Superstar Michael Jordan Needed an Assist: Top Teamwork Tips from the Championship Bulls
Mike’s dad shook his head. While his older son Larry was a great DIY’er, his youngest son Mike didn’t know the difference between a phillips screwdriver and a pair of pliers. “I guess I was a little short on patience with him and I said get back inside the house with your mom, boy, you’re never going to be anything,” Mike’s father recalls. Mike wanted his father’s love and adoration and was in constant competition with his older brother Larry — to prove he too was worthy.
That competitive drive stuck with Mike throughout his basketball career. He started out as Mike Jordan — a short-ish, skinny player on the University of Chapel Hill team. He became Michael Jordan, the athletic demi-god praised worldwide for his talent on the court. With the help of a growth spurt, a legendary coach and the right mix of teammates, Jordan helped the Bulls win six National Basketball League (NBA) championships.
At the beginning of his career, Jordan thought he could win championships with his talent alone. But despite his best efforts, the superstar couldn’t achieve his goal. Jordan was selected by the Chicago Bulls in the 1984 draft. He joined the lackluster team that was known as “the traveling cocaine circus.” His ever present drive to be the best basketball player kept him out of the circus and in the gym. Jordan won the NBA’s Rookie of the Year Award in 1985. A few years later, he won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award, but the Bulls still hadn’t won a championship together. Then assistant coach Phil Jackson was promoted to head coach in 1989. Instead of setting up plays so only Jordan would shoot, he tried something new.
Jackson implemented a novel offense strategy championed by fellow assistant coach Tex Winter called the triangle offense. There are five positions in basketball: center, power forward, small forward, point guard, and shooting guard. In the triangle offense, three players are situated on one side of the hoop with the other two players on the opposite side. Players pass the ball amongst each other to achieve the shot. This method differs from the normal strategy where a team’s point guard controls the offensive ball most often. Under the triangle strategy, one player doesn’t get all the glory. Instead, everyone has the opportunity to be a playmaker. Jordan would have to pass the ball and share the spotlight.
Coach Jackson successfully convinced Jordan that in order to win championships, which was Jordan’s ultimate goal, he had to bring out the best in his teammates. This is called the “Inclusion Rule,” and it holds true in other team settings as well. Teams thrive when each person is performing at their best in service of the team’s shared goal. Jackson explained that “you need everybody to feel their role has an opportunity to be displayed.” Scottie Pippen, the Bulls’ point forward player, said about the transition from former coach Doug Collins to new coach Phil Jackson:
“Phil took over and just had a different approach. Doug’s approach was more catered to Michael, and Phil’s approach was more catered to the team.”
At first, rising star Jordan didn’t like this new style. “I wasn’t a Phil Jackson fan when he first came in. Because he was coming in to take the ball out of my hands, Doug put the ball in my hands,” said Jordan. But coach Jackson convinced him that because Jordan had the ball too often, it was easier for other teams to defend against the Bulls. Their plays were predictable. In contrast, the triangle offense created the opportunity for all the Bulls players to be creative, to make diverse plays that would confuse their opponents.
Jordan agreed to pass the ball, to give up chasing individual accolades so other teammates could blossom — all in aims to win the championship. Jordan focused on pushing his teammates to excel, to practice in the off-season, to share the mindset that they could win together. Under this new framework, fellow teammate Pippen rose to prominence and turned into Jordan’s right hand man. Pippen became a top player in the NBA and joined the All Star team in 1990. The other Bulls players also evolved, and together, as a stronger, more cohesive team, they finally defeated their arch rivals, the Detroit Pistons in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals.
Their final obstacle to winning the championships that season was the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers had star player Magic Johnson, a five time championship winner. The matchup pitted a winning franchise against an underdog franchise. After the Bulls lost the first game in the series, they regrouped and won the next four games. Jordan stuck to the triangle strategy and passed the ball to point guard John Paxson, who’d earned his trust by making successful three-point shots. Paxson made the winning basket in game five and the Bulls won their first championship.
For the triangle offense to succeed, not only did Jordan need to share the ball, he also needed to have the right supporting players around him. When he passed the ball, Jordan needed to trust that it would make it into the basket. Jackson and team management knew this and found the best players to fulfill each role over the course of four years. Not just each basketball position role, but also the psychological role that would best serve the team. Teams that have all the necessary psychological roles filled have what is called the “It” Factor.
Pippen was the Robin to Jordan’s Batman. “I would never be able to find another support system, another partner in the game of basketball like Scottie Pippen,” says Jordan, “whenever they speak of Michael Jordan, they should speak of Scottie Pippen.” Jordan recognizes that he only won his six career championships because of Pippen. Pippen and Jordan each filled a significant psychological role on the team. Jordan pushed players to excel in an aggressive, exacting manner. While Pippen took on a gentler attitude to build team cohesion. Fellow teammate Steve Kerr said “[Michael] was the disciplinarian, the father figure, and Scottie looked after the other guys. It was a great marriage.” When Pippen left the team for a few months in the 1997 season, the Bulls immediately started losing games. “We’re not playing with much continuity and much rhythm, and that’s something that Scottie really provides for us,” explained Kerr at the time of Pippen’s brief absence. With Pippen’s return, the Bulls won their sixth championship.
After the Bulls’ first three-peat championship wins, Jordan had a brief stint as a baseball player, then returned to the court. Another three-peat championship winning streak followed. Jordan, Pippen and coach Jackson are all in the NBA Hall of Fame.
The 1990s Bulls created a championship winning team by applying The Inclusion Rule and the “It” Factor. Each player contributed their full talents and the team had the right mix of psychological roles. Superstar status was not enough to carry the team to victory — everyone needed to excel and support each other to achieve success.
Parallels between the basketball court and the office boardroom make lessons learned on both sides fruitful grounds for research. The business world is increasingly aware that they can learn from the robust data collection and analysis work that goes on in the sports world. At the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the sports and business worlds unite to learn best practices from each other. Former Bulls’ coach Jackson spoke at the 2014 conference and said “the next step in analytics will be how to build [team] chemistry.”
Businesses are following the sports’ world’s lead by looking at how an individual impacts the team as a whole. If someone doesn’t have the best individual performance metrics, yet the team still performs better when they are there, then the person is valuable for team chemistry. Only when Jordan’s talent was combined with supporting players’ efforts did the Bulls go to six championship ring ceremonies. He couldn’t succeed alone. Before the last game of their final championship win, the Bulls put their hands into the center of the huddle. Jordan called out “Everybody got their hand in? Hand in means all for one and one for all!”
Do you think your team would perform better if everyone brought their talents in service of the team’s goals? How do you bring out the best in your teammates and how do they bring out the best in you?
Let us know in the comments.
