to leave his team of the last four seasons, Miami, and return to his original club in Cleveland, another team in the NBA has quietly completed the execution of a different kind of talent strategy in advance of the 2014-2015 NBA season.

The talent strategy? The retention of key players and team leadership. The team? The NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs who recently defeated James and Miami 4 games to 1 in the NBA Finals, thus setting off a chain of events of player movement (starting with the league's best player, James), that is still not completely settled almost two months from the end of the season.

The Spurs' retention strategy concluded with the re-signing to a multi-year contract extension of the team's longtime coach Gregg Popovich. From the ESPN.com piece announcing Coach Pop's contract extension:

Gregg Popovich has agreed to a multiyear contract extension to continue coaching the reigning NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.

Popovich, 65, has coached San Antonio to five NBA titles since becoming the team's coach in 1996-97. 

The Spurs won their first championship since 2007 last month when they defeated the Miami Heat in five games in the NBA Finals.

With Tim Duncan, Boris Diaw and the rest of San Antonio's key players all set to return next season, it was no surprise that Popovich has signed on for a few more years.

The long time coach, Popovich. The 'Big Three' star players, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili. All of the important reserve/role players that helped the team vanquish the Heat in a five game series that was for the most part, incredibly one-sided. Everyone that played a key part and made needed contributions to the Spurs' great season and eventual NBA title are returning to the team next season.

In modern professional sports, the ability to retain so much of the key talent from a championship team is almost unheard of. Individual players, emboldened by their status as 'championship winners', often seek (rightly), to leverage that status into more lucrative contracts with competing teams. Some reserve players get uncomfortable returning to a team where they are likely to remain reserves for another season, thus potentially detracting from their longer term market value. And in sports, just like in any other business, sometimes people get tired of working with each other after a few years, and seek to use the success as a launch pad to something and somewhere else.

Retention as a strategy is sometimes, perhaps even regularly overlooked in sports and in many other types of organizations as well. Some people like to say retention is an outcome, and not really a strategy in of itself. It could be, but either way that does not diminish its importance and role in long-term organizational success.

ALL the NBA chatter this off-season has been about where LeBron was going to play next season, what his decision meant for the other stars on Miami, and how these moves impacted the eventual recruiting strategies of the other teams in the league. And while all this talk about player movement, potential trades, and how certain players might fit in with their new teams is fun and interesting for fans, it completely obscures what the most successful organization of the past 15 years has been doing.

The Spurs led the NBA in victories, won their 5th NBA title in the Popovich/Duncan era by defeating James and Miami in convincing fashion, and then re-signed Popovich and all the important players from that team and NO ONE is talking about them.

It is because retention is boring. Recruiting is fun and exciting though, so we like to talk about that instead. But retention, stability, and sticking to a winning formula probably gives the Spurs, (and your organization too), a better shot at long term success than chasing elusive talent and not doing enough to convince your home grown talent to stick around.

Diverse teams can (literally) better take the Heat

Did you happen to catch Game 1 of the NBA Finals last week between the San Antonio Spurs and two-time defending NBA champions the Miami Heat? In the game, won by the Spurs 110-95, probably the most notable element was the Spurs arena air conditioning system failing in the second half. This led to soaring arena and on-court temperatures which (likely) contributed to Heat star LeBron James' serious leg cramps, a condition which forced him to leave the game in the 4th quarter, and factored significantly in the Spurs win.

While each athlete's ability to tolerate or withstand the increased temperatures is probably difficult to predict, the Spurs team seemingly had a slight advantage adapting to the tough conditions. Why? Possibly because of the team's diversity. The Spurs are the NBA's most diverse team in terms of the player's nationalities, featuring guys from places like France, Argentina, the US Virgin Islands, Australia, and Italy.

Many of these players have considerable playing experience in leagues and competitions in Europe, where in-arena air conditioning is much less common than it is in the USA. As such, these players were able to draw on that experience that the diversity of their backgrounds helped to provide, to successfully adapt to the unusual conditions in Game 1. 

Here's a quote form Spurs guard and native of France, Tony Parker:

"I felt like I was playing in the European Championship. We never have AC in Europe so it didn't bother me at all."

The Spurs Manu Ginobili, an Argentine, had this to say about the heat (and the Heat):

"I don't think we (the Spurs) suffered as much. And for sure I played for more years in situations like this than with AC on the court. Not a big deal in that case."

