Every player has had it, the five-second hero fantasy of taking the buzzer-beating shot to win the game. Growing up, WNBA and NBA players have practiced it hundreds of thousands of times on slanted driveways, in poorly lit gyms, and in bedrooms with balled-up paper and trash cans for baskets. Each has scripted and narrated the Hollywood moment that would elevate them to legendary status:
The ball comes. The clock starts. The seconds tick. The pressure builds. Your team watches. Your coach stares. Your bench stands. Your fans wait. The shot spins. The bulbs flash. The net rips. The crowd cheers. FADE TO BLACK.
The reality is that heart-pounding victories are won in such moments. So are hope-baited seasons and history-making champions. Question: how many players have indulged and practiced that hero fantasy, having made the game-winning assist, the game-winning steal, the game-winning rebound or the game-winning blocked shot? Add the game-winning shot to that list, and you have five actions that can win a game. There are five players on the court. Any one of them can be the hero. Any one of them can do something game-winning.
That way of thinking is team-factored not star-fixated. There will always be one player, who stands out more than others, as being most critical to a team’s success. But restricting the possibility of victory to the feats of that one player, reduces by four players the maximum opportunity to win. Case in point:
In 1986, Michael Jordan scored 63 points against the Boston Celtics, in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference playoff, breaking Elgin Baylor’s playoff record against Boston of 61 points, set in 1962. After the game, Larry Bird was interviewed about Jordan’s performance. He said:
“I think he’s God disguised as Michael Jordan.
He is the most awesome player in the NBA.”
That night of his record-breaking performance, Jordan and his Chicago Bulls lost in double-overtime, to a Celtic team that prevailed with five eventual Hall of Fame inductees. Boston proved something that game that Jordan later learned, in order to win his six championship titles: one man will never beat five.
Championship teams know this. Solidarity is their constant mindset. It is never sacrificed for, or sidetracked by an individual’s pursuit of glory. It is never abandoned or surrendered by the collective will of the team. The attitude and approach is five for five, all the time, regardless of which five take the court. This has been a proven and unchanged model for success, from the time of Bill Russell to the time of Diana Taurasi.
However, professional basketball has changed dramatically through the years. Women now dunk. Seven-footers shoot three-pointers. Power forwards play point guard. Public service announcements, featuring NBA and WNBA players, address homophobia and domestic violence. Spotting up on the perimeter has replaced cutting through the lane, when defenders leave to double team. Small ball has ended the era of tall ball domination. And the best free-throw shooter in the game isn’t a man. Conventional player roles, marketing and style of play are outdated by today’s game.
What seems to have changed very little, though, is the dated notion of what a team “leader” is and what “leadership” means. These words are often mentioned during interviews with players and coaches, by announcers and commentators while broadcasting of games, and by sports reporters, analysts and talk show personalities on sports shows. What is seldom if ever heard are their meanings.
Traditional concepts, images and expectations of a team leader are of a vocal taskmaster driving teammates to play harder, smarter and better. Since score is kept and scoring determines the outcome of the game, the leader is most often thought to be the dominant scorer on the team. This person is expected to accept and assume the leadership role, and lay claim to the team’s identity by strength and force of personality. This is endorsed by use of the terms “his team” and “her team”.
A strong and forceful personality can actually be problematic for a team, if the individual is ego-driven and self-absorbed rather than goal-driven and team-focused. The first views teammates as props, for a “me” production. This is about imposing your personality as a dictate, and can have an alienating affect on a locker room. The latter views teammates as an ensemble cast, for a “we” production. This is about utilizing your personality as a resource, and can create a unifying culture in a locker room.
Leadership is behavior, and behavior is governed by a mindset --- a way of thinking. Mindset is mentality, and mentality is reality. As you think it, you will act it and your actions determine the outcome of what you do, your reality. How you think and what you think also directs both the path and pace of your success.
To direct means to guide, which means leadership is guidance, and a leader is one who provides it. Therefore, as a leader, your most important function is to set, steer and sustain the mentality of the team with same-page reality. To do this, you must establish the one thing all championship teams have; the one thing that makes every great leader great; the one thing that commits every player, all the time to a game-winning mentality:
Trust - an unshakable, unbreakable confidence in the support of, reliance upon and accountability to others.
Trust must not only be the challenge of the leader to earn. It must also be the challenge of everyone to earn and give in return. To be the guiding behavior of the team, trust must be an all in, all the time commitment from every player and every coach. And for it to be present in the last five seconds of the game, it must be present in the first five seconds of the locker room.
Every player can benefit from leadership development, and every team can benefit from the leadership development of its players. Doing so would elevate the level of team cohesion demonstrated by championship teams. Why? Leadership development is demanding personal development. The more command of self a player has, the more commitment of self a player can make to the team, and the more application of self a player can make to the shared goal of ultimate achievement.
Not every player and not every team’s star has the personality, to be the central figure for imprinting the team’s mentality. Player development needs to assess which player(s) has the personality suitable for a key leadership role, and work to enhance that individual(s) accordingly. Doing so will increase the likelihood of team success, by decreasing the likelihood of a player’s inadvertent failure to take on that role. For example, Draymond Green is not the dominant scorer on the Golden State Warriors. Neither is he considered the premiere-marquee headliner. That spotlight shines mainly on Stephen Curry, and more recently on Kevin Durant with his MVP Finals performance. But Green is unquestionably the most prominent determiner of the team’s intensity, focus and shared will to win. His presence has helped to lead the Warriors to the apex of the league.
Player development can also take a less centralized and more collective perspective about leadership development. Each player has talents and attributes that can be recognized as a standard to excel to (rebounding, free-throw shooting, perimeter defense, passing into the post, conflict resolution, transition defense, court awareness, camaraderie, etc.). Each player can lead the others in the development of their talent and attribute deficiencies, to move everyone closer to a greater level of excellence across the board. The elevation and evolution of the team’s collective abilities adds to its formidability. From that collective perspective, each player can resolve to contribute to overcoming the team’s most hindering deficiencies, to reduce or eliminate any weaknesses vulnerable to any opponent. This insures that each player contributes to and takes responsibility for the guiding mentality of the team, and trust that each player wearing the same uniform will and is doing the same. Trust wins.
The most crucial moments at the end of a quarter, half, game or season can be won or lost before the start of either. What will determine that outcome, more than anything else, will be the mentality that creates the reality, when the final buzzer sounds. One adage to remember underscores this with perfect sensibility:
There are two types of people in the world: those who think they can and those who think they cannot --- and they’re both right.
Mentality is reality, no matter which seconds you count. Leadership mentality counts when those seconds matter most.