Joe Lacob, majority owner of the Golden State Warriors NBA franchise, is not as stupid as he may appear. There are plenty of marginally bright, ego-soaked professional sports team owners, but Lacob is not one of them. He grew up poor, and earned a master’s in epidemiology from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Stanford. Lacob made a fortune worth several hundred million dollars as a partner with Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
How smart is Lacob? Smart enough to sign undrafted Jeremy Lin to the Warriors. He saw the kid’s scrappiness and Harvard smarts. Lacob’s own son, Kirk, had even played with Lin as a Palo Alto youth.
Then Lacob did something dumb. On Dec. 9, 2011 the Warriors cut Lin and his $800,000 salary to make room on the Warriors’ salary cap. Soon after, the New York Knicks picked up Lin, and the rest is history.
How has cutting Lin and saving $800,000 worked out for the Warriors? Not so well. The Warriors are near the bottom in the Western Conference. And the team is stuck with the league’s worst starting center, Andris Biedrins, who will earn $27 million over the next three years.
Lacob’s response to this debacle? “Son of a b----,” he told Sports Illustrated. He got that right.
Weird thing is, each step leading up to Lin’s Golden State cut last December had a flawless reason within basketball’s insular logic. One would assume that if Lin were a borderline prospect, his best chances for making an NBA team would be with a lousy one willing to take a chance. But lousy teams are lousy for a reason. They get trapped into thinking the next star player will save the franchise. Each new draft pick and signing, therefore, becomes a bigger and riskier bet.
Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire--cofounder of PayPal, early -investor in Facebook--once told me that team dynamics were the hardest thing to get right in a tech startup. “If you get it wrong, it’s impossible to fix,” said Thiel. Consequently, Thiel likes to invest in startup teams that have worked together before, even if only on college projects. “Team IQ is what matters.”
That sums up Jeremy Lin’s chief contribution to basketball: He makes the whole team better.
Since I picked on Joe Lacob--a bit unfairly--now let me pick on you. Do you have any Jeremy Lins in your organization? These would be employees with the gift and desire to elevate everyone around them. Do you know who they are? Have you put them in a position to succeed?
Wright By:kevin,Tags:ed hardyed hardy clothingChristian Audigier
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