The Daily Stoic - R.C. Buford on Leadership, Evaluating Character, and Building Championship Cultures | When Something Breaks

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to R.C. Buford about how the Spurs went about trying to build a culture of sustainable success, the hallmarks of building great cultures, the benefit of diversity within an organization, and more.This is an excerpt from the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, a 9-week course that was built to mirror the kind of education that produced historically great leaders like Marcus Aurelius. It is now a recorded course, which means all participants will join the course and move through it at their own pace. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/leadershipchallengeR.C. started his professional career as an assistant coach at the University of Kansas in 1983. R.C. was named CEO for Spurs Sports and Entertainment in July of 2019. In his current role he leads the business operations for all sports franchises owned and operated by Spurs Sports & Entertainment which includes the San Antonio Spurs (NBA), the Austin Spurs (NBA G-League) and San Antonio FC (USL Soccer) as well as the operations of the AT&T Center and Toyota Field.LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC. Terms and conditions apply.Go to shopify.com/stoic, all lowercase, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today - go to shopify.com/stoic right now.Framebridge makes it easier and more affordable than ever to frame your favorite things - without ever leaving the house. Get started today - frame your photos or send someone the perfect gift. Go to Framebridge.com and use promo code STOIC to save an additional 15% off your first order.Sunday can help you grow a beautiful lawn without the guesswork OR nasty chemicals. F​​ull-season plans start at just $129, and you can get 20% off at checkout when you visit GETSUNDAY.COM/STOIC.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. When something breaks, if a close friend had their home broken into, you'd comfort them and tell them that it was only stuff that had been stolen. If your child broke their favorite toy, you'd tell

them that these things happened and try to get them to play with something else. If a waiter spilled on your friend, you'd calm them down by saying it was an accident. Basically, when stuff happens to other people, we're able to see it clearly with some perspective and some detachment. But when our stuff breaks or is lost, it's always so much different. It's suddenly a tragedy or worse, a deliberate misdeed that had been wrongly inflicted upon us. I lost so much, but I really loved that toy. You ruined my favorite shirt. You meant to do that. We take it personally because it is personal. It happened to us. And then we're miserable. That's why the Stoics try to practice detachment. Not in the sense that they don't

love other people or that they avoid relationships and possessions, but in the sense that when something happens to one of those things, they try to see it with some perspective. Epic Titus points out how when someone we know loses a loved one, we can say, that's just life. But when we lose a loved one, suddenly it's poor me. And yet it is fundamentally the same event. We've just decided to indulge the more severe judgment. The one that doesn't bring back the person we grieved and only makes us feel terrible.

Epic teetuses advice when we get upset is to remember how we feel when we hear it has happened to someone else. We care, sure, but not so much that it deeply distresses us. We're empathetic, but unbroken, we're calm, we're collected, we understand. And then we move on. I had breakfast two days ago on the back porch of the Painted porch with my friend, Monouj Noble, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Actually, he's being inducted into the basketball hall

of fame this year. He won four championships with the San Antonio Spurs. I was one of the longest playing Spurs in NBA history. One of the pioneers of the game brings the Euro Step to the NBA. And as it happens, a fascinating, and as it happens, a lover of reading and stosism and it's been wonderful to get to know him over the years. And when I was sitting down with him a while back, he said, hey, I thought you had RC Buferd on the podcast.

When are you going to run that? RC Buferd being the GM of the Spurs through their incredible dynasty. And now the CEO of the Spurs organization. And I had interviewed RC actually as part of the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. So he and I went in depth specifically about leadership and culture for over an hour. And then even members of Daily Stoke Life who were in the challenge got to ask him some questions. But that was previously only for participants in the challenge, which by the way, I think

the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge is one of the best things we have ever done. It's 63 emails over nine weeks. It's an in-depth study of leadership from the Stoic perspective, because while not all Stoics are leaders, while not, because while not all leaders are Stoics, all the Stoics in the ancient world were leaders. They were in the arena. They were participating. They were leading organizations and causes and governments and parties and themselves, right?

And so RC was one of the people that I wanted to talk to as part of the challenge for these deep dives we did. We did six or seven deep dives with great leaders about what makes them tick. And I didn't run that to the whole podcast, but I decided Mono was right, the interview was so good, I had to share it. And that's what I'm going to do in today's episode. If you've never heard of RC Buford, it's not that you're living under a rock somewhere, but I think like a lot of great leaders, he was fine with the credit and attention going somewhere else.

He was the guy behind the scenes, making things happen, building the organization, building the culture, setting the tone, dealing with the stuff that other people didn't want to deal with, and being a little bit off the radar actually allowed him to be more successful. He started his professional career as an assistant coach at the University of Kansas. All the way now, in 2019, he was named CEO

of the Spurs Sports and Entertainment Business. He leads business operations for all the sports franchise owned and operated by the Spurs, which includes the San Antonio Spurs, the Austin Spurs, that's their G-League team, San Antonio FC, that's their soccer club, as well as the AT&T Center and Toyota Field. It's an enormous, multi-million dollar operation that affects millions and millions of people that puts on a number of incredible products.