As the Heat, and in particular James, were unable to adapt to the tough conditions, the Spurs were able to go on a late 31-9 scoring run and win the game by a comfortable 15 point margin. And in no small part, their diverse set of contributors were a key factor in the game's outcome.

It seems obvious that people from different backgrounds will have a different set of life experiences, sensibilities, and likely have ways to adapt and react to situations in a beneficial manner - all traits in evidence during Game 1 last week from the diverse players on the Spurs roster.

We all know, or have been trained to accept, that increased diversity is generally a good thing for workplaces and teams, but rarely do we get to see such a public and clear set of circumstances where having that diversity directly leads to increased organizational performance and better outcomes.

In this case, Game 1 of the NBA Finals, we saw loud and clear how having a more diverse team allowed the Spurs to succeed in conditions that really were not all that foreign (pardon the pun) to many of their players.

A good lesson and a fun game to watch as well. Unless you are a Heat fan.

Have a great week!

The analytics takeover won't always be pretty

Seems like it has been some time since I dropped a solid 8 Man Rotation contribution here on the blog, so to remedy that, please first take a look at this recent piece on ESPN.com, 'Fears that stats trump hoops acumen', a look at the tensions that are building inside NBA front offices and among team executives.

In case you didn't click over and read the piece, the gist is this: With the increased importance and weight that a new generation of NBA team owners are placing on data-driven decision making and analytical skills, that the traditional people that have been the talent pool for NBA team management and executive roles, (former NBA players), are under threat from a new kind of candidate - ones that have deep math, statistics, and data backgrounds and, importantly, not careers as actual basketball players.

Check this excerpt from the ESPN piece to get a feel for how this change in talent management and sourcing strategies is being interpreted by long time (and anonymously quoted) NBA executives:

Basketball guys who participated in the game through years of rigorous training and practice, decades of observation work through film and field participation work feel under-utilized and under-appreciated and are quite insulted because their PhDs in basketball have been downgraded," the former executive, who chose to remain anonymous, told ESPN NBA Insider Chris Broussard.

One longtime executive, who also chose to remain anonymous, postulated that one reason why so many jobs are going to people with greater analytical backgrounds is because newer and younger owners may better identify with them.

"Generally speaking, neither the [newer generation of] owners nor the analytic guys have basketball in their background," the longtime executive told Broussard. "This fact makes it easy for both parties to dismiss the importance of having experience in and knowledge of the game.

The piece goes on to say that since many newer NBA owners have business and financial industry backgrounds, (and didn't inherit their teams as part of the 'family business'), that they would naturally look for their team executives to share the kinds of educational and work experience profiles of the business executives with which they are accustomed to working with, and have been successful with.

The former players, typically, do not have these kinds of skills, they have spent just about all their adult lives (and most of their childhoods), actually playing basketball. A set of experiences, it is turning out, no longer seems to provide the best training or preparation for running or managing a basketball team. 

But the more interesting point from all this, and the one that might have resonance beyond basketball, is the idea that the change in hiring philosophy is coming right from the top - from a new generation of team owners that have a different set of criteria upon which they are assessing and evaluating talent.

Left to tradition, hiring and promotion decisions would have probably only slowly begun to modernize. But a new generation of owners/leaders in the NBA are changing the talent profile for the next generation of leaders.

The same thing is likely to play out in your organization. Eventually, if it has not happened yet, you are going to go to a meeting with your new CHRO who didn't rise through the HR ranks and maybe is coming into the role from finance, operations, or manufacturing. In that meeting your 19 years of experience in employee relations might be a great asset to brag on. Or it might not be.

And you might find out only when you are introduced to your new boss, who has spent her last 5 years crunching numbers and developing stats models.

Have a great week!

Choosing your benchmarks wisely and the legacy of David Stern

Real quick 8 Man Rotation style take for a travel Tuesday. Aside, I am heading out to Oracle HCM World in my favorite city in the world Las Vegas, if you happen to be out there be sure to say 'Hi'. 

Over the weekend I had a brief Tweet exchange with the HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn, and another Fistful of Talent colleague the very underrated R.J. Morris about the legacy of the very recently retired after a 30 year run Commissioner of the NBA David Stern. One of the tweets is embedded below to give a little bit of context, and also because I find embedding tweets to be kind of fun, (I know, i need to get out more).

@RJ_Morris @steveboese @thelance just read that this morning. Hard take. The real ? is what could have Stern done to close the gap with NFL.

