Is mentoring overrated?

GO UW!

But the Chauncy Billups article by Tom Friend over at ESPN kinda’ made me re-think things.

I think you’re spot-on when you say that a guy like LMA (been in the league a few years, already playing very well) has little or nothing to learn from Juwan Howard, but I do think that a player like Bayless (young, hasn’t had much playing time) could blossom under the tutelage of a savvy vet if the situation was right (read: Bayless has a shot at playing time and the veteran is the mentoring type).

Great thoughts though…definitely has been interesting to see how the public perception of mentors has grown and developed.

I believe that mentorship can be a positive factor in the development and have experienced it myself. But e.g. in business, the mentor is not supposed to be the supervisor. It’s often not even someone working for the same company. That’s one thing that I think makes it hard in a competitive environment for a current teammate to be a true mentor, especially when he competes on the same position for playing time and for the next contract. An assistant coach or outside advisor who has a lot of experience from his days seems to be better suited for such a role.

Regardless of how the position is presented, however, mentoring is indeed overrated in professional sports.

I don’t see teams falling over themselves to add mentors (overpaying mentors, denying roster spots to good young players for a mentor, making other rash decisions to get one). I’d have to say no, it’s not overrated – only because nobody I know is “over-rating” it to begin with.

It does not have to be on the court itself. Teaching how to handle the NBA lifestyle in itself can be huge. It is hard to measure in that way,for instance if a mentor keeps a young man from getting in trouble off the court you will never know it. The news only comes when a player does get himself in trouble so we will never here about the success only the failure.

Mentoring is overrated if you don’t have the experience to contrast it with….I think Oscar Wilde once wrote:

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes

Mentoring can be effective but I don’t think there is any substitution for hands on experience.

It should also be noted that there are varying levels of mentoring, and it can be effective in the overall road to success. Juwan Howard would be a good mentor for mentioning other PFs tendencies, what to do when a referree is calling a game a certain way, protecting you from jerks in the league (Pryzbilla mention that he’s indebted to Damon for helping him through the first few years) etc, but certain things like how to prep for a Finals wouldn’t be in Juwan’s forte. Can coaches do all of the above? Sure, but sometimes its good to hear from a teammate that is in the trenches with you.

You can sit BRoy down with the 10 greatest players of all time for a month and it won’t compare to what he will learn playing in the WCF. But an Andre Miller telling him here’s when you can complain about a call and when you shouldn’t, could indeed help him.

So if we generalize mentoring, it is over-rated…but if broke mentoring down to specific areas of expertise or life experiences, then it could be worthwhile.

I guess mentoring is just a misleading word…Having someone who’s been there before and now has your best interest in mind is invaluable, especially if they are on your team. Sometimes coaches can’t connect at that level.

And from my experience, it’s better to have one than not….and listening is up to the mentee.

What percentage of the game is mental and what percentage is physical?

Now take the percentage that is mental and divide that up into instinct and learned behavior.

To the degree that mentors speed up the learning process and aid in the physical development and conditioning aspects they produce a value measure.

Lets say the game is 50/50 mental and physical. And lets say that the mental portion is 50/50 learned and instinctive. Let us also assume that a mentor can influence conditioning and physical development by 5 percent through knowledge of what is needed and example.

So what do we have? What does the equation look like?

WE have .5 (mental) * .5 (learned behavior) = .25 (25%) influence potential (mental)

We also have .5 (physical) * .05 (conditioning and physical development) =.025 (2.5%) influence potential

Now lets add them together: 25% + 2.5% = 27.5% Total influence potential or a TIP of 27.5%.

If these numbers reflect the potential difference a mentor (team leader) can make (i.e. Chauncey Billups vs. Allen Iverson), then the influence is significant indeed.

Even if we were to cut the influence numbers in half, they would still be vital in a league where the top teams are fairly evenly matched.

Mentorships by their very nature are private. When a player or coach succeeds it’s usually chalked up to his talent or passion for the game and not who he talks to behind closed doors. Rarely do we have the inside scoop into those sort of relationships.

However, Kevin Pelton did do a pretty incredible article about NBA coaching trees. Here’s a brief summary.

Dean Smith
__________
Larry Brown, George Karl, Billy Cunningham, Matt Doherty, Doug Moe, Roy Williams

Brown Branch: Maurice Cheeks, Gregg Popovich
Karl Branch: Nate McMillan
Popovich Sub-Branch: Mike Brown, P.J. Carlesimo,

*It should also be noted that Kevin Pritchard was mentored by both Brown and Pop.ovixh

Pat Riley
________
Marc Iavaroni, Byron Scott, Erik Spoelstra, Stan Van Gundy, Kurt Rambis, Jeff Van Gundy

Scott Sub-Tree: Eddie Jordan

Jack Ramsay
___________
Rick Adelman, Jim O’Brien

Adelman Sub-Tree: Terry Porter

There’s a bunch more examples, and I recommend reading the article. Clearly for coaching success at least, having a good mentor matters. For players it’s a bit more tricky to distinguish mentorships, let alone determine their value. There are some pretty notable examples of players learning from one another.