I've been lucky enough to see a lot of it. And in this interview, we talk about how the Spurs went about building this culture, not just of success, but sustained success over an incredibly long period. The hallmarks of building a great culture, the benefits of diversity and different points of view inside an organization, and a bunch of other stuff. So thanks to Manu for the Spur, no pun intended, to put this live. I hope you guys enjoy it.

And if you haven't done the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge and you're thinking about it, I can't recommend it highly enough. There's lots of stuff from me, including a bunch of Q&As with me about how I think about leadership. You can sign up there at dailystilic.com slash leadership challenge. And again, if you're a daily stoke life member, you get this challenge. All the other ones for free. But for now, totally for free, enjoy my leadership deep dive, the one and only RC Buford.

As I was preparing for this, I saw like an old interview clip of Tim Duncan that had popped up. I don't know if you saw this, but the clip was of him in his rookie season. And they said, you know, what are your goals? And he said, you know, I hope I can just make a small contribution to the team that I can just play some minutes and, you know, score a few points.

And I thought it was an incredible encapsulation both of his sort of ethos as a player, but also the Spurs organization, just a dramatic understatement of the momentous career that he would go on to have with you guys. So, Ryan, it's great to be with you today. There's an interesting story that Tim's lawyer who is getting Juanbabbies shares. And they met in San Antonio. Tim came from New York, lawn came from Washington DC.

They met in San Antonio the first time Tim came to town. They were in the car from the airport down to where we were having a welcome reception. And his agent was telling him, lawn was telling him all the great things that he had lined up for him from a promotional standpoint. And Tim asked the question to Lon, what do you have lined up for for me and David, David Robinson. And Tim said that or Lon, asking the question, why would I have anything lined up with David? I work for you

And he goes, yeah, you work for me, but now I work with David And it was really just part of the Tim Ethos set It was he knew he was coming into a team that had been David's team for a long time and he didn't want to come in and over step that had been David's team for a long time. And he didn't want to come in and overstep and wanted to become a partner with Tim and David as with David in a way that was not your typical first pick in the draft, Ethos. So obviously I've got to imagine the talent

of Tim Duncan was pretty apparent as you guys looked at him in the draft. And his idea that he would only, he might make a small contribution to the team. I mean, I think he averaged like 14 or 15 points his rookie season. So his talent must have been evident, but did you have any sense or was that what you were looking for, the sort of the caliber of like teammate and person and a culture that would come along with that. Was that something you thought about

when you were drafting a player like him and then going forward? As we've built our systems and processes for player selection, player recruitment, there are values are our first filter. So high-care to people who want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and then the story that pop shares all the time about the stone cutter that goes to work every day,

and when the rock finally breaks, he knows it wasn't that blow that did it, but all the work that went before it. And so those values are our first filter as we're looking for players to bring into our program. Now Tim was such an obvious pick because of his talent, but at the same time, he was also a player who was graduating from Wake Forest with a psychology degree as a 20 year old, had gone to four years of school

because he made a commitment to his mom that he would graduate from college. And she passed away when he was 14 of cancer and Tim lived up to that. He's the last first pick that stayed all four years of school. Wow. I didn't think about that, but yeah, that makes sense. And that is, it's almost a generational divide there between the players that sort of came from that era and system and then everyone since.

Yeah. So how do you look for character in a player? Like how, obviously, you can see stats, you know, you can see what they do on the court. How do you look for character and then how do you weigh character against the other things I imagine there must be players you would see all the time who were extraordinarily talented and that talent was very seductive but how how could you how could you make a calculation that says you know talent does not outweigh character in this case. talent does not outweigh character in this case. We spend quite a bit of time in learning about who the people are as people. We talk about eyes, ears, and numbers. So eyes, what our scouts see, ears, what we get from the Intel work that we do, and then the advanced analytics that now can are available from a numbers aspect.

But we'll spend just as much time as we do watching them play in learning about them as players, talking to coaches, talking to teammates, talking to coaches where they didn't go to school, talking to their trainers and the people, watching them when we get a chance to interview them, talk about themselves, talk about the people they're important in their lives,

seeing how they treat people who are service providers to them, just learning about who they are. Do they want to be part of something bigger than themselves? Yeah, I won't get you in trouble by talking about a specific player, but I was struck. Let's just say there's a certain player in the news right now, making some decisions tearing apart a very talented, potentially championship contender team. It strikes me as an illustration given his past incidents on other championship caliber teams that this shouldn't surprise anyone.

You know, Stoics have this expression that character is fate. I don't see how anyone could have seen it differently, but is that what you found that character ultimately is a predictor of success on the basketball court? I think it's difficult to comment on people that are outside of our program. Yeah. Fortunately, we've been together long enough that we know what works here and shame on us if we don't. There are opportunities or times where we'll try to manage risk and maybe take a chance on someone to hope that we can influence them and bring them towards us. But the other part of that is holding ourselves accountable. If, first of all, managing the risks, both from a time and a financial aspect,

and then holding ourselves accountable when they don't, when they don't fit. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all! I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of you.

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like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired, and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early, and add free, on the Amazon, or Wondery app. Yeah, it seems like that's the tension, right? So, characters fate, this idea that who someone is, they show you how they treat other people, they show how they behave, that's who they're going to be. But then also, some of the greatest success stories in sports have been rehabilitating people who have struggled in one environment or made mistakes.

