The Celtics, Coaching, and Compensation

The Boston Celtics shocked the professional sports world earlier this week when they named Butler University Men's Basketball Coach Brad Stevens to be their new Head Coach, replacing the recently departed long time coach Doc Rivers.

The signing of Stevens as the C's new on-court leader was notable and surprising on several levels:

• None of the NBA writers or pundits seemed to have Stevens named as a potential replacement for Rivers or even in a fuzzy, 'sources say' kind of way

• Stevens has no prior NBA experience as an assistant coach or a player, the most common kind of experience possessed by first-time NBA head coaches

• There has been a recent history of failure at the NBA level for a number of very high profile college coaches, i.e. success in college coaching hasn't not been carrying over to the NBA

• Stevens, at 36, immediately becomes the youngest head coach in the NBA

• And finally, while at Butler for the last six seasons, Stevens' teams had success, including reaching the National Title game twice, (losing on both occasions), he had not reached the 'top' of the college coaching ranks reserved for the leaders of most historic and storied programs like Duke, Kentucky, or North Carolina.

All in all, the announcement of Stevens, by all accounts an excellent coach and still rising star in the profession was one that took nearly everyone off guard. And it may or may not work out for the Celtics and Stevens, but dig just a little deeper into the details of the deal, and the former coach Rivers' contract, and then it begins to make more sense from a pure Talent Management perspective.

The Celtics are a team that is in rebuilding mode - they recently traded away two of their most highly paid and best performing players Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets, and rumors are circling that their other key franchise player Rajon Rondo might be next to be shipped off. The team clearly wants to build around some younger players and hopes to utilize the increased number of draft picks acquired in the recent trade with the Nets to stockpile more young, (and importantly, cheaper), talent.

And in essentially trading Rivers, the former head coach who has over 12 years experience as an NBA head coach and led the Celtics to the NBA Championship in 2008, for the much less experienced Stevens, the C's also give us all in the talent game a lesson and reminder of the tradeoffs that organizations have to make when chasing talent, and more importantly, aligning the talent strategy to the business and organizational reality.

Rivers with his years of experience, demonstrated success in the job, and reputation amongst the players was a very highly compensated coach - he had 3 years and $21 million remaining on his Celtics contract. At $7M per season, that is the kind of compensation that elite NBA head coaches can expect.

Stevens, by comparison, signed for 6 years and $22 million. Still a lot of scratch, but by NBA head coaching standards not so much. 

You pay Rivers, or similar, $7 million a year because he is a proven championship coach. These are incredibly hard to find. But the Celtics are not going to be a championship-caliber team next season, and probably for two or three more after that. They are essentially starting over after six or seven years of really high-level, title-contending play. Paying an elite-level coach top of the market compensation in this scenario makes no sense. It's wasted money (not to mention Rivers himself losing interest in the club as well).

So you make the smart move - bet on a younger coach, hopefully on the rise, at half the salary of the last guy knowing that in the next couple of years anyway, his inexperience in the role won't matter too much because the team isn't ready to contend.  Maybe it works out, and the Celtics look like geniuses for locking up a great coach at a bargain rate.

But the key here is the Celtics know who they are right now. For all their storied history and many championships over the years, they are not an elite team at the moment. And that fed into the call and the decision to release their elite coach, some of their elite players, and move in a new (and cheaper) direction.

All organizations say they want to attract and retain the 'best' talent. But sometimes doing what is necessary to land the 'best' talent doesn't make sense from a broader organizational context. And when you need to move off what is needed to land the top talent in terms of compensation, then you also likely need to think more expansively and creatively about who you can bring in. Maybe you place a bet on an up-and-comer. Maybe you don't worry so much about '10 years experience doing exactly the same job'.

Maybe you find a way to land the next star employee before the competition does.

You have to know who you are, and make talent decisions accordingly.

Have a great weekend!

If you want more leaders, you have to let them lead

The NBA Finals are underway, and as I write this post the San Antonio Spurs are still enjoying a 1-0 series lead, primarily due to the steady play of their veteran stalwarts, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker. Parker, their point guard hit a remarkable shot near the end of the game to put the Spurs in a commanding position, and Duncan shook off a bad start to put up 20 points and 14 rebounds and contributed all-around solid play.

These two players, (along with Manu Ginobili), with a combined 10 championships between them, have formed the core, of one of the most auspicious franchises in all of professional sports. Throughout the Spurs run of success there has been one more constant - the Spurs long time coach Gregg Popovich. Popovich has been at the helm of the Spurs since the late 1990s, (an amazingly long tenure in the coaching world), and has helped build and lead the Spurs to four titles, (going for number five as we speak). 'Pop' has been successful for a myriad of reasons, (getting the #1 pick in the Draft in 1997 and landing Duncan perhaps the most important and fortunate one), but I'd like to call out just one in this post, one that I think speaks to the trust he places in his leaders, and how he challenges them to continue to develop.

