On Leadership

Yesterday was about as hyperbolic as it gets in the NBA media world. Pundits across the new media sphere took it upon themselves to analyze the Cavs victory over the Bulls on Sunday. Their favorite talking point: head coach David Blatt, who was weighed in the balance and, by many, found wanting. Coach Blatt was called to task for his attempt to call a timeout when he had none (and was saved from the mistake by Tyron Lue), and for his initial final play call: to have LeBron inbound instead of shoot.

Much of the media’s questioning and “analysis” reached a level of groupthink and rabid mob demagoguery that was surprising, even for those of us who regularly and wade into the murky waters of NBA mainstream and social medias.

https://twitter.com/tompestak/status/597816592332881921

doubt it. isn't mike brown still on the books? RT @KalPatel13: If the Cavs don't make the Finals I have to assume Blatt will be fired.

— bomani (@bomani_jones) May 11, 2015

If you're coaching LeBron in 2015 and design a play where he inbounds, in that situation, you don't get today's NBA. https://t.co/FWTxB2Ohqv

— Izzy Gutierrez (@IzGutierrez) May 11, 2015

"Even if the Cavs win the title, David Blatt is done in Cleveland." – @RealJayWilliams pic.twitter.com/8k0tEAweRV

— Keyshawn, JWill & Max (@KeyJayandMax) May 12, 2015

We’re going to mostly ignore the prevailing theory that the “alpha dog” has got to take the last shot in any given situation. I mean, Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson both have game winners this season off of final plays where LeBron was the inbounder. Tom Pestak and Kevin Hetrick thoroughly debunked the media’s trolling on this matter, yesterday.

@tompestak a play that features the team's best passer passing to a quality shooter to shoot? That almost sounds crazy enough to work.

— Kevin Hetrick (@hetrick46) May 11, 2015

Yes, perhaps some in the media are trolling us, and if you’ve listened to Blatt’s press conferences (here and here) since Game 4, it certainly seems as if they’re trolling him. Of course, he gave the media plenty of fodder when he compared himself to a “Fighter Pilot” on Tuesday.

A near-mistake was made and I owned up to it and I own it, a basketball coach makes 150 to 200 critical decisions during the course of a game, something that I think is paralleled only by a fighter pilot. If you do it for 27 years, you’re going to blow one or two. And I blew one. Fortunately it didn’t cost us.

Yes, that line was cringe-worthy, hyperbolic, and loaded with an over-inflated sense of self importance. But, I also detected a smirk just below the surface of his Blatt’s stoic bloviating. We all know there are people whose critical decisions are more frequent and important than an NBA head coach’s during the course of a two or three hour period: military commanders, surgeons, police officers, EMS and Fire responders, soldiers, pretty much anyone driving a car on a highway, and, of course, fighter pilots. I’m quite sure David Blatt knows that. But he can’t resist trolling the media back, no matter how ridiculous it might make him look.

Blatt also didn’t do himself any favors, either, by simplifying the narrative of the final shot in his first press conference, after which he was subsequently contradicted by LeBron James’ and J.R. Smith’s tales that LeBron “scratched it.” On one hand, you can see Blatt taking credit for LeBron’s shot, but on the other, you say he stuck with the old mantra of, “what happens in the locker room (or on the bench) stays there.” From the outside, it looks like a power struggle: two men jockeying for control of the narrative, and their percentage of “credit.” Some part of that is undoubtedly true, but Ty Lue’s restraint, LeBron’s ability to change the play, and David Blatt’s ability to roll with those moments are examples of leadership — not examples of its absence.

I was driving home last night, and guess who was on the radio? Former commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq, retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal. He’s publicizing his new book, Team of Team: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. In an interview on NPR with Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal, McChrystal said some things that struck a chord with me

The speed at which data is being created and changed stays ahead of our ability to harness it. I really believe it’s going to be someone who creates an ecosystem. In that ecosystem, the leader allows a whole host of leaders inside that to interact and be effective, and that’s where the power comes from…

I believe in winning. If centralized decision making was the way to go, that’s what I’d do. In the case of trusting your staff, I trusted my team in a case that, when sometimes things come out wrong, the most important thing is to learn from it quickly, learn from it immediately, keep the confidence of the organization up and move forward and that’s what I think is really important.