The Patriots being a great example of a team who's taken problematic characters, not 100% success rate, but taking problematic athletes and gotten them to buy into the system and had success together. So how do you think about like, I don't want to say who to write off, but how do you think about that risk management of like, who do you think we can get to buy in and who is just doing their own thing and they're not a fit for the spurs? I think we're probably more aligned with they're not a fit to the spurs and haven't taken the risk that an organization like the Patriots have. They've got such structure and stability built up for so many years that there was a structure and a process and a system that they knew how to manage the risks that they did take.

Pops got an expression, they am who they am, which is kind of like, character is faked. And more often than not, your risks don't, don't, don't, uh, outperform the reward would be my guess. Well, isn't there a certain amount of ego in that too? The idea that like we tell ourselves, I'm going to change this person, right? Like no, everyone else failed because they're not as good as we are. They don't have this, you know, the idea that you're going to change someone or reform them. It can come from a place of compassion, but it can also feel like it comes from a place of ego. That oftentimes was, you know, I think when you get in the way of yourself, ego is the enemy. Yeah. You know, Manu brought me that book first. and there was so much that when you when you have failures,

there's so much of that that that is apparent in how you get in your in your own way. One of the things you and I connected with specifically about Duncan and Tim Robinson because I wrote a daily story email about it, but I to me was a lovely illustration of the Spurs culture. When Tim Duncan was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he was saying, you know, people often ask him, what did David Robinson teach you about leadership and about being a good man and all these things? And he said, I don't think David Robinson ever had a single

conversation with me about any of these things. He just embodied it day to day on the court. I just thought that was so beautiful. Not even day to day on the court. They both live their lives and hold themselves to standards that raise the standards of everybody around them. standards that raise the standards of everybody around them. In 19 years, Tim Duncan was never late once to a practice, to a meeting. He wasn't doing that to demand that of anyone else, but what he demanded of himself raised the standards for all of us. David was very similar. David's impact in our community will live on for years

because of the building blocks that he put in place that he'll never see the cathedral eventually finished. But he set such a great example and challenged us all to really care for each other. And does that make it easier to create a culture when you have these sort of tent pole individuals who are embodying the ideas? And you know, it's like, if Tim Duncan

won't let himself get away with this, who am I? Does it sort of allow you to create a culture around them? Well, I think they create the culture. We're people who work with them, but when you're best players, when you're leaders, when the people who are the examples for your organization and the community, set the culture, then it's up to the rest of us to buy in and to take ownership of it in a way that we all want to build the culture together.

I think what's fascinating about the Spurs is that like obviously it's a dynasty, obviously it's a place that players wanted to go. I love Texas, but it's a relatively small market team or it was for many years. How have you created, how did you create and make San Antonio a destination when you're not New York City or Los Angeles or whatever? It strikes me as one of the most impressive things that you guys that you've managed to do it, but create a culture where people not only want it to come,

but I mean, how many how many players still live in San Antonio, you know, how many players spent their entire careers there. How did you think about creating something both sustainable and desirable in the market that you were in? The people are the ones that created that. The the start with David and the people in our organization, where we'll be celebrating our 50th anniversary next year.

And the sustainability of the success is built around the people and the people who others wanted to come play with. And then I think the structure that Poff put in place, the community, one great thing about our community is that our community allows the superstar players to live their lives. And they don't have to live reluctantly going through life because they will get overwhelmed. South Texas, Central Texas does a great job of letting people be who they are and supporting

and sharing their success in a non-judgmental and also a non-invasive way. I think Mono was telling me and to me this was a testament to the culture that you guys have created. It's that either at the practice facility now or the new one or whatever it was, that you have an alumni locker room or a section for alumni in the locker room. Is that true? As our building that we've been in for 20 years now is getting a little tight. But in our current locker room, we have Tim, David, Manu, all with places to come and be a part of the program. In our new locker room, in our new environment that will move into the summer of 23, we'll have a dedicated alumni space for players and coaches and people who've been important to our organization to come back and be a part of.

Yeah, and he was just saying that was such a good illustration of the culture. First and foremost, that people would be coming in, that they didn't just immediately leave San Antonio as soon as they retired, but that they would be voluntarily coming back to their own place of work to spend time when they could be anywhere doing anything.

It was just such an interesting illustration of the power of a culture and a workplace that people actually want to be in. So Tim is one of the great examples, now Monty, but once Tim retired, he didn't have any interesting coaching, but he was in the gym three or four days a week, just helping people grow and mentoring new players. And he loves to play. He loves to be in the gym. He, Lonnie Walker, Lonnie's rookie year, he injured his knee during training camp.

And so he was out for six weeks, and the team, the season started, the team was away. We were bringing Lonnie back. Lonnie was out of shape, hadn't been because of the knee surgery, hadn't been able to work out hard. One of the first days he was back on the floor, they were going up and down the court full speed. And Lonnie got sick and threw up on the court. The first person to go over and clean up the mess was Tim. And then, Tim's like, Lonnie, get your butt back on the floor.