— Kris Dunn (@kris_dunn) February 3, 2014

The gist of the conversation regarding Stern was this: By most measures of internal comparison, i.e. taking where the NBA was in terms of hard metrics like revenue, franchise values, player salaries, international growth, etc., Stern presided over a long and sustained period if incredible growth for the league. By every internal standard, the NBA is in a far, far better and more financially successful place today than it was when Stern became commissioner. 

But Stern has his critics too, and rather than dig into all the specific and sometimes subtle elements of his stewardship of the NBA, let's focus on just one. Namely, that while Stern did, by most accounts, a superb job of growing the NBA, it is still far, far less popular and financially and culturally massive (at least in the USA) as the National Football League. The NFL is the proverbial 300lb gorilla of modern American sports. It has widespread appeal, its game telecasts rank among the most popular TV programs week in and week out, the the culmination of the season, the Super Bowl game, has become such an important and ubiquitous event that there are fairly serious proposals that the Monday following the game be designated as a national holiday.

The NFL is #1, by every measure that matters, and when holding up the NBA to that mirror, well then the Association falls short, a distant second really, (and possibly even third behind Major League Baseball), and consequently then Commissioner Stern must be judged as not having really been such a transcendent sports business leader.

But I think that comparison is a little unfair, and perhaps even a little premature, (even as Stern retires). I think if we let the evolution of both American professional sports, and societal and global trends play out a little longer, I think this kind of comparison, or benchmark of basketball to American football will end up looking quite a bit different, and Stern, long gone from the scene, will have to be credited for at least some of these developments.

To me, the NBA is like Apple Computers, in the latter part of the 90s. The NFL, the behemoth, is Microsoft of that same time.

Back then, Microsoft was the undisputed leader in personal and corporate computing technology, was led by a legendary and visionary Bill Gates, and simply dwarfed everyone else in its space with its vise-like grip over almost every interaction you had with a computer. Apple was still interesting, quirky, made a different kind of computer that had its adherents, but never was seen as a serious threat to the MSFT ecosystem.

And then something called the iPod came out and things started to change. You know the story and I don't need to go into all the Apple innovations and the subsequent (or concurrent) missteps from Redmond, but suffice to say the technology world in 2014 does not look anything like it did in 1998 or so.

So back to my NBA and NFL take, and the need to give Stern some room before we all start deciding about his legacy.

I submit that about 15 years from now the NBA will be almost, if not more popular (in America and globally), than the NFL for the following reasons:

1. Basketball, and by extenstion the NBA, is largely an urban or city game. The game is mostly played and celebrated, in America's big cities - New York, Chicago, Boston, L.A.. And America (and the rest of the world) is becoming a more urban place as well. As more people migrate to the larger cities, the city game, basketball, will continue to thrive, often at the expense of football, a game that requires expansive grounds on which to play, lots of expensive equipment, and the type of space not easily found in a big city.

2. Basketball is a global game, played all over the world, while American football is played (seriously) pretty much only in America. As the world shrinks, cultural and sporting phenomena like the NFL, that have only single-country relevance, will eventually become somewhat marginalized over time. While the NFL dominates the American sporting landscape, it hardly registers anywhere else in the world. The NBA, with its global reach, and high number of non-American players is far ahead of the NFL in this regard. Just witness the growing popularity of English Soccer here in the US as a small example of this trend.

3. The talent supply chain is constricting for the NFL. Due to its violent nature, more and more parents are electing to keep their kids out of full-contact football. Every football player gets injured at some point in a season, and as the NFL has learned, many of these injuries can have incredibly serious and devastating repercussions. The recent concussion-related lawsuits, settlements, and high-profile former players revealing their stories of traumatic brain injury are beginning to cast a longer and longer shadow over not just the NFL, but the beginnings or feeder systems for their talent. This will play out over time, surely, but even today if you were the parent of a very talented and gifted athlete, would you steer him toward a violent sport like football where he is likely to have at least a few concussions over time, or a sport like basketball where the injury risks are much less?

4. At the top, I said this was going to be a 'quick take', turns out I was wrong. Sorry about that.

5. The NBA understands social media and new media in general. This is certainly subjective, but if you look at how the league and its teams have embraced digital and social over the last few years, you see an organization that is more forward-thinking than most others. This is a by-product of the NBA's long time strategy that elevates and promotes its star players and personalities. Think about it, only the most ardent NFL fans can name more than a handful of players on their favorite team, and even less would be recognizable. If the new world of media and commerce is about engagement and connection, then the NBA is in a much stronger place than the NFL, where the vast majority of players are faceless and anonymous.

