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By Sam Walker / Wall Street Journal
May 4, 2018
Do Coaches Matter? Not in the Way You Think
Five minutes into the first quarter of a routine Monday night game, Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors broke one of the NBA’s most inviolable laws of coaching.
He relinquished his dry-erase board—to a player.
As his team gathered for a timeout huddle, Mr. Kerr stood apart from them; eyes averted, hands jammed in the pockets of his putty-colored suit. As the former NBA coach of the year chewed gum, co-captain Andre Iguodala diagrammed the plays.
The Warriors shot 58% from the field against the Phoenix Suns that night, Feb. 12, with 11 3-pointers, 49 rebounds and 16 blocks. They won by a frightening margin of 46 points.
The game’s most revealing number, however, was zero. That’s how much input the Warriors received from their coach. “I have not reached them for the last month,” Mr. Kerr explained afterward. “They’re tired of my voice.”
Some intrepid professional-sports skeptics think that coaches get too much credit. It’s a fair argument—albeit a lonely one. This surprising gambit by the Warriors, who are currently rampaging through the NBA playoffs, pose an entirely different question: Do coaches matter at all?
Golden State is no ordinary team, of course. They’ve won two NBA titles in three seasons while revolutionizing basketball and displaying an uncanny talent for self-management. Last season, when Mr. Kerr took two extended leaves related to back surgery, the Warriors went 39-4 and 11-0. So I guess the real question is whether coaches matter on elite teams.
The answer is yes, they do—but not in the way you think.
In my book, “The Captain Class,” I studied the most dominant superteams in sports history to determine what they had in common. After ruling out things like raw talent, tactics and money, I started examining their coaches.
The roster looked sufficiently impressive. Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs and the former Barcelona soccer manager Pep Guardiola, among others, are frequently described as geniuses.
The strange thing was how differently people viewed these coaches before their teams made history. All but one of them arrived with a losing record, or limited experience—or none whatsoever. Mr. Kerr fits right in: Before taking over at Golden State, he had never coached before.
If anything, handing the clipboard to a total nobody is the safest bet in sports.
In his excellent new book, “Getting to Us,” Seth Davis explores “the mysterious process” celebrated coaches use to unlock potential. All teams begin as collections of “hims and yous,” he writes. “It is the job of a coach to figure out a way to get to Us.”
These words imply that greatness depends on what a coach does. In youth sports, up through the college ranks, that’s largely true. Learning to win at those levels begets more winning. Experience matters.
When it comes to helping a professional team sustain greatness, however, I’d argue that the reverse is true. The reason unheralded, inexperienced coaches like Mr. Kerr usually fare better is that they’re more inclined to do nothing.
Professional athletes, like veteran employees inside a company, are not impressionable teenagers. They’re fully formed adults. They know what they’re doing. They’re not puppets.
Since we rarely see what happens inside locker rooms, we tend to forget that the players also pick leaders—and we have little insight into how influential they really are.
The only thing the extraordinary teams in my book had in common was a certain type of captain. These men and women had seven distinct traits. They were rarely stars. Most of them performed thankless jobs in the shadows. Individual accolades didn’t concern them—only team outcomes. They weren’t afraid to speak out and could be challenging to manage.
The Warriors have a group of leaders who complement one another. Co-captain Stephen Curry is the rare superstar who doubles as a hardworking, modest and team-oriented role model. Forward Draymond Green provides the emotional fire. “We’ve got a really interesting leadership dynamic,” Mr. Kerr said.
They also have Mr. Iguodala, a captain who fits the profile to a T. “Andre’s our true leader,” Mr. Kerr once told the Mercury News. “Behind the scenes, he’s the guy that everybody really looks to.”
The linchpin for this team is its unusual coach, who learned firsthand about elite NBA dynasties while playing for both the Spurs and Chicago Bulls. The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen has brilliantly chronicled Mr. Kerr’s A-level efforts in analytics, court tactics and teambuilding. His father’s 1984 assassination in Beirut both steeled him and molded his character. He’s a broad and voracious reader.
He’s also unfailingly modest.
“I just have this long and storied coaching career,” he joked to reporters on Thursday. “Oh wait, no. That’s not the case, is it? I’ve only been coaching three and a half years.”
By coming to this team as a thoughtful novice, Mr. Kerr wasn’t burdened by his own reputation and didn’t feel entitled to command. He viewed his relationship with his captains as an equal partnership.
Some people dismissed Mr. Kerr’s night off in February as just another case of a coach pulling his players’ strings. “I love it,” one TV commentator said of the experiment. “It’s like parenting your children.
I think they’re mistaken. What Mr. Kerr understands about coaching an enduringly great team is that it’s not about becoming king--or about making yourself redundant. The trick is to lower your stature just enough to give your player-leaders a genuine say.
For the athletes, more autonomy means more responsibility for the outcome. For a coach, it means spending many days in a stewpot of conflict. The only simple part of the equation is the principle behind it: Sometimes the best way to coach professionals is not to.
“It’s their team,” Mr. Kerr said after the Phoenix game. “I think that’s one of the first things you have to consider as a coach... Our job is to nudge them in the right direction, guide them, but we don’t control them. They determine their own fate.”
—Mr. Walker, a former reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of “The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams” (Random House).