We got work to do. And that's such a meaningful example. Now, Manu is back in our program. And when he has conversations with players, it comes with such a level of respect for not only what they accomplished, but how they did it. And the commitment that they made to each other,

the teamwork that you see with Manu, with his national team. You know, over the course of Manu's career, Manu played for Argentito, a total of about 24 months, which in NBA seasons is three extra years on a career. They won Olympic gold medal, they won World Championships, they won in ways that Argentina had never been before.

One of the best team environments I'd ever seen in 2002, the summer before Monu joined our program, they lost in the finals of the World Championships in Indianapolis to Serbia. And it was a devastating blow. It's first time they played for a gold medal in a devastating blow. It was the first time they played for a gold medal in a worldwide event. And after the loss to Serbia, that afternoon,

I ran into their team in a Rusecrest in Indianapolis. And it was the greatest team environment I'd ever seen. Even though they were all devastated, they were losing. They knew that they were leaving each other and going to their respective clubs to play for the following season, and they weren't gonna be together, and that they were gonna enjoy their last night together

as teammates before they went to the far sides of the world to play for their clubs. And you learn so much by watching other cultures being built that are really meaningful. And what do you think some of the hallmarks of a good culture are? Like, when you look at a team or an organization and you see like, oh, that's a culture we can learn from, what do you tend to be struck by? Is it how people treat each other?

Is it how they're organized? What do you look for? I think it's the commitment that they make to each other as teammates and focused on what's best for the team, for the organization, rather than what's best for me. I think that's the first one. Then I think the standards that they set for each other, that they hold themselves accountable to, that provides the structure for them to go out and then be successful at the details of their mission, whether it's a McDonald's or a basketball club

or NASA, the great cultures all have people that are part of something bigger than themselves. That was what was striking to me, and I don't think we have to get political about it, but some of the athletes that have decided not to be vaccinated and they're reasoning, they say, well, I'm doing what's best for me, which is, I thought an interesting, you know, there's that great expression when people accidentally say the quiet part out loud, right? It's like you're saying I'm doing what's best for me, which I guess obviously every individual is entitled to do, but you play a team sport, right? Like the irony of saying that in a team sport struck me as interesting. You guys have in a sport that's become more and more individualistic. You guys seem to have built a culture that is bigger than the individual in a way that's pretty unique among professional sports. It's the lessons that pop shares on a daily basis with our team.

It's the opportunities of people who come speak with us and join and tell us about how they're successful, what made their journeys unique, that continue to emphasize we're involved in something much bigger than just a basketball club. If our team was just focused on winning games, if Pop was just focused on that, I think we would lose what really has made this organization unique. Tim Manu, Patty Mills, Borussia, their coffee club,

their lunches that they go talk about their life experiences in a way that don't have anything to do with basketball. I think that's where you build that culture and commitment as opposed to just being figured out how to make a better widget. Well, and what's interesting is I think people think like, oh, I should only care about winning because winning is what I'm judged on. But I think by its important to look at examples like this is here you have a team or an organization that is saying hey

This is bigger than basketball. It's not just about winning and losing and yet Or perhaps because you think about it that way you still win a lot, right? I think people Think that if if I'm thinking about anything other than winning it will come at the expense of winning But maybe that's not true. I think a fundamental aspect of our culture is competitiveness. So if you're not competitive, you don't fit into our program. That is a foundational aspect of our culture. Now from that point going forward, recognizing that I'm not competing for myself,

I'm competing for a larger group of individuals. And that when you really bring all those together, hold each other accountable, focus on caring for each other. Pop can coach people hard, because he spends so much more time developing the personal relationship that allows them to understand that he's coaching me hard not because of anything personal. He's coaching me

hard because this is what's best for the team. And at the same time, he cares like hell about me. And he's going to do everything he can to help me grow professionally, personally, within my family. Again, it's, you have to care to be able to demand excellence of others. If they don't know you care, it'll be difficult to demand excellence. Well, just as a bit of a tease, I actually talk about you guys a little bit in the book that I'm working on now. What I think is an illustration of what you're talking about is the spurs pioneering the concept, which is now very common in the NBA of load management.

So pop my ride guys very hard. You might have extremely high expectations of people, but then he also illustrates that he cares about their long-term longevity as players, and he cares about them as human beings, that he doesn't just see them as horses that you ride into the ground and then shoot and then move on to the other one. The idea of like, hey, no, I care about these people and I'm going to actively work so they don't get burned out is it probably a good example of not just saying you care about players but showing that you care about players.

And you took big fines for doing that in the early days as well. It wasn't free to do it. Now in 2011 we play in Orlando on a Wednesday night. We've got the Miami Heat on a Thursday night, the early in the season. And this was one of TNT's first games of the year. Miami were defending champions. We were coming off our and they had in place that Saturday. We were coming off. The Miami game would have been our fourth game in five nights. And one of them had been an overtime game, right? Yeah, we were exhausted.

We had a private plane ready to send Tim Tony, Monu and David, I mean, and Danny Green back to San Antonio after the Orlando game on Wednesday night. And then the team went on to Miami and was going to play with the rest of the team that night. Our private plane had mechanical problems. We couldn't leave that night after the game, and the quickest way to get our guys home, the next morning was on Southwest Airlines. It was a nonstop from Orlando to San Antonio,

so we stick them all on Southwest. I think maybe Tim got an aisle seat, but because it was so late, everybody else was stuck in the middle. And it was right in the early time of cell phone pictures and Twitter. And so here, the whole plane's tweeting pictures of Monu and Tony sitting in middle seats and Timmy sitting on an aisle on his Southwest plane. So the league knew about it before we got to the arena that night.

