Written by As our cultural shift has led sports teams from a centralized leadership role to one that expects each player to have those capabilities, the ongoing need for athletes to be more self-sustaining has dramatically increased. There will always be some sort of authoritative figure within the team, only now their dictatorship shared among others. How will this shape the future of coaching, and how will coaches get their athletes to be the best version of themselves
Sharing responsibility among teammates evenly is hard; there will always be some sort of head honcho, whether the team labels it or not. The shared leadership is supposed to relieve the pressure off the captain/leader of the team so that at any given moment someone else can take over (emotionally, physically, mentally) to prepare everyone else for the game, event, practice.
We see this in sports like the NBA, where people have made satirical comments about LeBron James being the captain, leader, owner, GM, and coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. This is to poke fun at the fact that LeBron is really doing everything himself, making all of the executive decisions for the team. Recently though, especially after a few pickups the team made in the last couple years, that pressure has been eased off of LeBron’s shoulders. It’s no longer “give the ball to him every possession and see what he does,” but rather more evenly split among all teammates, with everyone having to partake within the play.
This increase of pressure on the other teammates seems to be the direction that new era sports are using. Pressure does make diamonds, but at what cost? How many players have always been the 3rd or 4th guy on their team and now the coaches expect everyone to be their number 1 or 2 guy at any given moment?
Taking a step back and realizing who is fit for what role would seem to make more sense, but our cultural shift looks like it’s adapting and now requiring everyone to do their job at 110%, as expected from Sports organization owners and leaders. The most important thing to do as a coach, owner, or GM is to feed the player’s needs first, and then try “carving out the diamond.” We must take into account that although they are an athlete, they are human first and foremost, which means the players have needs to, and if they can’t handle the pressure we can’t just deem them as disposable, find the right amount of pressure and help to turn them into that diamond.