In Game 1, Parker hit his amazing shot to put the Spurs up by 4 points with just a few seconds left to play. Miami called timeout, and after the timeout would have a just about impossible task, make up 4 points on one possession. But still, stranger things have happened, and a Spurs mistake, say fouling a Miami shooter attempting a 3-point shot made the unlikely scenario at lease possible. In situations like this, coaches always take a minute during the timeout to implore the players on the team leading by 4 to make sure they play smart, do not foul under any circumstances, and generally stay focused and sharp despite the seemingly high probability that victory was safe.

As I say coaches usually give these kinds of instructions, especially NBA coaches, and especially in the waning moments of what was an incredibly tense and close game, and in the Finals no less, the pinnacle of competition for these teams.  

What did the Spurs and Coach Popovich do and say during that last, tension-filled timeout? 

Catch the video below and see, (Email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).

Did you see that? Tony Parker, the on-court leader of the team, talked with Coach Popovich, made sure they were in alignment on the preferred message/strategy, and then proceeded to walk back the huddle with the other players and run the timeout conversation just like the 'real' coach normally does. 

Did you see all the players immediately lean in to listen to Parker? Did you notice that Parker sat in the chair facing the other players?, (where in 99% of these timeout huddles you will see the coach usually sits).

Did you see any of the players looking around, confused, wondering 'Where is the coach?'

And finally, did you see Popovich sticking his head back in to the huddle at all, to make sure everything was taken care of?

Of course the answer is No to all those questions.

Popovich has done a lot of great things in a legendary coaching career, and from this 45 seconds or so we can see that developing leaders is one of them.

If you want more leaders in any organization, you have to let them lead, like Pop did to Parker in this moment - a big, important moment no less.

You have to let them lead. It's the only way to know if they will do it. And if they can do it.

And this is hard to write coming from a guy who is puling for LeBron.

Have a great week!

The Wisdom of Earl Monroe

Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe, for the benefit of readers who may not be familiar (shame on you), is a basketball legend who had a Hall of Fame career in the NBA with the Baltimore Bullets and New York Knicks in the 1960s and 1970s. Earl's talent was so immense and otherworldly that in addition to his more popular nickname of 'The Pearl' was also known as 'Black Jesus' early in his playing days.

Monroe was a rare player - a creative, almost effortless scorer, (he averaged an astonishing 41 points in his senior year in college), who later in his career became an important and team oriented player on some fantastic teams, including one NBA champion in the 1973 Knicks. 

Earl has a new book out titled Earl The Pearl: My Story, and recently has been doing a number of interviews promoting the book, and the 40th Anniversary of that Knicks championship team of 1973. I caught one of these interviews, on New York sports talk radio, where Earl related a wonderful story of his earliest days learning to play.

Earl got a late start, even for those days, as a basketball player, not taking up the game until he was 14 years old. As you'd expect, in the beginning Earl was not as good or polished as other kids his age who had been playing for a few years. Earl shared how he'd come home from the playground and tell his mother that he wasn't good enough, and that the other kids all mocked and teased him pretty badly.

Earl's mom would have none of it. She told Earl to quit complaining. But in addition to the tough love, she also gave Earl a great approach to addressing his problem. She told him to get a notebook and write down the names of all the other boys that were better players than him and that were putting him down. Once the list was written, she then told Earl to keep working, keep practicing, and not to think about what anyone said.

Then she said, once you improve your game and surpass a player on the list, cross out his name. And keep doing this until all the names are crossed out. Then you can throw away the notebook and know that you have accomplished something you set out to do. And then it would be time for the next goal, and a new list of names in a new notebook.

It was a great story, and you could tell Earl enjoyed sharing it, and the memory of his Mom and how she helped keep him grounded, focused, and determined. 

It's also a really neat approach to achieving a difficult goal. Writing the list in the notebook served dual purposes - short term motivation - 'I need to be better than the next guy', while keeping the longer term goal in view - 'Once all the names are crossed out, I can move on to the next big challenge'.

Very cool and even better to hear a legend like Pearl share the story.

So, who is on your list in your notebook?

On teamwork and a busted out tooth

With the NCAA's March Madness basketball tournament underway I wanted to share a little story from the world of college basketball before I come back to my senses and realize once again that the college game is inferior in every way to 'real' basketball, i.e. the NBA.

A week or so ago, during the West Coast Conference's post-season tournament, the team from Saint Mary's University found itself in a tough game versus conference rival San Diego. Late in the game during a scrum for possession of the ball, San Diego big man Jito Kok managed to separate Saint Mary's forward Brad Waldow from one of his front teeth.