And Commissioner Stern came up, made a big statement. He'd find us $250,000 that for resting the guys at night. But the rest of our team had a two-point lead with under a minute to go. And Ray Allen makes a three-bonder, and we end up losing the game by one or two. But the opportunity to let a new group play in compete and play at the highest level against the defending world champions, I think, raise the expectations and the opportunities

for the rest of the team. We had several players play better that night that then put them in a position to grow for the future. As you look at Tim Manu's career, they both played till they were older than 40. Tony played till he was 38. Like we talked about, Manu had 24 months of national team play. Tony did, he wasn't 24, but he was about 20 months as well as these guys played together about 250 playoff games on top of their regular seasons.

And Olympics. And yeah, in an Olympics, which is another three NBA seasons. So in dog years, these guys played a long time. And it was because Pop did what was best for them to to help them maximize their their careers, their opportunities, their impacts, not only as players, but as people in the world. Another illustration of of you guys culturally that I wanted to share that I was very struck by is I went to a game this maybe two years ago. I forget when it was, but I was visiting you and I was I was taking the elevator

up to your box and I forget what entrance I came in and was taking the elevator. And I noticed that the guy sitting he was the elevator guy who's sitting on a stool was pretty old. But I noticed he has a huge ring on his finger. And I looked down and it's a championship ring. He has a spurs championship ring on his finger. And I said, how did you get that championship ring? And they said, oh, when the spurs win a championship,

everyone who works for the team gets a ring. And it was so striking to me that when you think about, like I think for the fan, you think about the organization as the players on the field, the coaches, the special assistants perhaps, and maybe a few like the equipment manager, you don't think about the person working the elevator as being a contributing member to that championship run,

but I was so struck by that expanded definition of who's on the team that I was like, ah, this is why they have the tradition of winning that they do. There's a great example from a NASA custodian at NASA where they ask him, you know, what do you do for NASA? I think his response was, I help put men on the moon. Yeah. I take it out the garbage. Everything everybody has a role in the success of the program. Yeah, and it could probably be easy not to think about those people because you're

managing, you know, people making hundreds of millions of dollars, you've got celebrity, you've got all this stuff, but I imagine it's, it takes time and energy to care about all those people, but when you do that, you get an organization that is aligned and working together. And yeah, who knows? Maybe that guy delivers the fan to their box who celebrates, it all contributes to a great home environment. And maybe he's taking Tim Duncan's wife up and down the elevator and she's more relaxed and as a result,

Tim Duncan plays better. You never know where these little contributions can make a big difference. You're exactly right. So as you have transitioned for people who don't know, you were the GM for many, many years. So your primary responsibility was the sort of on-court product, delivering the talent that pop coached and won the championships. But was it now two years ago,

is it three years ago, you transitioned to a new role inside the organization, walked me through what that role is and how that has challenged you. Well, in September of 19, we've had quite a bit of transition going through our organization over the last, since 2015, really. the investor group had a generational transition of leadership. We had three of our iconic players retired during that point in time. We had two of our business leaders retire in the summer of 19 and at some point in time pop is going to retire. And so in trying to create some stability for the

organization, I moved into the CEO role in September of 19. And my real mission is to align our organizations across all the different aspects and to take it from a basketball side and a business side and a re-n operation side and try to align us all under one umbrella that will hopefully set up our organization for the future. And little did we know that March of 2020 we would have a pandemic that has challenged us organizationally but is just across the world to reimagine what our organization of the future will look like.

And I think I've spent quite a bit of time trying to create an organization of transparency and innovation in a place that for 20 plus years we had a really stable team, we had a stable business environment to try to to try to grow, you know, adding the opportunity to engage both Austin and San Antonio all the way to to Monterey, Mexico. I think we've got the fastest corridor community and region in the world growing from a growth standpoint and really tying that quarter together in a way that we not only expand our brand, but we help build

the brand of central Texas to Mexico. Yeah, it's like it was already a hard transition from GM to CEO, because you go from just caring about the players to having to care about everything. And then the world rolls into your lap. People can't be in the same building as each other. The players are going to play in a bubble. That must have been extraordinarily challenging for you at this stage in your career to essentially have to reimagine what you do day to day and reimagine the game itself in some ways.

Challenging, but it was also really exhilarating. And I think that the NBA created through their legal offices, through creating a bubble, through reimagining the fan experience. You know, we had to go from an environment where now that the fans come to, can't come to us, how do we go to the fans and how do we reimagining our product and the world was craving for sports and the bubble that the NBA created and the virtual fan experience and the virtual partner relationships that we were able to do through the creativity of the NBA and the ability to get 22 teams together in a safe environment that they were allowed to compete, go through the playoffs and complete the season.

What there were great learnings that were happening on a daily basis. And it just, it made us really reimagine our whole game. And then now, the organization of the future and how much different our worlds will look. Yeah, I mean, obviously in some ways, he's kind of like your boss. Or you see, you have to work with him as a colleague. So you probably see it a little more realistically than I do.