For example, without Dean Berry, “The Answer” would never have existed.

“A freshman at Georgetown University, young Iverson hadn’t acquired a crossover move. He then met Dean Berry, a walk on guard for Georgetown. During practice, Iverson noted that Dean had an unstoppable cross; Even when he knew it was coming he couldn’t stop it. Iverson himself had never had to develop moves to get to the basket…
-
Sometimes Dean and Iverson would stay after practice and play one on one for hours. Eventually, Iverson asked Dean how he could get by anyone at any time. It sparked a friendship that resulted in Iverson’s pro career. Without Dean, Iverson would never have learned a move to get to the basketball and would have been stuck trying to out run bigger and bigger opponents.”--sportstales.com

Regardless of how you feel about Iverson, I think that’s a pretty practical example of a player learning a tangible skill from one of his peers. If some guy named Dean Berry can help Iverson become one of the most prolific scorers of our time, I don’t see why Andre Miller wouldn’t be able to teach Bayless a thing or two.

seldom happens, I believe. For one thing, as you put in your later comment, players on a team are in competition with each other for playing time. Plus the coin of the NBA realm is talent+money+effect on the game. If you’re highly rated in all of those areas you have the authority to speak. If not, what do you have to tell guys who are seeking for the same. It’s a culture of youth and immediacy. Codgers tend to be low on the ladder in all three categories. If a geezer on a minimum contract stands up and tries to lecture other players might well tell him to sit down, shut up, and leave it to the players who are actually playing. Or even if they don’t say it, it’s implied. Therefore that kind of overt locker room leadership probably happens rarely. Add in that many young hotheads consider any critique of their game or style as an insult and you see why an old guy can’t just come in and start telling people how to act and and how to play.

But you’ve only discussed the type of mentorship that’s least likely to happen. In nearly every locker room on nearly every team in the world there’s a guy (maybe two) who is quiet, professional, and just goes about his business. 99.9% of the time he leads by example, which is in itself a type of mentorship. He takes care of his body. He knows the places to eat and the places to avoid in each town. He has little tricks he uses to enhance his presence on the court. He knows how to interpret what the coach is saying…which things are deadly important and which things you can let blow by. He knows when to joke and he knows when it’s time to get down to business. And yes, most often this guy is old. If he goes about his business right—meaning basically specifically not doing the overt, bossy things we just talked about—people start to look up to him. They ask him a question or two. They learn the tricks of the trade.

Almost always there comes a point on the way to the promised land where things fall apart. You lose a home game in the playoffs. Or the team leader gets into an argument with a key teammate. Or the team goes on an unexpected losing streak and guys are sitting looking at each other not understanding what went wrong, how serious to take it, or how to stop it. Or the tension rises to a boiling point in a team meeting. Or the coach kicks everybody out of practice for not going hard enough but the guys are ready to kick the coach in the rear for not understanding that they’re tired and injured.

These critical moments don’t happen every day. Maybe it’s once a year. Maybe it’s only once in a team’s growth period but it happens to be a critical time, like when a playoff series is on the line. Then suddenly, out of the blue, the old guy speaks. Every eye is on him because he hasn’t done it much, which means this must be important. Maybe he doesn’t say much. Maybe the guys don’t even get it entirely. Maybe it’s not even the best advice. But it doesn’t matter, because even by speaking he affirms that somebody has been in this situation before and people DO get past them. There is a wrong and right way. It’s up to the team to find the right way but it can be done. There is hope.

Maybe this doesn’t even happen in a team meeting. Maybe the superstar has that blowout with the second best guy on the roster. Maybe he asserts his leadership hard and shuts the other guy down. Maybe there’s a knock on his hotel room door that night. The old guy might not tell you what to do. It’s your team, not his. But you need that other guy. He makes the team better, which makes you better. And you can’t be much of a leader if your team doesn’t do better. So do you want to be completely right and have the team suffer or do you want to give a little and watch the team succeed?

These things happen all the time. NBA lore is replete with them. Most every superstar I’ve heard interviewed at length about his career has at some point mentioned, “When I was coming up so and so was the old guy in the locker room and he helped me see what I needed to do.”

If you look at the Blazers’ locker room the past few years, they haven’t had any of those guys. Before Brandon Roy it wouldn’t have mattered because the younger guys didn’t give a crap what Scottie Pippen had to say anyway. We ended up having to dump those young guys when they became the older guys because they were standing in Roy’s way and couldn’t kick their bad habits. We’ve done without them since. Fortunately this new crop of players is mature and negotiates most things well. But that doesn’t mean an experienced voice is unnecessary or unhelpful. Those moments are coming for the Blazers too. One came in last year’s playoff series. More lie ahead as the team tries to go deeper.