Undeterred, and as you can see in the GIF below, Waldow reacted like most tough competitors would, with the knocked-out tooth in hand he proceeded to head over to the bench to find someone to relieve him of said chiclet so he could continue playing in the still undecided game. But take a look at what happened as Waldow looks to the sideline for some help with the tooth:

Thanks - Business Insider

Did you catch what happened as Waldow approached the bench and looked for someone to take the tooth from him?

First Saint Mary's head coach Randy Bennett leans back in a 'no 'effin way I am taking the tooth' manner, and delegates down the bench to his assistant. The first assistant coach then coolly points to the next assistant down the line. And once that assistant refused to help a brother out, Waldow just tossed the tooth on the floor in order to head back into the contest.

Waldow, the player, the guy out there on the front lines taking shots to the mouth, loosing teeth, bleeding all over the place couldn't get any of the suits on the bench, the organization's 'leaders' to give him an (admittedly gross) hand when he needed it. And all Waldow wanted to do was to continue playing, to keep putting it on the line for the team.

Sure, the natural reaction just about anyone would have in that kind of a circumstance would be similar to the Saint Mary's coaches - I mean, who the heck wants a handful of someone's bloody, busted-out tooth?

But their reaction is also instructive I think, because when their player was in need, no one stepped up to help, they let their first reaction overcome their roles as leaders. They ask players like Waldow to make all kinds of sacrifices in the name of the team. It would not have killed one of them to make a little bit of a sacrifice themselves and help him out when he needed it.

This may be a goofy, insignificant example but I think it serves as a good reminder for any of us that have a leadership position. We ask the people we are leading to give up things all the time. 

What are we prepared to give up for them?

Have a great weekend!

French fried and who takes the heat when you reach for talent

Last night I stayed up way too late for a tired body still recovering from #SHRM12 to watch the NBA 2012 player draft up until the point where my beloved New York Knicks made their one and only selection, with the 48th overall pick.

And in classic Knick fashion, they managed to enrage the small but vocal contingent of fans on hand at the draft, as well as a fair number of active fans in the Twitterverse, with the selection of the mostly unknown Kostas Papanikolaou, from Greece, whose main claim to fame, (aside from being short an 'e' from having every vowel in his last name), was ONE good game in the recent Euroleague finals.  Immediately after the selection of Papanikolaou, and amid the fans' shouts of 'Who the heck is that?', some of the commentators on the draft broadcast talked about the Greek's game, and that he has potential, some good skills, needs some further development, yadda-yadda-yadda. Truth is, hardly anyone knows anything about this player and his game, and whether or not he will become a productive NBA player someday is anyone's guess. The dunk of death

As a Knicks fan, the draft always brings back memories of the 1999 draft, where the Knicks selecting with the 15th overall pick in the event, selected a similarly unknown, (but admittedly with a better body of work to that point), Fredric Weis, a 7'2" center from the basketball hotbed of France. Long story short, Weis never played in the NBA, and despite having a decent career in a few European leagues and representing France is several international competitions, is really only remembered for one thing - being jumped over and dunked upon by NBA star Vince Carter in the 2000 Olympics, in a play known as "Le dunk de la mort'', ('The dunk of death'). 

As I mentioned, Weis never made it to the NBA, and certainly it will take a few years to know if Papanikolaou will meet the same fate. There are just too many variables, and a long history of guys you've never heard of before, (Nowitzki, Ginobili, Sackett), having fantastic careers to completely discount the Greek's chances. 

But here is the interesting thing for the talent evaluator and professional in these kinds of 'reach' scenarios - if Weis would have turned out to be a star, or even a solid, reliable contributor on the NBA level, a ton of the credit would have gone to the person(s) gutsy enough to risk their professional reputation and jobs and pick an unknown guy out of France over a more established player from a US college that the fans and public would have at least known about. The risk, at least a disproportionate amount of selecting an unknown quantity, from a talent pool not known for producing great hires, who you have to explain for half an hour just exactly who he is, is almost all on the talent pro.

If a guy like Weis, and Papanikolaou as well, ends up as a success, most of the accolades and credit will go to them. If they fail, it isn't really their fault, no one expects unknowns from Europe to become big NBA stars, (less so today, certainly that was the case in 1999). 

The safe bet of course, for the NBA talent evaluator, and for you the corporate talent pro, is to make the 'safe' pick, choose the talent from a known source, one that your fans, colleagues, and hiring managers recognize. Make the 'defensible' choice. 

Because if the the blue-chip guy from the Big 10 school that has been on TV 47 time in the last 3 years fails - well then that's the player's fault, not yours.

If you as a talent pro reach for a guy like Weis and he fails?

Well that's your fault. And that's no fun.

Have a Great Weekend!