But it does strike me that as far as leaders go in this crazy period that we have existed in, that Adam Silver has done a pretty incredible job as a leader of a really spread out, decentralized, complicated, multifaceted organization. I can't think of many businesses or industries that have done a better job adapting and surviving through the pandemic and all the other things that have happened over the last two years than the NBA? Well, Adam is maybe one of the most unique empathetic leaders I've ever had the fortune to observe and to share with. If you think about the changes in leadership from the prior commissioner, David Stern was a hero in the development of professional sports and basketball through the NBA in our world. But he was a very demanding, disciplined,

structured leader that used fear as a real motivator across multiple aspects of our league, our players, our organizations. Transform that to the next generation leader, which is a much different environment for both the League Office, for our player relationships, and for our team owners and investors, as well as the globalization of the game has created an entirely different platform than what we had. And Adam has really been the steward of that through that leadership change. If you remember right at the beginning, when he first was named, you had the circumstances around the LA clippers and Donald Sterling and the racial insensitive remarks

that Donald made and the swift motion that Adam changed leadership, which had never been forced upon an owner or a team environment in the NBA history. And then since then continuing to emphasize and amplify impact work through the NBA social justice reform through creating a foundation with our players. The goal is for each team to contribute $1 million a year

for 10 years, and then to raise another $6, 700 million to create a billion dollar fund for economic equity opportunities over the next decade, and partnering with our players to have real impact in those spaces to develop the basketball affricably, the NBA Academy programs that are now in India, South America, Australia, Africa, and China. I mean, he's just a global visionary that has influenced and impacted us us all mostly because of this empathy. Yeah, it strikes me, there's kind of a Steve Jobs Tim Cook analogy there. Steve Jobs is the charismatic TV set, you know, sort of media-centric, powerful leader, and then Tim Cook comes along and is quieter and less

assuming and isn't blowing anyone's mind with these genius innovations, but actually manages to optimize the company in a lot of ways, accomplish a lot of things that people thought were impossible and really continue the legacy of the growth of his predecessor. It strikes me that's sort of been the trajectory of the NBA. Adam's over isn't the, isn't perhaps that people don't even know who he is, but has done a really good job of leading the NBA, which is probably a good model for leadership as well, that you can be a quiet empathetic leader. You don't have to be that sort of forceful in center leader that people often assume that a leader is like.

I mean, especially the lessons that you share through the Stoics. I think we see those empowering leaders emphasized quite often in the stories you share. So as you've transitioned, you obviously had to learn a whole lot of different skills or had to do a bunch of things. I imagine you were very comfortable, although it was hard, you were quite comfortable with your day-to-day role before because you had 20 odd years of experience doing it, how did you adjust to just a different way of being and leading and problem solving, how did you go about becoming a student of this new set of responsibilities? Summer of 18, I started engaging in executive education at Stanford and took a two-week class that really was powerful, not so much in what I learned, but in the new relationships that I created around

the world. And then as I was in preparation, I started an online MBA at Stanford that started September of 19, I spent the last two years really continuing to learn and a much more business focused curriculum, but also crisis management, understanding disruption and innovation, and a much more global approach to strategy than I'd ever had. And so I think wanting to learn was something that I've always enjoyed, I wish I had started back into an executive education program sooner in my life as much for the new relationships and the new people that I've met as much as much or more so than for the actual curriculum although the curriculum has been fantastic. The other part of this is I think you have to listen and there are experts throughout our organization, throughout our world, that know more about specific tasks

and details than I ever will know. And so listening to them and powering them to take ownership and be a part of something. Yeah, there's a story about Marcus Aurelius. He's emperor and he's seen leaving the palace that carrying these tablets and someone says, where are you going? And he says, I'm off to see sexist the philosopher.

And the guy says, why would you be doing that? You're wise and powerful and all these things. And he says, to learn that, which I don't yet know. And I love that story because I have to imagine for a person in your position who's top of the world class at a thing, you've won multiple championships, you're one of the best people in the world to ever do your job, to then go into a new environment

and not be naturally good at it or not know everything to do. I imagine it was scary and required a certain amount of humility to ask questions and to say I need to go back to school and that there's to even admit that there's stuff that you need to learn. I think people really struggle with that. It was clear that that was a part of the journey if I was going to be successful. But again, I think, as I've learned through reading your books, your ego is going to get in the way more often than it's going to help you, use the opportunity, the obstacle to grow.

And the pandemic was an amazing obstacle for all of us and to be able to share that across our organization and admit that we don't know what is going to happen next. And it's going to be messy. And there's not going to be, we can't give each other the answers, but we'll do this together and we'll all be better because of it. And I think our group, our organization is a better team today for what we've had to go through than we were when we, before we went into the pendant. And I think we know how to have more difficult conversations with each other and be more authentic with each other because of the challenges that have come through social justice at the murder of George Floyd organization. I didn't know what to help.

