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- Mar 13, 2004
I'll see if I can break this down....
I just started reading Bill Simmons' book titled "The Book of Basketball." I'm only about 60 pages into it, but the second chapter is called "The Secret." This is about the secret to NBA success as told by...(don't laugh) Isiah Thomas. The entire chapter outlined how teams should be structured in order to win a NBA championship. It was extremely ironic to hear these nuggets of wisdom coming from Isiah on the heels of his many failures as a NBA exec. Why he couldn't follow his own blueprint, is beyond me....
anyways..."the secret of basketball is that it's not about basketball." That's it. When broken down, it ties into Pat Riley's "Disease of More" theory:
I just started reading Bill Simmons' book titled "The Book of Basketball." I'm only about 60 pages into it, but the second chapter is called "The Secret." This is about the secret to NBA success as told by...(don't laugh) Isiah Thomas. The entire chapter outlined how teams should be structured in order to win a NBA championship. It was extremely ironic to hear these nuggets of wisdom coming from Isiah on the heels of his many failures as a NBA exec. Why he couldn't follow his own blueprint, is beyond me....
anyways..."the secret of basketball is that it's not about basketball." That's it. When broken down, it ties into Pat Riley's "Disease of More" theory:
A team wins it one year and the next year every player wants more minutes, more money, more shots. And it kills them. Our team has been up at a championship level 4 years now. We could have easily self destructed. So I read what Riley was saying, and I learned... But its hard not to be selfish. The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money. Well, you gotta fight that, find a way around it...
What Riley said, really sheds light on why it's so difficult for teams to repeat as champions etc....there are so many other factors that go into a team's success that has ZERO to do with what's actually being done on the court.
It's all about cohesion....both on and off the court. If you have one player who doesn't buy in to what is trying to be accomplished, your whole goal of winning may be jeopardized. For example, Isiah went into detail about how on the Bad Boy teams, Adrian Dantley was traded mid-season for Mark Aguirre. Dantley was the more talented of the two, but he was causing major problems with the chemistry of the team. For example, Chuck Daly needed Dantley to sacrifice minutes, and therefore stats, to make room for Dennis Rodman to play a bigger role on the Pistons. Dantley refused to accommodate the team and was causing a ton of problems for the coaching staff.
Seeing the problems with Dantley really opened Isiah's eyes....he saw the successes of teams like the Celtics and Lakers and figured out why things worked out for them.
To quote Isiah:
"Those teams were all loaded with talented players, but thats not why they won. They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and valued winning over everything else... They won so long as everyone remained on the same page. "
When Dantley was shipped out, Isiah had this to say about the Pistons finally clicking...
... Lots of times, you cant tell who the best player in the game was. 'Cause everybody did something good. Thats what makes us so good. The other team has to worry about stopping eight or nine people instead of two or three. Its the only way to win. The only way to win. Thats the way the game was invented. But theres more to it then that. You also got to create an environment that wont accept losing.
At the end of the day it's all about chemistry....The 2008 Celtics figured it out....Simmons said that you had everyone buy in to the whole "team" aspect. Pierce and Ray Allen deferred to KG...KG was selfless as usual...the starters were supportive of EVERYONE on the bench (and vice versa)....it's buying into a formula that gets great results etc. It's the Spurs mantra....it's why Jordan and the Bulls were able to be so dominant. It goes on and on.
This is so hard to paraphrase because there is just so much more that goes into it. It's a concept that's so simple, but yet it's so hard in today's NBA to have athletes sacrifice their numbers etc for the greater good of the team. Guys @*%* and moaning about things behind the scenes....all of these things (if they happen) create a ton of turmoil that can ultimately lead to failures on the court.
I look at a team like the Thunder and can't help but to think that they understand what it takes to eventually become a champion. No...it may not be this year, or next, but it's coming soon. It was an interesting read, and yet so obvious....but I never really thought about it until I picked this book up.
Really good stuff.