Part Four Of Six Pitfalls Of NBA Management: Failure To Communicate

This is Part four of a six-part series dedicated to the Six Pitfalls of NBA Management. For Parts one through three, go to www.buytheclippers.com.

Fans of bad NBA teams, perpetually bad teams, will try to tell you their plight is a result of plain, old, bad luck. This six part series explains, I don't agree. Instead, I see six things that perpetually bad franchises do that make them perpetually bad franchises.

And, as luck would have it, there are six things that good franchises don’t do to continue being good franchises. Believe it or not, they are the same six things. On to the second of the six most common pitfalls of NBA franchises:

4) What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate.

On every team there are three main power brokers: the owner, the general manager, and the coach. Now, on any given team, there may be slight variations on this theme, but by and large, these are the three that make the personnel decisions.

Keep in mind that, while each has a specific and unique job description, they should all be trying to achieve the same goal: put the best basketball team on the floor each night that they can. Obviously, this isn’t always the case. In some instances, the coach or GM may just be trying to keep their jobs.

Maybe the GM wants to build for the future while the coach wants to win now. Maybe the owner just enjoys having the team for a tax deduction. Maybe the owner is Donald Sterling. The point is, bad franchises often suffer from the lack of a common vision. When you don’t have your power triumvirate working together, in tandem, you have a problem.

As stated in pitfall number three, it is important that teams correctly diagnose whether they’re rebuilders, up-and-comers, or contenders. This really shouldn’t be too difficult to do, as it consists of little more than looking at your win-loss record for the last couple of seasons. Apparently this type of due diligence is too much to ask of some of these teams.

But even assuming you get this task right, it means nothing if you can’t create a plan to help your team progress to the next step. In other words, if you’re a rebuilder, you should be making personnel decisions that will help you become an up-and-comer. And when you’re an up-and-comer, you should be trying to be a contender. And when you’re a contender, you’re trying to win a championship.

Pretty simple stuff. So how do teams so consistently botch this? 

The answer is they just can’t get on the same page.

The GM may have decided it’s time to rebuild and look to the future, but the owner is adamant about winning now so he can continue to sell season tickets. Coaches are almost never willing to go into rebuilding mode, as that more times than not ends in their looking for a new job.

So, on any given team, you can have an owner who just wants start talent on the team that will sell tickets, while the GM is trading away veteran talent for cap space and draft picks, while the coach leaves the younger players on the bench and plays mediocre veterans to try and grab a playoff spot.

You see how this works? You understand how quickly this can become a dumpster fire?

Equally problematic is when everyone is on the same page regarding the above, but can’t get together to determine what style of play they want to implement.

The perfect and most recent example: the Phoenix Suns. In 2004, they sign Steve Nash and hire Mike D’Antoni to coach the team. They immediately transform into a run and gun, fast breaking hire octane offense, and lead the league in scoring. And they were pretty successful doing it.

If not more the questionable suspension of Amare Stoudemire in game six of the 2007 Western Conference Semi-Finals, the team very likely could have gone on to win the championship. So, what does newly anointed GM Steve Kerr do in 2008? Of course, he adds the perfect complimentary piece to this fast-breaking team: Shaquille O’Neal.

O’Neal was brought in primarily because Kerr believed they needed a big body to get by the Lakers and the Spurs. Behind the scenes, D’Antoni hated the move, as it cost them one of their pivotal players (Shawn Marion) and replaced him with a plodding big man at the end of his career who was the antithesis of the perfect center for an up-tempo team.

The result?

The Suns lost in the first round of the playoffs and D’Antoni was fired…er, he resigned. Shaq played one more season with the Suns, they missed the playoffs entirely, and he was shipped off to Cleveland for cap relief. The team has since restored its run-and-gun style, but will likely never regain its contender status with the current aging team. Well done Steve. You get a brownie-point on my refrigerator.

The lesson?

Get on the same page! There’s only three of you. If you work together instead of in spite of one another, you just might have a successful franchise.

Come back again for Part five.

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