smart article from 48MoH: How the Mighty Fall

[Samr]

Empires fall. The history books are littered with them. The Greeks. The Romans. Spain. Britain. Maybe someday even America. The same holds true for nearly every major power that’s ever risen to the top, be it nation, corporation, or basketball team.

Especially basketball teams. After all, unlike nations or corporations, basketball teams rely solely on physical assets (players) whose value depreciates relatively quickly. But does it have to be this way? If given the proper warning signs can a team stave off decline?



Read more: http://www.48minutesofhell.com/2010/08/12/how-the-mighty-fall-signs-of-decline-applied-to-the-nba/#ixzz0wUU6bR2d

As to how this applies to the Spurs, what do you think? They are obviously trying to stave off decline, but what "stage" do you think they're in?

As to how this applies to their rivals, where do you think they are too?

[Bender]

good read, and yes I do feel smarter after reading it.

[Drachen]

I would actually like to pick up that book. Great read.

[tp2021]

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

When your leader and superstar is Tim Duncan, rest assured that no hubris is involved.

[Samr]

I would actually like to pick up that book. Great read.

Read Good to Great and Built to Last, first. Otherwise don't bother, at least if you want to get the most out of that one. Both of those serve as a primer on Jim Collins and great companies, and at this point in his career Collins is just building or going on tangents to the theories/lessons taught in the first two books.

[Drachen]

Read Good to Great and Built to Last, first. Otherwise don't bother, at least if you want to get the most out of that one. Both of those serve as a primer on Jim Collins and great companies, and at this point in his career Collins is just building or going on tangents to the theories/lessons taught in the first two books.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[Mark in Austin]

I get what they are trying to do here, but to me the comparison between the Spurs, Suns, and Cavs is fundamentally flawed. PHX, NO, and Cleveland were never championship teams. They were trying to get to the point where they were the dominant team. (In the Collins comparison, trying to go from Good to Great. They never made it to the top.) Assuming the same type of motivation in terms of risk assessment, personel decisions, etc to each front office doesn't really make much sense. (SA wanted to stay on top, the rest were trying like crazy to get there.)

I think the more appropriate (and interesting) comparison would be the Lakers. While the Spurs have been more consistent over the past 10 years or so, LA has had higher highs (two sets of back to back champions), but also lower lows (several years where they were clearly out of contention and even missed the playoffs once).

An in-depth comparison of the personnel and strategic decisions of each team since the lockout (the period where LA and SA are the only teams with multiple rings) as they slide up and down the 5 step scale during this period would be more revealing about the similarities and differences of each team's approach.

[GSH]

Good read. Silly to extend it to professional sports. Nations and companies don't have to contend with a draft, free-agency, or a salary cap. The NBA has artificial constraints to try and create a measure of parity around the league. It's not hubris, it's an intentional part of the design of the league.

[Samr]

Good read. Silly to extend it to professional sports. Nations and companies don't have to contend with a draft, free-agency, or a salary cap. The NBA has artificial constraints to try and create a measure of parity around the league. It's not hubris, it's an intentional part of the design of the league.


No, the NBA IS a business. That's exactly the point. It's not some charity entertainment industry, bringing good will to cities while herniating money for a tax write-off. If NBA teams didn't turn a buck (and right now, a lot of them aren't), they wouldn't play, and thusly no league.

Let's make the analogy to say that running a team is like managing a stock portfolio (and let's ignore the main difference being that a stock portfolio makes money when stocks are sold off ideally at their peak value, whereas an NBA team makes money through ticket and merchandise sales):

The NBA players are your individual stocks, your portfolio manager is your GM, and the owner of the team is the person who hires the portfolio manager. Just like the NBA has artificial constraints to -- in theory -- keep it even (such as the draft), the stock market is also governed by a set of rules to help ensure fairness, in theory (for example, insider trading is punishable by law). But free agency and salary caps are most applicable to only those owners in a smaller market or with shallower pockets; the owner of the Knicks can afford to go above the salary cap (and pay a luxury tax) because he's ridiculously rich and can leverage his assets -- the Knicks -- because of the highly-marketable New York environment. If Dolan was a business man playing the stock market in our analogy, he might buy a ton of google stocks, pay out the butt for it, but know that they are still a safe bet to increase.

The NBA IS a business, and if a team starts losing, then merchandise doesn't sell, seats in the arena aren't filled, and fans are less willing to open their pocket books for a few shares of Enron/Nets. The business then fails. And the owners, portfolio managers, and even players who do not fully understand this are ultimately like the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos; their stock drops, and ultimately, they disappear.

This is why the Spurs have continued to stay steady. Because they DO understand this. Pop and RC, as the joint portfolio manager, are keenly aware of this. And Peter Holt has just deep enough pockets to build a strong portfolio.

[toki9]

[B]When your leader and superstar is Tim Duncan, rest assured that no hubris is involved.

Ironically, the same can't be said of that statement...