This is a book about a vision and a dream. When I was named head coach of the Chicago Bulls in 1989, my dream was not just to win championships, but to do it in a way that wove together my two greatest passions: basketball and spiritual exploration.
On the surface this may sound like a crazy idea, but intuitively I sensed that there was a link between spirit and sport. Besides, winning at any cost didn’t interest me. From my years as a member of the championship New York Knicks, I’d already learned that winning is ephemeral. Yes, victory is sweet, but it doesn’t necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day. After the cheering crowds disperse and the last bottle of champagne is drained, you have to return to the battlefield and start all over again.
In basketball—as in life—true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment. The day I took over the Bulls, I vowed to create an environment based on the principles of selflessness and compassion I’d learned as a Christian in my parents’ home; sitting on a cushion practicing Zen; and studying the teachings of the Lakota Sioux. I knew that the only way to win consistently was to give everybody—from the stars to the number 12 player on the bench—a vital role on the team, and inspire them to be acutely aware of what was happening, even when the spotlight was on somebody else. More than anything, I wanted to build a team that would blend individual talent with a heightened group consciousness. A team that could win big without becoming small in the process.
Before joining the Bulls’ coaching staff in 1987, I was ready to say goodbye to basketball and let my 20-year career in the sport become history. Over the years I’d grown disenchanted with the way power, money, and self-glorification had tainted the game I love. I’d recently left a head coaching job in the Continental Basketball Association, frustrated by how shamelessly ego-driven the game had become, and determined to find something else to do with my life. I was contemplating returning to graduate school when Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ vice president of basketball operations, called and offered me a job as an assistant coach.
The more I learned about the Bulls, the more intrigued I became. It would be like going to “graduate school in basketball,” I told my wife, June. The coaching staff included a couple of the best minds in the game: Johnny Bach, a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of basketball, and Tex Winter, the innovator of the famed triangle offense, a system that emphasizes cooperation and freedom, the very values I’d spent my life pursuing off the court and dreamed of applying to the game. What’s more, the team also had the most creative player in basketball—Michael Jordan. I “was excited” to give basketball another chance.
It was the best decision I ever made.
Most leaders tend to view teamwork as a social engineering problem: take x group, add y motivational technique and get z result. But working with the Bulls I’ve learned that the most effective way to forge a winning team is to call on the players’ need to connect with something larger than themselves. Even for those who don’t consider themselves “spiritual” in a conventional sense, creating a successful team—whether it’s an NBA champion or a record-setting sales force—is essentially a spiritual act. It requires the individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for the greater good so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
This isn’t always an easy task in a society where the celebration of ego is the number one national pastime. Nowhere is this more true than in the hothouse atmosphere of professional sports. Yet even in this highly competitive world, I’ve discovered that when you free players to use all their resources—mental, physical, and spiritual—an interesting shift in awareness occurs. When players practice what is known as mindfulness—simply paying attention to what’s actually happening—not only do they play better and win more, they also become more attuned with each other. And the joy they experience working in harmony is a powerful motivating force that comes from deep within, not from some frenzied coach pacing along the sidelines, shouting obscenities into the air.
No team understood better than the championship Chicago Bulls that selflessness is the soul of teamwork. The conventional wisdom is that the team was primarily a one-man show—Michael Jordan and the Jordanaires. But the real reason the Bulls won three straight NBA championships from 1991 to ‘93 was that we plugged in to the power of oneness instead of the power of one man, and transcended the divisive forces of the ego that have crippled far more gifted teams. Center Bill Cartwright said it best: “Most teams have guys who want to win, but aren’t willing to do what it takes. What it takes is to give yourself over to the team and play your part. That may not always make you happy, but you’ve got to do it. Because when you do, that’s when you win.”
When Jordan came out of retirement and returned to the Bulls in the spring of 1995, expectations rose in a deafening crescendo. Michael Jordan is the greatest athlete on the planet—the argument went—then, ipso facto, the Bulls should win the championship. Even some of the players, who should have known better, bought into this line of reasoning. But what happened instead was that the team lost the identity it had forged in Jordan’s absence and regressed to the way it had been in the late eighties when the players were so mesmerized by his moves that they played as if they were mere spectators at the show.
To succeed, the new Bulls will have to rediscover the selfless approach to competition that inspired their predecessors. They will have to expand their minds and embrace a vision in which the group imperative takes precedence over individual glory, and success comes from being awake, aware, and in tune with others.
That lesson is important in all areas of life, not just on the basketball court. My friend and former assistant coach Charley Rosen used to say that basketball is a metaphor for life. He applied basketball jargon to everything he did: if someone paid him a compliment, he’d say, “nice assist”; if a taxicab nearly mowed him down, he’d shout, “great pick.” It was an amusing game. But, for me, basketball is an expression of life, a single, sometimes glittering thread, that reflects the whole. Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game—and life—will take care of itself.