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There's No "I" in "Coach," Either

By Malcolm GladwellPosted Monday, Aug. 7, 2000, at 9:30 PM ET

The Philadelphia 76ers recently made an abortive attempt to trade Allen Iverson. Under the terms of a complicated 10-player, three-team deal, they would have given up Toni Kukoc, Matt Geiger, and Iverson and received, in return, Glen Rice, Jerome Williams, and Eddie Jones. The deal, of course, never happened. Jones went to the Miami Heat instead. And it's a good thing too, because for Philadelphia it would have been a terrible trade. In exchange for one of the most exciting players in the game and Kukoc, a superb playmaker, they would have gotten an all-star (Jones), a journeyman (Williams), and an aging gunner (Rice), who, by all accounts, studied defense at the George Gervin Institute of Waving Goodbye. But the team made an argument for the deal that is worth exploring in some detail. Iverson, it seems, wasn't getting along with the Sixers' coach, Larry Brown, and in the case of an irreconcilable conflict between the star and the coach, the Sixers maintained that the coach had to win. This, in the world of pro sports, is what passes for the moral high ground. Philadelphia would not be pushed around by a petulant, pampered star. One player could not be allowed to damage the integrity of the franchise. There is no "I" in team—etc., etc., etc. Were the Sixers right?

Let's start by asking a general question: Is a coach ever worth more to a basketball team than a star player is worth? In cases where the coach is mediocre, the answer is easy. Gregg Popovich is not worth more to the Spurs than Tim Duncan is. Even in the case of great coaches, any comparison usually ends up on the side of the player. Who was worth more in Chicago—Phil Jackson or Michael Jordan? Clearly Jordan, because without Jordan there is no myth of Jackson the great coach. Jackson in Los Angeles is a tougher call, but to say that Jackson was the last piece of the championship puzzle for the Lakers is not to say that he was the most important piece. In football, by contrast, it clearly is the case that a great coach is worth more than even the greatest player. Bill Parcells was more important to the Giants than Lawrence Taylor was. So too for Joe Gibbs. He won three Super Bowls with three different but equally uninspiring quarterbacks. (First Joe Theismann; then Doug Williams, of whom it was once said, legitimately, that he was the only man who could overthrow the ayatollah; and finally Mark Rypien, who was as mobile as a goal post.) But basketball is not football. Great football coaches create winning cultures and systems. Great basketball coaches call plays that no one follows.

There is a more important issue here, though, and that is what it means to be a great coach. Did the Bulls under Jackson or the Lakers under Riley ever present their organizations with the Larry Brown problem? No. And why? Because one of the main things that made Jackson and Riley great is that they didn't alienate their best players. The Giants never had to choose between Parcells and Taylor, because Parcells made sure he got along with Taylor. Lesser coaches don't understand this, because they are caught up in the idea that a coach is someone who imposes his personality and his standards on his players. Nothing could be further from the truth. In When Pride Still Mattered, his superb biography of Vince Lombardi, David Maraniss points out how extraordinarily indulgent Lombardi was of his star players. Contrary to his reputation, Lombardi was adept at understanding and serving each player's idiosyncratic needs. Paul Hornung was a legendary carouser who at one point was suspended from the league for gambling. Lombardi, the so-called disciplinarian, welcomed him back with open arms. Maraniss writes of Lombardi,

He knew that his quarterbacks were not to be yelled at: Bart took it as an affront to his leadership and Zeke was too nervous. Hornung could handle anything, absorbed all of the Old Man's heat and kept going. Marv Fleming, the new tight end, was hugely talented, but Lombardi thought he required constant riding to play at his best. Taylor played better when he was mad at his coach, if not the world. Willie Davis was above reproach. ... Skoronski was sensitive to criticism and best left alone. ... Max McGee, the seemingly carefree receiver who was notorious for challenging Lombardi's curfews, required special treatment.

This is what great coaches do. They accommodate their talent. Nothing could be further from the coaching style of Larry Brown. He chased off Tim Thomas because he didn't like Thomas' attitude. He chased away Larry Hughes because he didn't get along with him either. And now he's feuding with Iverson. Lesson No. 1: Iverson is worth a dozen Larry Browns. Lesson No. 2: If Brown were the kind of coach worth fighting for, you'd never have to fight for him.

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Malcolm Gladwell is a writer with The New Yorker magazine and the author of The Tipping Point. An archive of his work is available at gladwell.com.
Photograph of Dennis Rodman on Slate's Table of Contents by Andrew Wallace/Reuters.
COMMENTS

Reader Response from The Fray:


Gladwell is a wonderful writer, but he ignores these facts:

1)The Sixers had Iverson before they had Brown, and they were awful.

2) The Sixers hired Brown, and the team instantly improved. He brought in players that fit his system. He got the guys he wanted by trading overrated young scorers like Stackhouse, Thomas, and Hughes for underrated players like Ratliff, McKie, Ty Hill, and Toni Kukoc. Gladwell trumpets Kukoc early in the essay, and then he chides Brown for trading Hughes to get him. Which is it? The team won over 75% of its games after trading Hughes. They went six games against the eastern conference champion Pacers, a team that Larry Brown himself built.

3) Despite Riley's "greatness," it is Brown's teams that have gotten farther in the playoffs the last two years. Allen is a big part of that, but so is Larry. No one in Philadelphia wants them to divorce, but it's simplistic to blame Brown, one of the game's greatest coaches.

--Andrew W.Cohen

(To reply, click here.)


You mention Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan as working well together. From what I understand of Jordan, getting along with him wasn't hard so long as he knew that what the coach wanted to do was improving the team. A better illustration of why Phil Jackson is a great coach is his relationship with Dennis Rodman. Jackson somehow managed to get three extremely productive seasons from the Worm, sometimes while pretty severely injured. No coach since has gotten more than a few good games out of him. Again, somehow Jackson was able to check Rodman so his off-court behavior didn't detract from is on-court performance. Not so with Rodman's subsequent stints in LA and Dallas.

Great article. It's too bad sports is often ignored or downplayed as a metaphor of life. I believe coaches are of slightly greater than average intelligence with amazing drive, stamina, and awareness. I yearn for the day when business executives, who are much smarter and better trained, put forth the same effort and adaptability as the average successful coach.

--Tamon Honda

(To reply, click here.)


Simple answer to Gladwell's question: it depends on the specific coach and on the specific player. He mentions Popovich and Duncan, a case in which the choice is obvious. But Brown is a better coach than Pop, and Iverson is a worse player than Duncan. Gladwell doesn't consider Iverson's game in coming to his final estimation of relative value. With his low shooting percentages and poor practice habits, the Sixers decided Iverson was more trouble than he's worth. And their inability to trade him suggests that other GMs agreed. Incidentally, is there a single champion in modern NBA history in which its star player skipped practices?

--B-Ball Fan

(To reply, click here.)

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