How to lead at a time that was so disruptive and I listened, you know, I listened to pop forever and what happened when our team faced difficult time is he got us all in a room and we had hard conversations and we listened to each other. And we did that as an organization and through the vulnerability of many of our leaders of color, and many of the people throughout our organization of color shared their experience with racism. And I think it opened our organization up to now. Two things we learned about each other and have a greater appreciation for each other and the daily challenges and burdens that people carry into our jobs that are going to help us know how to work together better.

into our jobs that are going to help us know how to work together better. But I think it also gave us the opportunity to recognize the responsibility we have to each other to support each other during times of challenge and change. And the Spurs Voices campaign that is online is a great example of taking a step back and listening to each other. And now I think we can have harder conversations because we're building a skill set that not necessarily isn't isn't easy within a business environment. Well, I was going to I was going to say that one of the things that I've always loved about the Spurs that probably served you well in the time you're talking about

is that the Spurs have always been a diverse organization, not just racially, but from players from all over the world. You have one of the first, if not one of the first female assistant head coaches. How have you thought about diversity inside the organization both as a GM and now as the CEO? I've got to imagine that as a result of this diversity, not only have you had a great on the court product,

finding talent that perhaps other people would have overlooked, but you also have such a beautifully diverse fan base as a reflection of that diversity. So if you want to talk about the self-interested benefits of diversity, you're probably one of the most Spanish heavy markets of all the NBA teams because of the overtures that you've made to all these different communities.

First of all, our community is 60% Hispanic. We are a part of a community that the minorities are the majority. I think also it was a great wave. I learned from pop early. He had a great appreciation for the way basketball was played around the world. And I think too many people think that we invented the game and we know how to play it. And the game is a much more team focused game around the world as the stories that we talked about with the Argentinian national team.

We are our 2014 championship team. 11 of our 14 guys were born outside the US, outside of continental US. And the shared life experiences that those players can share with each other are what made the individual personal relationships different than just being part of a team that plays basketball. Becky Hammond had been a great player within the WNBA, had finished her career in San Antonio, and Pop and I didn't even look at this like we were blazing a trail. She had been injured

the year before her last year, so she spent quite a bit of time rehabbing with our medical team, and she was just around our team, and our guys got to listen to her, share her experiences. She sat in our coaches meetings and challenged us to think differently in ways that we hadn't. And when it came time for her to retire, it was just like, this person can help us be better. Let's go higher. We didn't even have a press conference.

We made a press release. And then the next day, the world blows up and good morning America and USA today and all these people are coming in. And Pop and I weren't even smart enough to figure out that this was going to be a big deal. So it's just part of building the best team that we can. Let's find the best ideas from wherever. No, and I think, I was with you once when someone was sort of dismissing some of the virtue, dismissing some of the efforts inside the NBA is virtue signaling.

But I think there's a real self-interested case to make for stuff like that. The diversity being to one's advantage, not only do you get the perspective of someone like Becky, but to me the perfect encapsulation of diversity of the Spurs is that Manu, a player from Argentina, brings to the Spurs and the NBA what we now call the Euro Step. Right? And so you have like four cultures there all smashing together to create something totally new

that is actually better than how things were done before. Yeah, and Monu brought a lot of crazy stuff with it. It was a real challenge for pop to coach Monu early because of Monu's lack of fear and his ability to try things sometimes they work, sometimes somebody's going to get beaten in the head with a straight pass. But over the course of time, you saw how Monu's creativity elevated the engagement of his team, of his league, of a worldwide basketball population. Well, and that goes to the last thing that I wanted to talk to you about. And if people have questions, throw them in, I'll try to get to them. But this idea of time,

or consistency, or the compounding returns of working together over the long haul, that you brought up that image of the guy pounding the rock, which I know is sort of an expression inside the spurs. The idea that you pound and pound and pound and pound at the rock and eventually it cracks, but how many hits does it take, how long does it take? The idea of building a dynasty, a sustained culture, as opposed to reinventing the wheel every year, trying to go get the best players in the free agency market each year, that seems to not be as popular now in the NBA. Is it still possible to do what you guys did? Are people wrongly going away from something tried and true?

As a person who's trying, as a writer, I've been all my books with the same publisher. I try to think about consistency. I try to think about sustainability. I try to think about how they're gonna do over the long term. But it does seem like everyone is always chasing what's new or what will work right now.

And does that come at the expense of building something that lasts? I don't think there's only one way to do things. And I think that's your consistency has proven to be a successful approach for you. Someone else is going to have a different approach, and they'll probably have success as well in a different way. Clearly player mobility is impacting the stability of leagues right now. You know, there's there's a great team in Brooklyn that has been built by one of our closest just brothers, Sean Marx. one of our closest brothers, Sean Marx, and he is one of the great culture builders

and teammates that we've ever had in our program. It'll be interesting to see how that culture, that team grows together and what the sustainability of capturing Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and the rest of the pieces that go around. Marcus. Yeah, Lamarcus is back this year. We're thrilled that he's healthy and ready to play. It'll be interesting to see how they capture that and how they can carry it forward and do the personalities of Kyrie

disrupt that in a debilitating way. Yeah, and it does strike me though that the way you guys were able to beat the heat, for instance, was just this sort of grinding year after year, the players coming together learning a system year after year, the players coming together, learning a system, and that I still think that's an underrated strategy. Again, we can only control what we know works here. And fortunately, the investor leaders of our organization have allowed us to establish culture. I mean, as you've talked about culture, culture is really difficult and it doesn't happen quickly and in sports that instant gratification and I don't know this across all industries, but the constant churns of the head coach and player movement makes the development of some

consistency and stability really difficult and I think it takes time to build sustainability. Have you read this new Seth Wickersham book about the New England Patriots? I have not. It's really good. It was something I was gonna ask you about because I found it really interesting.

