In sports the product shows on the field, the pitch and the court. The business model is what connects the risk-reward product in development calculation to the profit-loss calculation that makes business what it is. And early-September is the time of year when the business models for team sports is on display. The soccer transfer window shows which European soccer teams have their act together, and which are experiencing some organizational pain. Training camp is over for football teams and coming up fast for basketball teams, and the available options for teams who might hope to refashion themselves are pretty much over. The home stretch for baseball and North American soccer separated the on-track from the off-track and the way off-track (Houston Astros, Toronto FC).
Lean Startup Methodology is a school of thought among tech entrepreneurs and, no surprise, provides a torrent of jargon around how to develop new products, and to make them the cornerstones of profitable businesses. I’m going to pull one “lean” tenant to make a point about team sports, taking basketball as my example, and hopefully sidestep the fusillade of cultish tech business talk. Let’s talk about Minimum Viable Products and how the idea applies to NBA basketball.
Minimum Viable Products are what tech entrepreneurs are told to start out with when embark on the path from idea to revenue. Make something that takes the least amount of effort but still captures the essence of a product idea. Once the MVP gets done, turn it loose on the world and see what the worldsi has to say about, then fix what the world says should be better. Repeat, repeat, repeat, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The question is, for a professional sports team, what is the Minumum Viable Product? Before getting to the answer though let’s pin down why thinking about MVPs is better than any sort of master planning exercise by NBA front offices. Lean Startup Methodology emerged as the alternative to Master Planning, a way to evolve a product in collaboration with customers without a startup to finish roadmap. It allows an organization to focus on improvement rather than on a plan (and a doomed plan at that).
You can make the case that a basketball MVP is a quality five-man lineup, one with qualities and cohesion to regularly outscore the five on the other team, whatever that five might be. Hibbert-West-George-Stephenson-Hill is an example for the Pacers. The 2011 Mavericks’ Chandler-Nowitzki-Marion-Terry-Kidd is another. Get that core group together and then fine tune it into contention.
You might also make the case for an even smaller group, like in a three stars LeBron-Wade-Bosh approach. Keep the stars on the court in lineups with functional role-players and watch the wins pile up. It sets up a weird improvement dynamic though, since improvement is harder to come by since both stars and established role-players come with upside ceilings.
Both these approaches are practical but seem on the verge of losing out to what I’d call a five-plus approach, a situation where five makes the basketball product viable but five is not actually enough to satisfy what’s minimal. Minimal could be six, seven, eight. The actual number would depend on the on-court system used by the coach. Continuous improvement in multiple facets (coaching, players, front office) reflects the Lean Startup spirit, where product development iterations build functional complexity without sacrificing that goals established with the MVP. And should failures occur, the (jargon alert) “pivots” into rethinking product plans and MVPs can occur as tweaks (to coaching/players/front office), thus avoiding overhauls, teardowns and tanking.
Does a five-plus MVP explain San Antonio? Probably. Last season the Spurs evolved a 9-player core with Duncan-Splitter-Green-Leonard-Parker-Ginobli-Diaw-Belinelli-Mills that also had significant roles for two more in Bonner-Ayres.
More interesting are the teams which appear capable of evolving into something even better than the Spurs. Portland (Aldridge-Lopez-Matthews-Batum-Lillard) and Washington (Gortat-Nene-Ariza-Beal-Wall) had successful five-player cores last season and will try to go five-plus. Phoenix and Dallas added scoring playmakers, Isaiah Thomas and Chandler Parsons, respectively, to give the teams five-plus redundancy in crucial, heavy work roles. Chicago and Oklahoma City have roster depth and talent to go five-plus if they can figure out their MVP, something that should not be too difficult. Atlanta and Denver could make a leap if they get a five-plus MVP together early enough in the season to improve as the season goes on. Orlando and Utah are interesting collections of young talent that appear likely to struggle but might still pull together their five-plus MVP to become teams to watch.
And what of the old school master planners? They are the ones who are hunting for their stars. The Rockets made a mess hunting for star #3 and made their team worse in the meantime. The Sixers hope players drafted for future seasons will mesh with the guys they currently have. The Knicks and Lakers are examples of teams treading water.
Lean startups, jargon aside, have lots to offer business thinkers, including sports business. Teams that pick it up will be better off. The NBA seems to moving away from salary cap-eating stars to something that’s more team-oriented. The focus on making something where the sum is greater than its parts suits the increasing complexity that a lean team-building business model affords.
The evolving complexity incorporates greater use of analytics and sports science, simply in terms of the greater number of opportunities to innovate technically and scientifically, whether that is to improve players, coaching strategy or business decision-making. The absence of a master plan roadmap and the more opportunistic lean process help build the cross-organization relations that integrate the health and development of players with what coaches and front office managers are doing.