Not Found

So the New York Knicks are (not surprisingly) a huge mess after the return of Carmelo Anthony and the addition of J.R. Smith (the real addition being his actually getting in normal shape). Mike D’Antoni just resigned. And they obviously have chemistry issues that go far beyond the system of the head coach. The pieces of their team just haven’t fit. At least, all the pieces of the team together, for they have played better when they have had less pieces.

Owen Strachan offered some great insights as to why.

This article over at ESPN also gives more insight into what is going on behind the scenes.

So what’s the lesson in all of this? There are many. Here are a few big ones that stand out to me and that I have had to deal with head on myself throughout the years.

1) Oftentimes in basketball, less is more and more is less.

More talent doesn’t often lead to more success. Oftentimes less talent prevails and too much talent causes more problems than you can imagine. A few key pieces of high level talent are absolutely necessary. But beyond that, chemistry, humility and the joy of playing a role are huge keys. If you have too many guys who have to play the way they want to play, well, who is going to win? Answer: No one.

Aren’t the Knicks obvious evidence of this?

2) The ability to bring out the best in each other is not easy to come by, no matter how genuinely individuals want to do it.

Sometimes there just isn’t a good mix. The players may genuinely want to make it work, but no matter what they might do, it just won’t work. Look at the Knicks. Are they full of bad guys? I don’t think so. Do they all want to win? I believe so. But you have players at different stages in their career whose strengths just don’t seem to be able to fit well together. Is it their fault? Maybe to some degree, but ultimately, I don’t think so.

I mean, I was saying this stuff the moment they got rid of all those good players in order to get Carmelo. It just didn’t make sense. If you have ever been a part of a great team (one that fit well together), you could see this coming from a million miles away. New York traded away some great ‘chemistry’ pieces in order to get one great star who has spent the last several years playing a lot of one-on-one ball. And they thought Carmelo was going to fit into D’Antoni’s game? Come on.

Again, I don’t think Carmelo is just out to get his. I am sure he genuinely wants to win. And to a certain degree, I believe he is willing to make some sacrifices. But asking a great player like himself to sacrifice what he does best doesn’t make sense…for the team or for him.

When it comes to the make-up of a good team, I think C.S. Lewis’ words about friendship are very applicable here.

Reflecting on the loss of his good friend Charles Williams he wrote,

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [J.R. Tolkien’s] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself ‘ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.

And so it is for a great team. The individual players bring out the best in each other. They are more together than they can be apart. Their personalities and styles of play, strengths and weakness, complement each other. And they like it that way and appreciate each other for each player’s unique contributions. The best teams understand this instinctively. The worst may understand it, but just may not be able to apply it the way they would like.

There is certainly more that I could say, but that is enough for today. Maybe I will offer a few more points tomorrow, because the Knicks really do serve as a great object lesson for what does or doesn’t make for a great team.

I am on the road this week and enjoying a classic basketball book entitled The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam. It really is one of the all-time greatest books on basketball, in particular, professional basketball. He focuses the book around the Portland Blazers’ teams of the late 1970s, but really uses those teams to describe the entire professional basketball world in general. It really is a great read.

Anyhow, at various points in the book he focuses on Bill Walton, who, in the few professional years he was healthy, was probably the best all-around center in the league. Regarding Walton’s love for good competition, he writes,

He loved competing. The more intense the competition the better. Graduating from UCLA, he turned down an offer from the ABA worth perhaps twice as much as he received from Portland, because he thought the quality of its play inadequate. In his early years at Portland, unhappy with the city, the rain, his teammates, the league, perhaps even himself, he seriously considered for a time leaving the professional game, starting his own team and playing in a high-level semipro circuit. But that meant that he would not play against the best, and that was unthinkable. He loved, unlike most professional basketball players, playing on the road, because he was able to focus his entire day on basketball, with fewer distractions. In addition he like the theater of the road game, the enemy arena, the way the opposing crowd focused all of its emotions and hostility on him –their antagonism made his adrenaline flow. His favorite games were the close games with great rivals on the road, the noise of the opposing crowd rising in crescendo as the game progressed and then (in his own words) the silence at the very end. The silence was his own personal reward. He hated playing against second-rate teams and inferior centers and it was hard to motivate him on these occasions; his performances were almost uniformly subpar.

That is so well said and, more importantly, a wonderful example of why in sports, love for your neighbor demands that you give him your best effort within the rules. If we are viewing competition in the right way, we will welcome the opportunity to play against the best, or at least someone better than us. For if we want to really grow and improve and develop the gifts the Lord has given us, we need someone to help us along the way. The good competitor does just that.