I'm gonna interview him on the podcast, but it's called it's better to be feared. But anyways, I had thought originally that Tom Brady leaving the Patriots was an indication kind of this player mobility, like I want to go where I can win right now, this sort of a knock against building a dynasty. But one of the really interesting arguments

he talks about in the book, and this pertains to something that you had told me, is that he argues that one of the really interesting arguments he talks about in the book and this pertains to something you had told me is that he argues that one of the reasons that Tom Brady left New England was that he loved basketball and wanted to keep playing, sorry, he loved football and wanted to keep playing football, but that it sort of stopped being fun, that the system had kind of ground him down and it didn't have a way to operate that the New England system was so rigid, it was struggling to work around a 42 year old quarterback who had done all these things.

And that basically his wife came to him and said, you can keep playing football, but not like this, right? Like that it's tearing our family apart. And so part of the reason he goes to Tampa is that he wants to keep playing, but he wants to play in a culture that's more fun and accommodating and whatever. But I thought that was interesting

because I remember you told me something about one of your players, and I don't know if you wanna share it who it was or whatever, but that they had been thinking about leaving the Spurs and they had a bigger offer from the Spurs than the Spurs, but they didn't leave due to a policy about the integration of family inside the organization.

It was something like you couldn't travel with the spouse and that part of the reason that this person had stayed with you guys is that you had done such a good job building and accommodating players and their needs inside the organization. So that's a big part of Pops' ethos, this is bigger than basketball. We're not just here to focus on winning games

and we want to engage the families. Steve Kerr talks about this. One of his real core values is joy. And I think that having the ability to include your families, to bring them on the road. We don't want 15 families on every trip, but on occasion. Bring your kids. bring your spouse, go have fun and make this bigger than just the game of basketball.

And I think, I can't comment on New England, but I think you run the risk of taking the fun out of the joy of, I think that I've listened to Steve quite a bit lately about that aspect as we transform to our next generation team with a new coach at some point in time, recognizing that the next person is gonna have to have the opportunity to be himself and to come as their authentic self in a way that they don't feel the responsibility of replacing pop and but really come with a sense of joy as well.

Well, I think it's just illustrated that even at Tom Brady's level or even in professional basketball, even as you're making millions and millions of dollars a year, people are still asking themselves, am I having fun? Do I like where I work? People do not want to go show up every day at a job that it's no fun, and they won't be their best selves if they're being ground into dust or used like fodder.

And so I think the idea that part of culture is enjoying yourself and being able to maximize and fulfill your potential personally and professionally. That's a huge part of culture. Yeah, we play a game. We're blessed to have an opportunity to make a lot of money playing a game that we love to play as kids and you know for nothing. And so, too often times, especially when we're challenged, I think we lose that perspective. And that's oftentimes when you have to focus on stillness and getting. And when you start losing, losing

that joy and that passion, I think is when you know you need to step away. And last question was part of the decision to take on the new role and to shake things up inside the organization was part of it for you, like wanting to do something new, wanting the next challenge, keeping it interesting? The learning, the interesting part of it, yes. I also, we had some great young talent in place that I wanted to provide the opportunity for growth for others.

I think that's been one of of my joys in our career together in San Antonio is that the impact on other people's opportunities that we've shared the journey with for pop and media. Now there's, you know, there have been a dozen head coaches that grew up within our program. There's, you know, 10 people who lead organizations or who have led organizations, who we all shared the journey with, and to see people to provide opportunity for growth, to provide upward mobility, and as well as our organization needed some stability, as we had so many significant transitions happening in a very short window. This was, I'm honored and proud to be able to be part of a team and hopefully help us transition

to our next generation. Well, the idea that you were partly stepping into a new role to create opportunities for other people strikes me as a move very consistent with the Spurous Culture you were talking about and illustrated with the Tim Duncan story where he's working out with players, even after he's walked away from the game.

I think another great example of this is Monon, who was the greatest player ever from his country, comes to the NBA and had an entire career as the six man on our team. And he got over himself early and recognized in the best interest of the team. It's best for me to come off the bench and be the wild card that made him a Hall of Fame player

that made him all star four time NBA champion. That was a real sacrifice for what's best for the team. And it wasn't always easy. Early he was catching a lot of public sentiment from South America, like how the hell can manage you knowably not be starting for the spurs. And his sacrifice for our program allowed us to accomplish things that we never would have had he,

had his approach been more selfish. Because he could have, he could have gone somewhere else, right, and he decided to stay. And several times. Beautiful. RC, thank you so he decided to stay. Several times. Beautiful. RC, thank you so much. It's been too long. I hope we can see each other soon. I look forward to being in the painted, pony bookstore,

painted for it. Well, you got a good independent bookstore right down the street from you. Jenny Lawson just opened one. I don't know if you've been yet. I have not. It's right down the street from you. You got to go check it out. Okay. All right.

You're the best. We'll talk soon. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.