Go Team!
I seem to be on a tear these days about words that are tricky to define, if they can be so at all. Those who follow sports all use the word team. But we rarely mean the same thing with the term. My cousin and I have gone at each other about this on several occasions. Like many sport discussions, perceptions are everything and hard facts are elusive. In the end it seems each person uses their own experiences and feelings as the 'facts' to cement a conclusion. This elusiveness of consensus is what drives interest in sports. In the end of any vigorous debate about sport matters, in one form or another, it always kind of ends with some version of "If I want any shit out of you I will squeeze your head". Anyone present not interested in the topic at hand finds the whole scene 'a lot of ado about nothing'. I guess to them the answer is "What difference does it make to anything what either of you think about all of this?" But, to a sport fan on the matter at hand, put simply, "how does one not care?".
I once got a D in a Science Methods course because when the Professor asked me in front of the class how best to teach a particular science concept, I replied "there is no best way". He went through the roof, demanding an explanation for such an outrageous answer and just for what did I think the course existed? I replied that if I listed the 10 best teachers in my life their methodologies would differ substantially, that a good teacher has to find a method which plays to his/her strengths and protects his/her weaknesses. Fortunately for me the guy went on sabbatical the next term when I practice taught and the substitute professor gave me an A. The poor substitute got absolute hell from the regular Professor for that. Life is full of weird stuff like that.
Anyway, I kind of view teams in the same fashion. A good coach has to play to his strengths and protect his weaknesses. Good coaching therefore differs widely and this means the nature of good teams vary accordingly. You can accurately describe a particular good team and what makes the components work together well, but any broader application is probably useless. Phil Jackson is valued as a coach because he is good at finding ways to mesh varied personalities together to accomplish specific athletic goals. Tony Dungee and Dick Juaron are good coaches who are low keyed and depend on their supportive role to their players to get a good effort and cooperation from each in return for that personal support. It is not really clear how far that really goes since one could argue that, without Payton Manning, Dungee only gets good teams, not outstanding teams. Dick Juaron doesn't have any Payton Manning. A Vince Lombardi or a Bill Parcels achieved success in a rigid dictatorial abusive sort of relationship to their players.
The word team has a really varied significance depending on the sport. On a track or bowling team maybe it is a bit silly to emphasize team. Each person does the best they can in their event and that is about all one can write. Baseball is not far behind. If each player can hit and field well, that is about it. Personal interaction is pretty much limited to preventing them from assaulting each other in the dugout or club house. Football is not really much different. Each player has a particular task, has a particular position coach, and the turnover rate is high. Each player either does their task well or they are gone. Most of the positions are pretty cut and dried. A few, like quarterback, receivers, and running backs need to find ways to convince coaches to get them the ball. Their ability to do this determines their salary. These will always be the tension positions because of the nature of such a football beast. Football players all know it is not how well the team does which determines their future and salary, but how well they do. There are so many players on a football team all off being trained by their position coaches that most players have little chance for much serious personal interaction. Each player is being trained to do this or that in a multitude of situations. To the extent the 17 coaches succeed in getting all these players to do what they are suppose to do in particular situations, if they have the talent to do it, then you have a good 'team'.
