Highly recommend watching “The Last Dance” on Netflix (series of 10 episodes, about 50 min each). It tells the story of Chicago Bulls from the late 80’s to the late 90’s through a wide range of interviews and a lot of never seen before footage. Under coach Doug Collins the Bulls kept making the playoffs, but the team didn’t win an NBA championship. Their tactic was mostly focused on quickly giving the ball to Michael Jordan and trusting him to make it happen. This worked well for a while and Jordan’s stats was incredibly high. However, very soon most teams, especially Detroit Pistons, figured out that the easiest way to win towards the Bulls was to have 2-3 people cover and bully Jordan.
The Bulls’ manager Jerry Krause fired Doug and replaced him with Phil Jackson who then (along with an assistant coach) came up with a different set of tactics in which they would build a team of great players who elevated each other and won by not having a single point of success (Jordan). They also came up with a triangle play that most often involved Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, but in theory could involve any of the members of the team. This triangle formation also allowed for 33 different ways to complete an offense play, which made it very challenging for the opposing team to read them. This new approach allowed the Bulls to win the NBA championship in 1991, 1992 and 1993, as well as in 1996, 1997, and 1998.
There are several of valuable lessons on how to act as a team, elevate each other, build experts/superstars in their distinct area and play on each others strengths in order to win that easily translates into business, other sports and areas of life. Enjoy!
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