I probably could keep going on this, but I think I have made enough points for now, and besides, I have to get on a plane. But the bottom line to me, taking us back to the question of David Stern and his legacy I think we have to let some of these cultural and global trends play out a little longer before we dismiss Stern (and the NBA) as being somehow inferior to the NFL. Compare the NBA of 1984 to the NBA of today and then no question, Stern was a great leader and executive. Compare the NBA of 2014 to the NFL of 2014 and sure you could say he fell short, but I say we need to let these shifts develop.

Apple wasn't Apple back in 1998. But the world changes, sometimes faster, sometimes slower than we like or anticipate. And being on top of the food chain, even if you have been there awhile doesn' guarantee you that spot forever. Just ask Microsoft.

<post typed on Chromebook> 

Recruiting the ninth best guy on the team

Note: Yes I am posting about sports again. If you are sick of it I am sorry, you can quit now and go somewhere else to read ANOTHER post about employee engagement or culture or some such. Tell me truly that you aren't sick of those too.

In college and professional sports 'stunt' recruiting demonstrations- mocking up team jerseys, creating fake pictures or scoreboard videos with the player in the new team colors, or imagined play-by-play calls of a player hitting a big shot or winning a championship for his or her would-be new team are not really new or all that novel anymore. 

College teams especially, and sometimes professional ones too, use these kind of demonstrations to try and impress the candidate/recruit, to get them to more clearly envision themselves joining the team, and to play into their egos somewhat - not only will they come to the school or team for the expected reasons, (get an education, make some money, etc.), but they will also achieve their bigger dreams as well - win titles, be idolized, create a legacy - that kind of thing. For big-time and highly sought after recruits these kinds of displays are kind of expected and probably don't do all that much on their own to sway the recruit's decision. After all, once the 5-star high school running back sees about a dozen of these same kinds of pictures/videos from every major college program in the country the effect of any of them is pretty diminished. 

But where these kinds of gestures can still be effective I think is at the next, or even next-next tier of recruiting - for those candidates that are not All-Stars or Top Talent or whatever expression you prefer. For the players/candidates that might only be solid contributors, important to the overall cause but not the most important factor, perhaps just a little bit in the way of treatment typicall reserved for the big time prospects can be the most effective lever the recruiter can pull.  

Take a look at this piece, Chris Copeland signs an offer sheet with Indiana after the team Photoshopped him into an ESPN Mag cover on the Indiana Pacers efforts to sign the former New York Knicks and now free agent Chris Copeland - a guy who just broke into the league at 28 years old, and on a good team like Indiana figures to be the 8th or 9th most important player.

From the Yahoo! Sports piece:

This isn’t a new exercise, teams have been Photoshopping potential free agents into would-be uniforms as part of a free agent pitch for years, but it’s still cool to see. Chris Copeland has signed an offer sheet with the Indiana Pacers, and before doing so the Pacers sent him this gift box (pic at right).

Copeland is a D-League alum that couldn’t even hook on with some of the better leagues that international basketball has to offer, playing in outposts like Belgium and the Netherlands before catching on with New York as a long range shooter and active defender.

Indiana’s biggest weakness in its run to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals was its depth, and in acquiring both C.J. Watson and eventually Copeland, the team has smartly shored up that pine with players that should fit right into (Pacer Coach) Frank Vogel’s system. 

Again, not that big a deal, I suppose, teams can and have been doing these kinds of stunts for ages. But what is distinctive in this example is the approach and attention paid by the Pacers to a guy, Copeland, who will almost certainly not be a star on the team, and will not even be a starter on the team. Sure, the actual contract offer ( 2 years for $6.1M) reflects that, but making the player feel as wanted and as needed as a big time recruit with the simple little photoshop magazine cover, (that probably took someone all of 20 minutes to do), shows that the Pacers understand what is important when working with talent.

There will probably be a few games next season where the contributions of bench players like Copeland mean the difference between a win and a loss. The NBA grind is relentless, and often teams have to get better-than-expected efforts from the 8th or 9th best guys on the team when the stars are not playing well or are tired or someone in the starting lineup gets injured.

By showing the ninth best guy on the team that he is still important, that he is wanted, that he too, can envision himself on magazine covers the Pacers teach us all a lesson about making talent feel important.

Even those who are not so-called 'Top Talent.'

Have a great Tuesday everyone!