Write to Sam Walker at sam.walker@wsj.com
May 4, 2018
Do Coaches Matter? Not in the Way You Think
Five minutes into the first quarter of a routine Monday night game, Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors broke one of the NBA’s most inviolable laws of coaching.
He relinquished his dry-erase board—to a player.
As his team gathered for a timeout huddle, Mr. Kerr stood apart from them; eyes averted, hands jammed in the pockets of his putty-colored suit. As the former NBA coach of the year chewed gum, co-captain Andre Iguodala diagrammed the plays.
The Warriors shot 58% from the field against the Phoenix Suns that night, Feb. 12, with 11 3-pointers, 49 rebounds and 16 blocks. They won by a frightening margin of 46 points.
The game’s most revealing number, however, was zero. That’s how much input the Warriors received from their coach. “I have not reached them for the last month,” Mr. Kerr explained afterward. “They’re tired of my voice.”
Some intrepid professional-sports skeptics think that coaches get too much credit. It’s a fair argument—albeit a lonely one. This surprising gambit by the Warriors, who are currently rampaging through the NBA playoffs, pose an entirely different question: Do coaches matter at all?
Golden State is no ordinary team, of course. They’ve won two NBA titles in three seasons while revolutionizing basketball and displaying an uncanny talent for self-management. Last season, when Mr. Kerr took two extended leaves related to back surgery, the Warriors went 39-4 and 11-0. So I guess the real question is whether coaches matter on elite teams.
The answer is yes, they do—but not in the way you think.
In my book, “The Captain Class,” I studied the most dominant superteams in sports history to determine what they had in common. After ruling out things like raw talent, tactics and money, I started examining their coaches.
The roster looked sufficiently impressive. Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs and the former Barcelona soccer manager Pep Guardiola, among others, are frequently described as geniuses.
The strange thing was how differently people viewed these coaches before their teams made history. All but one of them arrived with a losing record, or limited experience—or none whatsoever. Mr. Kerr fits right in: Before taking over at Golden State, he had never coached before.
If anything, handing the clipboard to a total nobody is the safest bet in sports.
In his excellent new book, “Getting to Us,” Seth Davis explores “the mysterious process” celebrated coaches use to unlock potential. All teams begin as collections of “hims and yous,” he writes. “It is the job of a coach to figure out a way to get to Us.”
These words imply that greatness depends on what a coach does. In youth sports, up through the college ranks, that’s largely true. Learning to win at those levels begets more winning. Experience matters.
When it comes to helping a professional team sustain greatness, however, I’d argue that the reverse is true. The reason unheralded, inexperienced coaches like Mr. Kerr usually fare better is that they’re more inclined to do nothing.
Professional athletes, like veteran employees inside a company, are not impressionable teenagers. They’re fully formed adults. They know what they’re doing. They’re not puppets.
Since we rarely see what happens inside locker rooms, we tend to forget that the players also pick leaders—and we have little insight into how influential they really are.
The only thing the extraordinary teams in my book had in common was a certain type of captain. These men and women had seven distinct traits. They were rarely stars. Most of them performed thankless jobs in the shadows. Individual accolades didn’t concern them—only team outcomes. They weren’t afraid to speak out and could be challenging to manage.
The Warriors have a group of leaders who complement one another. Co-captain Stephen Curry is the rare superstar who doubles as a hardworking, modest and team-oriented role model. Forward Draymond Green provides the emotional fire. “We’ve got a really interesting leadership dynamic,” Mr. Kerr said.
They also have Mr. Iguodala, a captain who fits the profile to a T. “Andre’s our true leader,” Mr. Kerr once told the Mercury News. “Behind the scenes, he’s the guy that everybody really looks to.”
The linchpin for this team is its unusual coach, who learned firsthand about elite NBA dynasties while playing for both the Spurs and Chicago Bulls. The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen has brilliantly chronicled Mr. Kerr’s A-level efforts in analytics, court tactics and teambuilding. His father’s 1984 assassination in Beirut both steeled him and molded his character. He’s a broad and voracious reader.
He’s also unfailingly modest.
“I just have this long and storied coaching career,” he joked to reporters on Thursday. “Oh wait, no. That’s not the case, is it? I’ve only been coaching three and a half years.”
By coming to this team as a thoughtful novice, Mr. Kerr wasn’t burdened by his own reputation and didn’t feel entitled to command. He viewed his relationship with his captains as an equal partnership.
Some people dismissed Mr. Kerr’s night off in February as just another case of a coach pulling his players’ strings. “I love it,” one TV commentator said of the experiment. “It’s like parenting your children.
I think they’re mistaken. What Mr. Kerr understands about coaching an enduringly great team is that it’s not about becoming king--or about making yourself redundant. The trick is to lower your stature just enough to give your player-leaders a genuine say.
For the athletes, more autonomy means more responsibility for the outcome. For a coach, it means spending many days in a stewpot of conflict. The only simple part of the equation is the principle behind it: Sometimes the best way to coach professionals is not to.
“It’s their team,” Mr. Kerr said after the Phoenix game. “I think that’s one of the first things you have to consider as a coach... Our job is to nudge them in the right direction, guide them, but we don’t control them. They determine their own fate.”
—Mr. Walker, a former reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of “The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams” (Random House).
Write to Sam Walker at sam.walker@wsj.com
