Too Many Sports Stories: On Leadership
This is a new section on my Substack that isn't about veterinary medicine or artificial intelligence, but rather a collection of things that I've learned from sports.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been a sports fan. I’ve been around some form of sports or exercise or fitness or something for most of my life and I am frequently reminded of things that I learned from sports that had nothing to do with the games.
This is a series I won’t publish by email, so subscribers will only be notified for this first one. After this, you’ll have to opt-in. I decided to do it this way because this mostly a Substack about veterinary medicine and artificial intelligence and the sports stories are a bit of an indulgence on my part. Further, the pieces won’t be as long or as thoroughly researched as the vet med or AI stuff, and I expect they’ll tend to be shorter essays.
On Leadership
I've come to appreciate how much of success, especially in leadership, is situational, although it is often glossed over in the highlight-reel review of things. And acknowledging circumstances is valuable not only to the successful individual or leader, but also to those who would learn from that person. Without turning this into a rant against management and evaluation styles that rely on toxic positivity, I’ll say this: I think there’s often more value in the clean lens than the rose-colored glasses.
In thinking about this, I recall interviews with the great basketball coach Gregg Popovich, who has led his San Antonio Spurs to five NBA championships. “Pop” is tied for third all-time for championships and is the all-time leader in wins as a head coach. The only reason he’s not a Hall of Famer is that he’s still coaching at 75 years old and a person needs to be retired to be elected to the Hall.
Popovich is famously terse. In this clip, the reporter tells Popovich that the Philadelphia 76ers’ then-head coach Brett Brown, an assistant with the Spurs from 2007 to 2013, called Popovich “the greatest head coach the NBA has ever seen.” Pop scoffs, drily joking, “he’s so full of shit. That’s why I got rid of him: kiss ass.” The reporters, familiar with the coach’s style of humor, enjoy the joke.
There’s another an interview that stuck with me, more than a decade later. Popovich was asked about his innovation. More accurately, he was about to be asked, but he interrupted the interviewer’s question.
"Oh, hell, I don't know anything about innovation," he said, "Here is my innovation: I drafted Tim Duncan. Okay? End of story."
Duncan, a former first overall pick selected in Pop's second season as head coach, is a 15-time All-Star, has a litany of other accolades shown below, and frequently ranked as one of the top five, ten, or 20 players of all time.
Hard to argue against having an all-time great seven-foot power forward providing more than 100 playoff triple doubles probably helped the team win games and titles. But I don’t think any reasonable person believes that just having such a player on the team is all it takes. You need that, and you need good coaching. In the highest levels of competition, you probably need great coaching.
While Gregg Popovich’s response to this and other questions may come across as self-deprecating, there’s a deeper lesson in his humility. By highlighting an individual, Popovich deftly reveals an essential truth about leadership: it’s not just about the individual. The best leaders are those who recognize and leverage the strengths of those around them, and you can’t do that if you’re not accurate and candid about the role of things beyond our control like luck, circumstances, or timing.
This honesty, both with oneself and with others, is crucial. The ability to assess one’s role in the broader context, to understand what factors contributed to success, to disabuse ourselves of the “Great Man” theory of leadership, and to give credit where it’s due are marks of genuine self-awareness. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that success is the result of individual brilliance, but the reality is far more nuanced.
Leaders who are open about their limitations, who recognize the value of their team, and who understand and acknowledge the situational factors that affect outcomes are better equipped to lead effectively. If for no other reason than they are actively considering a more accurate and complete picture of situations. Gregg Popovich’s frankness about his alleged “innovation” is a reminder of the value of clear thinking.
It also highlights the importance for those that manage leaders of evaluating more than merely results. The aforementioned Brett Brown was fired by Philadelphia after three seasons where his team won 61.6% of their games. Popovich immediately rehired Brown as an assistant coach to the Spurs. In Popovich’s first season as head coach, the Spurs went 17-47. Leading leaders takes more than an evaluation of statistics and a quick trigger finger.
Leadership is as much about self-awareness and honesty as it is about strategy and vision. I’d argue that effective strategy and vision only occur by accident in the absence of self-awareness and honesty. And perhaps that’s why, when reflecting on his coaching, Popovich does not to focus on his own genius but on the talent and circumstances that helped shape the outcomes.
He wouldn’t admit it though, and he’d probably call me names for saying so.