Mark Lebedew
The overarching theme is that Jordan would do ‘anything to win’, including damaging his relationships with his teammates, and should be lauded for it. Conversely, those who could not cope with his style were not prepared to do ‘anything to win’, and are deserving of our scorn.
But what does it mean to do ‘anything to win’?
The focus in the documentary (and general discussion on the topic) is on task focus and hard work. High focus, hard work = ‘anything to win’. In reality that is the most superficial of interpretations. In an environment where a dominant personality demands a specific way of working, the other players are making many more sacrifices than the general discomfort that comes from hard work and high focus. They are also sacrificing individual recognition, pride, financial reward and in this case were often emasculated in the process. They were expected to do all of those things to ‘win’.
The overarching theme of the documentary (other than Jordan) is that the team was broken up because Jerry Krause did not receive enough credit. It was not enough for him to ‘win’, and so he had to break up the team, start from scratch and prove he should have had the credit for all the winning in the first place. In reality, he was not prepared to do ‘anything to win’ (after a point). Jordan had to win. Of that there is no question. But would he really have done ‘anything to win’? Would he have been prepared to share the credit? To compromise? To pass up the biggest shots?* I have written before that competitiveness is often misinterpreted.
There are many sacrifices that are required to win. We tend to judge players very strictly on the hard work, high focus part but devalue the other sacrifices they are making. And we give far too many free passes to players who very clearly would not do ‘anything to win’ but who seem competitive because they scowl on TV and get angry at people.
If winning is really your primary goal, if you think you will do ‘anything to win’, you have to ask yourself, am I prepared to: compromise, be wrong, share credit, help others**, take less money, ignore slights and insults, look stupid in public.
If you can answer yes to ALL of these questions, then you can say you would do ‘anything to win’.
*share credit – grudgingly, compromise – a bit, shots – not often, but sometimes
**help others is not the same as tell others what to do
About Mark Lebedew:
Mark Lebedew authors the At Home on the Court Blog. He coaches professionally in Poland, in season 2019/20 with Aluron Virtu CMC Warta Zawiercie. That follows five seasons Germany where his Berlin Recycling Volleys won three straight league titles and a CEV Champions League bronze medal. He has prior professional experience in Belgium and Italy. Mark was also Head Coach for the Australian Men’s National Team.
Mark partnered with his brother and father to translate and publish “My Profession: The Game“, the last book by legendary Russian coach, Vyacheslav Platonov.
With John Forman, he is behind the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project (link http://volleyballcoachingwizards.com/) which identifies great coaches from all levels, making their experience, insights, and expertise available to people all over the world. The project has produced multiple books, a in e-book format available here ( link to http://bit.ly/34yakou ) or in print at Amazon here (link https://amzn.to/2JRqTE6)
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