Coaches know if each player does his job well, the team will win. That is the bottom line. For most sports the sum is simply the addition of the individual parts. That the individual players need to be soul mates marching lock step and barrel off the field, in the locker room, or dressed like cloned identical bobbydolls is rather overblown. A few sports, like basketball and hockey, are a bit different in that the number of participants is limited, especially in the game itself, and the players do have a lot of instances when they have to make decisions relating to each other (like who to pass to) etc. Some kind of personal rapport is desirable, but not always essential even there. Dennis Rodman rarely spoke to his teammates in Chicago, not in games or practice. The talent of the Coach, in this instance, was not to force it, but get widely discordent personalities to co-exist with each other. They won championships twice. This is a clear example of the reality: if each player does his job right and has the ability to do it effectively, the TEAM wins. A lot of fans and sport writers like to go on and on about this or that player being a distraction. This might have some truth in high school and to a lesser degree in college, but in professional sports this is kind of silly. You don't get to the level of professional sports if you don't clearly understand what YOU are expected to do during the game. If YOU do it, and every other YOU on the team does it the TEAM wins. The classic example here is Terrell Owens. I can't take serious these media analysts who say Terrell is a distraction and destroys the 'team chemistry', thereby destroying a team. They scream no 'team' would ever want him on their team, he would destroy the team, or so it goes. It is not for me to be the source of any answer here. But the facts seem not to fit their hypothesis at all. Every team Terrell has been on has been good and was not as good after he left. When Terrell had his contract dispute with Philly, and then it escalated to a personal feud between Terrell and Donovan (the quarterback), Terrell did what Terrell does as well as play football, and that is become Attila the Hun over perceived injustice to his personhood. Terrell is Terrell. Right or wrong, whether others like it or not, I haven't seen anyone stand on principle to the extent of Terrell. Most fans get angry at Terrell. I kind of say 'Wow'!. Most of his teammates say "Wow" too. What other sport figure ever takes on the entire NFL corporate powers, their lawyers, and the media, and wins every time. Almost all of us take similar injustices in our jobs on the chin, dust our selves off, eat crow, and meekly move on. Terrell is the ultimate Right makes Might. But of course I wander off here; the applicable observation here is that when Terrell said he would no longer talk to Donovan, the pundits all said this could not possibly work, that there has to be solid team chemistry between a quarterback and his receiver. Wrong. Their play on the field continued to be superb. In a game, each depends on the other for their own reputations and future. They each did what their position coaches worked with them to do and the clockwork hardly missed a beat. I repeat myself here, but if each player does his job correctly and well, the team wins. Distraction? I suppose, to a coach like Parcells who perceives himself to be the team 'persona', the team media attraction, the genius and sole decision maker behind every plan---a player like Terrell is a distraction, to put it mildly. Imagine a defensive lineman claiming, "I just can't tackle as good anymore because Terrell isn't speaking to Donovan". Am I saying the distraction was not a problem? Of course it was a problem---for the coaches, the management, the League, and was fodder for the media. Last I checked they are are not the team football players. Terrell created the problem exactly where he intended to create the problem---to those he felt were abusing or using him personally.
Frankly, team is often a more valued fan concept. The old Brooklyn Dodgers were a team and essentially the same team year after year. Players move around so much now that teams are often unrecognizable from year to year. Let's be real here. If team chemistry was remotely as important as some claim, all this player movement from team to team, season after season, would never occur. If loyalty were a valued priority, such breakups could not possibly occur with such frequency. Frankly, as a fan, I prefer each player to be his own personality, speak his mind within reasonable limits, and not be like a parrot spewing forth trained rehearsed answers to questions. One gets sick of fawning pabulum after a while. Humility can be overdone. Pretending one is a round peg fitting neatly into some round hole if one is a square peg needing a separate hole for a fit, is no applaudable virtue to me. When corporate, media and fan Terrell haters press his teammates to say something bad about Terrell, with precious few exceptions they come up empty. Most say something along the lines, "I got nothing against Terrell. He ain't never done nothing to me." Terrell stays to himself, what else can they be expected to say? His haters argue that his teammates won't say anything bad about him because they don't want to be disruptive to the team by saying something negative about a team member. Terrell is 34 or 35 years old. Probably 95% of those who have been a teammate are not currently a teammate. Certainly they are free to let loose if they disliked Terrell or felt he was bad for their team. It would certainly make headlines. Any such comments I have seen from former teammates have been remarkably similar: "None of us could get very close to Terrell. He stays to himself mostly. Never hangs out after the games, drinks with the guys, parties with them, none of that. Terrell is Terrell. He did his job. He was good at it. The team was better for him being on it. You just tried not to cross him because he doesn't forgive easily. Whether happy or sad his presence is kind of overpowering. Like the press, we players watched, you don't really interact much."
At any rate I define a good team as a bunch of talented players who all perform their respective tasks well resulting in a successful season. If they do this it matters little to me how happy media, fans, coaches or management are about it all. This other stuff is what social circles, friends and marriages are for. I defend the right of anyone not to like Terrell. But when they go on about what a distraction and bad teammate he is, I think that decision lies with his former and present teammates. If so, once again Terrell wins. The guy most often cited as an example of a teammate abused by Terrell, is Garcia, a former quarterback of Terrell. Trouble is, this is what Garcia has said: "I would jump at the chance to be on a team with Terrell again. He is a play maker. I have nothing against him." Oh, what the hell does Garcia know about all this? If he were as smart as Terrell's critics he'd feel differently. I guess.
