THE LEAFLET

June 12 2025

basketball anecdotes: coaching to talent, laying rails for growth, interview questions to ask

BASKETBALL ANECDOTE, 1: COACHING TO YOUR TALENT

Rick Carlisle, coach of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, is getting flowers a bunch these days. His team has had unexpected success for two seasons in a row. Last year they made the conference finals (the equivalent of the semifinals of the NBA playoffs). This year they’re in the Finals. As of last night, they’re up 2 games to 1 in the best-of-7 series against the heavily favored and usually dominant Oklahoma City Thunder.

I like the Carlisle story because it’s a herky-jerky growth story. His leadership arc isn’t a clean, smooth one and that makes it feel real to me.

In this ESPN.com article, you get some accounts of how Carlisle has grown as a coach of superstars over the last 25 years. Bluntly, he wasn’t good at that critical part of the job for a long time. 

He made efforts to improve with superstar #1 (Jason Kidd) and did, in fact, improve after a couple of years of tension and frustration and weak results. Then, with superstar #2 (Luka Doncic), he backslid and had trouble all over again, before eventually finding his way. Now, with budding superstar #3 (Tyrese Halliburton), it appears he had it figured out from nearly the beginning of their relationship.

Someone in the article is quoted as saying “he coaches [to] his talent.” In practice, this has meant releasing tight control of the action on the floor and giving his star license to improvise and orchestrate as he (the star) sees fit. Instead of running scripted plays that Carlisle calls from the sideline, the star makes decisions on the fly, within a system Carlisle has deliberately designed for the star’s skillset.

I find this evolution compelling. By most accounts, Carlisle knows a ton about basketball. (He’s even called a savant.) It’s likely that his knowledge of the game is even deeper now than it was 15 years ago, when he was struggling with superstar #1. Many in his position grip their teams more tightly as they age and gain knowledge; their awareness of the difference between their experience and that of their people makes them anxious. They even feel a moral responsibility to hold a short leash. I can’t let these KIDS screw this up - that would be a dereliction of duty.

Yet, bald, old Carlisle is giving the youngsters he leads more power than young Carlisle did. His teams are exceeding others’ expectations of them. 

I have a suspicion that they are, however, simply meeting the expectations Rick has helped them hold for themselves.

-eric

Read the rest here.

BASKETBALL ANECDOTE, 2: LAYING RAILS FOR GROWTH

I can’t leave you the Carlisle story here with a simple “coach to your talent” recommendation. That’s a slogan that’s almost devoid of content.

What I can recommend is a specific move that Carlisle made with superstar #3, Tyrese Haliburton. Carlisle laid the rails for Halliburton’s growth train. He taught the young point guard how to watch film. 

Game film of your own play is basically feedback on your performance. It carries fewer distractions and flaws than another person’s take on your performance. It’s a third-party record; it’s data. Being able to watch film, identify shortcomings, strengths, and opportunities, and then make changes raises the ceiling on a player’s performance. They have a whole ‘nother coach: themselves.

Carlisle “coaching to his talent” isn’t simply giving a star the ball and saying “let it rip”. It’s equipping that star with the ability to improve himself – and setting the expectation that he do so.

Ben and I see this in our own coaching of executives. We help them most when we push them to identify the problem and the answer rather than supplying those for them.* That id’ing is a transferable skill the exec can apply in lots of situations to come, when Ben and I won’t be there with them.

-eric

*Often by having them watch film of themselves in action!

Read the rest here.

BASKETBALL ANECDOTE 3: QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NEXT INTERVIEW

The other two pieces today ask you to be the grizzled old basketball coach. In this one, you get to be the stylish young superstar. 

Ben and I tend to think that the interview process is often more useful for conveying information about the firm to the candidate than about the candidate to the firm. This inverts the conventional wisdom and recasts the responsibilities of both firm and candidate. 

When you’re a candidate, interviews are an opportunity to learn as much as you can about your prospective employer and colleagues. You might not get more than a few minutes or a couple email exchanges to ask questions. It’s worthwhile to choose those questions thoughtfully.

If you are a young and up-and-coming leader with a taste for innovation (like a star point guard early in her career), I think it’s good to devote one of those scarce question slots to the organization’s appetite for change and improvisation. Here are a few ways you can get at that:

  1. What rate of change would be seen as stressful or to-be-avoided here? Some organizations only make big decisions once a year; others once a quarter; others close to every day. Where do you all fit in? 

  2. Which of my decisions will require CEO / board approval? What does that approval process look like (in practice, not just on paper or in the bylaws)?

  3. How satisfied are you with the substance and process of this role’s work right now? How much different do you want it to be, just in terms of percentage - are you looking for 1-5% adjustment or 50% adjustment?

  4. What does change management look like around here? Do you like the way it looks?

  5. Imagine for a moment that a few years from now you say that I’m the best who has ever done this here. What makes that true?

It can be easy to make assumptions about a firm based on its reputation or the sector it’s a part of. These assumptions can be painfully inaccurate -- some start-ups (or founders) are process mavens who love structure. Some 100-year-old institutions have squirrelly innovators at the helm. 

-eric

Read the rest here.

COMPELLING QUOTES

Scottish economist Adam Smith (yes, that one) on household finances:

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

Band leader Sly Stone (RIP) on hate and hurt:

Don't hate the black, don't hate the white, if you get bitten, just hate the bite.

Designers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans on first ideas:

Our minds are generally lazy and like to get rid of problems as quickly as possible, so they surround first ideas with positive chemicals to make us “fall in love” with them. Do not fall in love with your first idea.

Keep going, keep growing,

Ben & Eric