Team Effectiveness Lessons from The Celtics' Early Season Struggles

Source: Wikipedia

The Boston Celtics basketball team entered this season with much promise and high expectations. Last year, with two of their top players missing, they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals.  This year, with superstar Kyrie Irving back from injury and former All-Star Gordon Hayward back from injury as well, many analysts and fans expected a trip to the NBA Finals.  However, they have struggled through the first 21 games.  They have won 11 and lost 10.  What's wrong? Many people have pointed to the fact that they are trying to sort out their roles.  Young players who played a ton of minutes in last year's playoffs have had to adjust to the return of two veterans.   The veterans have had to adjust to the fact that some of these young players developed into major contributors and expect more playing time and more shots.   It seems as though they haven't figured out their roles, and they don't fully understand how they fit together.   Many teams struggle when the members don't have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and when members don't understand how they complement one another.   We should not be surprised if it takes a few months for the Celtics to settle into a groove and become a cohesive unit.  

Research also shows that some level of hierarchy can be beneficial on teams.  A "team of equals" does not always perform best.   Consider research by Nir Halevy and his colleagues.  They have demonstrated some of the benefits of hierarchy.  In fact, they have studied NBA teams.  They collected data over 11 seasons.  They examined the dispersion of salary and playing time among players on each team.  They found that teams with wide dispersions tended to win more games than those with what appeared to be more egalitarian structures.  In short, it helps if all the players recognize who the superstars are, and who the role players are, on the team.   A team of people who all think they are roughly equal doesn't perform best, according to this research.   The researchers argued that a clear pecking order led to more cooperative behavior among teammates.  In fact, they showed that the more hierarchical teams had more assists - a statistic that measures when one player helps a teammate score a basket.  

Could the Celtics have too "flat" a structure?  Perhaps.  Analysts have described them as having lots of interchangeable parts.  They have extolled the virtues of having players who can play "positionless basketball" because that means they can switch on defense all the time (a strategy that can be effective in today's NBA).   Are they right though?  Is a team of interchangeable parts who play positionless basketball really best? 

Consider the Celtics this year.  They appear to have a flatter structure, as opposed to a clear pecking order.   That might be part of the problem.  Everyone surely recognizes that Kyrie Irving is the best player.  However, after that, it may be a bit dicier.  Gordon Hayward is a former All-Star, but he missed all of last year after a gruesome leg injury.  He's clearly not back to full health.  Al Horford is a highly paid former All-Star, but he isn't a high scorer and seems to be showing some signs of age.  Meanwhile, youngsters such as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown excelled in the playoffs last year, and they may think of themselves as rising stars in the league.  They may not be ready to defer as easily to these former All-Stars.  Terry Rozier, the back-up point guard, became accustomed to being the starter with Irving injured last year. He may think he's just as good as many of the starters, though he has now had to return to the bench. 

In the November 28th episode of the Celtics Beat podcast (start at 26:00 minute mark), legendary sportswriter Bob Ryan argues this very point about having a clear pecking order.  He describes great teams of the past as having a clear starting five, a few well-defined role players or "specialists" off the bench, and a few players at the end of the bench who know that they aren't going to see much playing time.  

What's the lesson from the Celtics' struggles?  Knowing who the star is and who the role players are can be important in certain kinds of teams.   Clear roles and responsibilities are very important for a team to excel.   An adjustment period is clearly needed when you are trying to integrate new members or re-integrate former members who are returning to a team.  It's not just about putting together the most highly talented set of individuals.  It's about figuring how they fit together, and helping each member understand how they fit with their fellow team members.  Getting people to buy into their role is a key job for a coach and for any team leader.  

Should I Tell That Joke at Work?

The Wall Street Journal has a nice summary of recent research on humor in the workplace written by scholars Alison Wood Brooks and T. Bradford Bitterly.   The scholars point out some of the positive effects of humor in the workplace.  For instance, they cite one study by Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock.  Here is the summary of those findings:

Research led by Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock at VU University Amsterdam studied how patterns of humor in conversation—such as a joke followed by another joke or a joke followed by laughter—predicted other types of communication, as well as team performance, more broadly. The researchers found that teams that tell more jokes and laugh together also made more supportive and constructive statements to each other, things like “that’s a great idea” or “we could solve this problem by doing X.” That, in turn, led them to perform better on a number of measures, such as hitting goals and improving efficiency. The researchers surmised that humor could improve team interaction by triggering positive forms of communication.

Of course, one always worries about the inappropriate use of humor in the workplace. Will you offend someone?  Could you cross the line and face disciplinary action for something you say?  Could it even get you fired?   The problem, according to researchers, is that we are not very good predictors of what others will find to be funny.  In fact, we aren't good predictors even when we know the person quite well.  Here's one study that examined this situation:

In a recent study led by Michael Yeomans at Harvard University, pairs of museum-goers were asked to predict what their companion would find funny. Many of the pairs included married couples, or people who had known each other for years. Even with the close connection between people, Dr. Yeomans found that they weren’t very good at predicting what their partner would find funny. A statistical prediction model turned out to be much better at rating how funny their companion would rate a joke.