Despite McChrystal’s embarrassing exit from the military due to a Rolling Stone exposé in which McChrystal criticized the president, this is a man who knows about leadership. It’s a man who, as Kai Ryssdal pointed out, lets “subordinates do their their jobs and act independently without that leader having direct or controlling oversight.” This is also a man who regularly admits to making mistakes. In this article on learning from failure, McChrystal illustrate’s the key problem with some people’s idea that leaders must be these omnipotent, perfect leaders who can get everything right all the time.

The world is grappling with 21st-century problems (networked terrorism, global supply chain disruptions, viral trends), yet we are still using 20th-century organizational solutions (a command-and-control hierarchy, siloed corporate structures, bureaucratic procedures). In today’s world, it’s not one isolated military unit or one lone corporate division tackling a problem — it’s a task force.

“Game is fun because team is team,” Timofey Mozgov said earlier this season, and no mantra more perfectly encapsulates Blatt’s leadership style. He’s empowered Tyrone Lue, LeBron James, and the rest of his team to be able to make decisions in the moment and on the court, because Blatt can’t control every aspect of every moment. No one in this day and age can. In fact, one of the reasons that many see the Bulls as struggling against the Cavs, is because their offense is so scripted. ESPN’s Michael Wilbon noted this trend earlier this week.

Opposing players throughout the Eastern Conference, even ones who were/are in these playoffs, say they have the Bulls scouted to the T largely because they adhere so strictly to called plays.

“If the Bulls could avoid having all those six-, seven-minute scoring droughts they’d probably be the best team in the league, but they can’t,” one Eastern Conference veteran told me Sunday night. “And we all know every single thing they’re going to run. … Some nights they just execute at a level you can’t stop, but you can’t do that all the time in the playoffs, not against well-coached teams that lock in defensively.”

Can anyone imagine one of Thib’s assistants being empowered to restrain him from making a bad decision? I can’t. Thib’s players aren’t empowered on the court. If they were, perhaps they would have made an adjustment to the worst end-of-game inbounds defense in NBA history.

To Bulls fans complaining about an "extra timeout"

Here's the play you couldn't defend with YOUR "extra timeout". pic.twitter.com/1xGrIMEiND

— SN Ohio (@SN_Ohio) May 11, 2015

David Blatt is not a grognard who needs to control every aspect of this team. And if you look at any video of him from earlier in his career, you can realize that his demeanor and the way he has approached this season has changed. Gone are the days him yelling invectives at people in the huddle.

Many who perceive this coaching adjustment and lack of control as weakness are suffering from a misconception. Most of these media critics castigating Blatt are completely ignorant of what makes an effective leader in the postmodern world. People want to focus on why Blatt almost failed on Sunday, rather than why he succeeded. He succeeded because he and his superiors (David Griffin and Dan Gilbert) have empowered the head coach and his subordinates. I thought a commenter, Excl, summed up the final exchange between Blatt and LeBron best.

It’s Great Coaching 101. If your best player is struggling or you’re worried he might not have the confidence to take that last shot, you call a play that doesn’t involve him. It takes the pressure off of him, and if they don’t have the confidence to take that shot, then they aren’t taking that shot. But you still WANT him to stand up and say, “NO! I want that last shot”. That’s the mindset you want to get out of your best player. You’re empowering him to win the game, rather than just expecting him to make the shot for you.

In a system where players aren’t empowered, like say Baron Davis under Mike Dunleavy, players are dejected and ultimately uninspired. They have no ownership stake in the outcomes of their actions. In the Cavs’ system, Blatt succeeded because he trusts Tyron Lue and LeBron James to take responsibility and action, even when the head coach might be on a questionable course. If the Cavs go on to win this series, it will be because they’ve developed an “ecosystem” where leaders can “interact and be effective,” and because the “lack of control” that many in the media point out is Blatt’s weakness, is actually a strength.

To prove my point, I leave you with secret video we recorded of the Cavs huddle before LeBron’s last second shot.