NBA | Adam Fuller

The NBA’s Strategy Credit

Basketball in the bubble, Skin in the Game, and doing the “right thing” with nothing to lose

The NBA restart has been a slam dunk: competitive games, virtual fans, a fun vibe of March Madness meets Summer League, and of course the surprising, yet ultimately tragic, run by my Phoenix Suns, who closed out the season 8-0 as the only undefeated team in the bubble, and still didn’t make the playoffs.

And crucially: zero positive tests for COVID-19 among players, as of August 12, 2020.

The league’s pivot to the pandemic is even more impressive when you consider the degree of difficulty and operational complexity required to move everything to a secure “bubble” in Orlando, in the middle of a pandemic, under intense scrutiny and uncertain timelines.

But when you watch this new version of the NBA, it’s clear from tipoff that basketball in the bubble is about much more than just the game on the court.

Red Nation: The NBA, China, Hong Kong, and the sounds of silence

I have been absolutely glued to this story over the past couple weeks.

It feels like an immense moment that is underappreciated.

A complex issue that is really quite simple.

A terrifying wake-up call and a breath of fresh air.

A cultural reckoning and a crisis communications case study.

An attack on American soil and an opportunity to bridge divides.

Admittedly, I’m primed to gobble this story up and overreact thanks to a few pre-existing conditions.

The real MVP

In a world smothered by scripted interviews, entitled stars and vanilla soundbites, Kevin Durant – the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player – delivers a slam dunk speech that pulls back the curtain, transcends sports and inspires leadership, humility and perspective.

These days, I don’t expect much from post-game press conferences, sideline reports, superstar interviews and other sports speeches. Why? Because we rarely get more than a quick thank you to God, followed by a litany of canned sports cliches.

If we expand the scope, the same low expectations can often be applied to other arenas, with force-fed agendas, rhetoric and scripted remarks clouding our glimpses at the true character and opinions of our leaders, influencers and role models.

But every now and then, we’re treated to something genuine, something thoughtful, something inspirational.

Kevin Durant’s exceptional acceptance speech for the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player Award was one of those times.

Judged in a vacuum (in my amateur opinion), the speech stands strong as an organized address with a heartfelt and well-delivered story.

However, in the vanilla, lay-up context we’ve grown accustomed to in sports speeches, Durant’s MVP remarks deliver a posterizing slam dunk.

In this post, I’m going to break down why the speech is so special, and list a some of the lessons I took away after watching it a few times.

Continue reading The real MVP