At the end of last week, Joe Johnson, fresh off his buyout from the Brooklyn Nets, eschewed any realistic hope of chasing a championship and instead opted for a contract with the Miami Heat. Bought-out veterans like Johnson usually follow a predictable pattern, heading for the open roster spot that gives them the greatest chance of winning a ring. Given that both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder were rumored to be interested in his services, the Heat are decidedly not that.
While Johnson probably won’t get a ring in Miami, he will likely win more games than he’ll lose (a benefit that cannot be understated for someone who spent the first 57 games of this season with the Brooklyn Nets) and almost certainly make the playoffs. Miami offers a much larger role for Johnson to play, even if it isn’t going to lead to a more laudatory outcome. Oh, and he also gets to live in Miami, as opposed to Cleveland or Oklahoma City.
In the end, Johnson appears to have chosen quality of life over championship dreams.
Happiness, as a factor in winning basketball games instead of an outcome, is severely undervalued. Looking around the league, talent makes for an obvious dividing line between the haves and the have-nots. But chemistry and joy draw some lines as well. The Houston Rockets have depressingly underperformed preseason expectations and they have looked thoroughly depressed in the process. The Cleveland Cavaliers have been good but are still struggling to hit their ceiling. They are also a team that has often looked as frustrated with each other as they have with their opponents. Hold that pair up against the Boston Celtics this season, or the beautiful collaboration of the Atlanta Hawks last year. Whenever a team becomes more than the sum of its parts, a pleasurable work environment is almost always one of the binding agents.
We have watched countless great teams (on paper) run into a ceiling of unhappiness and frustration that manifests as a lack of execution and precision. We have seen just as many good teams (on paper) become great because they love playing with each other. The 2004 NBA Finals, between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Detroit Pistons, was a five-game referendum on the validity and reach of this phenomenon.
Of all the things that the Golden State Warriors have working in their favor as they chase history, the most basic may be that the team appears to honestly like each other and enjoy playing together. It’s what allows them to shake off emotional flare-ups, and re-form around the strife like so much Play-Doh. Obviously, it’s hard to separate success from happiness. Do the Warriors enjoy playing together because they win, or do they win because they enjoy playing together? The answer is almost always a bit of both and untangling the exact nature of cause and effect is largely irrelevant. One thing feeds the other, which is why happiness should be a coveted organizational value for all 30 teams.
Chemistry and player happiness, as tangible concepts, are extremely difficult to measure. If you can’t measure them, intentionally creating them seems like an even more complex challenge, which is why so many teams seem to just focus on winning games. If you’re winning games then everyone should be happy. And if they’re not, who cares, because you’re winning games!
Besides being difficult to measure, it’s hard to spot teams who are meaningfully investing in player happiness as an organizational value. If there was one obvious example, it would be Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks. Early in his tenure as Mavericks owner, Cuban was celebrated for the little things he did to make his players comfortable — perks like catered meals, a luxury team jet, luggage, limos, and the plushest locker rooms in the league. In terms of organizational costs, those were monetary investments that paid out entirely in emotional and psychological benefits. The whole point was to make the players happier. The Mavericks have had an unbelievable run of success under Cuban, often dramatically exceeding expectations, this season included. Dallas may often be at a talent disadvantage but they rarely suffer from the sorts of interpersonal frustrations and malaise that seem to affect so many other teams.
Each and every one of us has probably worked at a job we didn’t like, with people we didn’t particularly care for. Regardless of whether you have succeeded in those situations, the environment creates an added level of difficulty. In this era of basketball, where every strategic rock is being turned over in search of marginal advantages — sleep, nutrition, shot selection, biometric data collection and analysis — it seems that maximizing the happiness of players would be an obvious variable to plan for. I don’t mean to imply that teams disregard this, but I would posit that very few organizations treat a player’s mental health with as much forethought and care as their physical health.
There is a perception that professional basketball players (and athletes in general) should start from a place of happiness, after all they’re getting paid enormous sums of money to spend their days engaged in what many of us would consider a leisure pursuit. It’s a naive and disconnected perception and players — who, remember, are also human beings — are subject to the same emotional pressures as any of us. Spending your days in an environment where you don’t feel valued, working towards a vision you perhaps don’t feel committed too, alongside people you don’t get along with, can kill the spirit, no matter how much you’re getting paid.
This is why yesterday’s report about Kyrie Irving being unhappy in Cleveland is so serious (assuming it’s true). Figuring out how to get him more shots or develop more synergy with LeBron James may be treating the symptom without taking care of the disease. If Irving is unhappy, the situation needs to be addressed holistically. A disgruntled star is not just individual petulance, it’s a sign that the community of a basketball team has broken down. The best teams, especially the ones who endure across many seasons, have talent and cultures that promote joy. Not every happy player looks the same, but it’s pretty easy to tell those that are from those that aren’t.
Even a happy and engaged Joe Johnson is unlikely to be a game-changer for the Miami Heat. But the fact that he felt Miami was the place for him to be happy and engaged is something deserves respect. With the Heat, his contributions may play a smaller role in the narrative arc of the entire league, but they will play a much larger role in the narrative arc of the team, which is a significant form of compensation in its own right.
As for the Golden State Warriors, they already hold almost every advantage. They have the league’s best offense and one of the best defenses as well. They may very well end up with the Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year. They are also, most certainly, the most joyful team in the league — just one more thing putting them ahead of everyone else.