You can take the chance that these guys can adapt quickly and won’t lose a single step or a single game while they’re figuring things out. Keep in mind if you want to do so that there are no do-overs. Lose a series because of one game or one moment—one mistake or hesitation or brief-but-telling disintegration that the team could have seen coming or recovered from—and you lose an entire year of work and perhaps one of a very limited number of chances to achieve the ultimate goal. Or you can take that same team, those same players, and season them with a couple of guys who have been around and seen a few things. You lose nothing. You might gain something though.

The claim that the media always touts mentoring when a veteran is signed is a bit overstated. Nobody talked about Shawn Marion mentoring anybody in Dallas or Richard Jefferson in San Antonio or probably Bobby Jackson or Quentin Richardson anywhere. The reason it’s mentioned in connection with the Blazers is because it’s an element (a reciprocal dynamic really) they’ve utterly lacked in recent years. It also has a decent chance of being needed.

—Dave

I can think of a number of times when mentoring has occurred in Pro sports. Bill Parcells, NFL football coach, believed strongly in mentoring. During training camp every year he would invite several retired players to come and spend time with the younger players. His example was demonstrated one year when the infamous Terrell Owens (TO) latched onto two young undrafted WR candidates working with them after practice every day. Both made the team and both are key contributors now.

In basketball the coaches cited by NVE above are evidence. Incidentally Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp were both players and coaches under Phog Allen at Kansas. College basketball coaches go out of their way to train up their assistants knowing that the success they have will lead to them getting hired away as rivals.

In college basketball the reason young teams do not usually do well in the tournament is the lack of mentors on the team. The teams that are strong year after year blend the young and the older and encourage them to mentor and be mentored.

As for the Blazers I suspect one player in particular needs mentoring and that is Travis. Roy and Brandon are younger and have not been here as long as he and a timely word from Miller or Howard might bring some needed discipline to his game. (Purely speculation on my part.)

In business I was helped by mentors and served as a mentor in a number of occasions. The difference was very noticeable. Now never did I hire someone to just mentor. But the ones who could/would mentor were more valuable and appreciated.

For my opinion I’ll quote Jsnake above: “I definitely think it is overrated.”

Cutting to the chase, it appears the timing of this post relates directly to our hiring of Juwan Howard. It seems to be difficult to make a strong case that he still has enough playing ability remaining to help our team to any appreciable degree. Therefore it appears that many fans have decreed the hire was made mostly in the name of mentor-ship. But believing as I do that the pro basketball mentoring aspect is overrated, I feel KP must have had a more prevalent reason to hire him—-although I can’t figure out what it was. I guess it’s just to have a big guy backup featuring a player who likely won’t grumble even if a situation never arises to where his services are needed.

(Definition—when I say “mentor” here, I’m using it strictly in the “let’s bring in an older player sense” and ignoring the possible mentoring opportunities with coaches, etc)

To boil this down to raw economics, the only way to measure a supposed “Mentor Effect” is the difference between the total basketball production of a non-mentored player versus that of a mentored player. I suppose the goal of mentoring is for the given player to reach a high production matching his potential faster and for that period to persist longer.

Let us consider Brandon Roy. I don’t think you can go faster than Rookie of the Year to All-star to Second-Time All-Star in three years. So you have to ask yourself: who was Roy’s mentor? And if he had a mentor (I don’t think that he did), how much better would he be?

The recent Blazers are an interesting example because they are essentially mentorless as a team. If Outlaw had been paired up with a mentor, would he have achieved more and more quickly?

What about the much maligned Zach Randolph? He achieved and achieved quickly… would a mentor have tempered his poor attitude?

Would a mentor of somehow given Rasheed a soul?

In looking over basketball, I’m inclined to agree with Norsktroll. There seem to be no obvious examples of pairings of old and new players being a model of success. In fact, I’m inclined to think KP’s concentration of character from the outset has more to do with determining outcomes than trying to mentor character into people.

mentoring is a very big deal for basketball players in general. relationships often form in middle school and carry on through to the nba. to take local examples, brandon roy makes appearances and actively supports his former aau team, including recruits like abdul gaddy. nate robinson is also very active with younger seattle-area players, including uber-recruit tony wroten. ime udoka has been a father figure/mentor to mike moser and nigel williams-goss. these guys consider each other family members because they often have more in common with each other than those not similarly blessed.

whether a single veteran addition can make that big of a deal depends on a lot of factors. but without a doubt younger players look to older players for a lot once they hit the league and also are the beneficiaries of a lot of support from a very, very young age.

you raise an interesting point though about teammate mentors being overrated… if you consider robinson, stockton and jordan’s hall of fame speeches. they didn’t really thank any older teammates. they mostly thanked contemporaries and guys on other teams that pushed them to be the best. part of that is the gypsy nature of older players — they aren’t around long enough to establish those relationships. also, once stars hit their prime the older guys become less and less important. once stars are old, they are the example and don’t need to have any mentors.

guys on this blazers team did definitely look up to james jones when he was here.

From now on I’m leaving my offspring in a cave somewhere and saving some money.