The Good Face
(This is the third in a series of ideas about leadership…from the perspective of a basketball point guard.)
In the Oklahoma Women’s Basketball era of Stacey Dales, our games actually started about 50 minutes before the opening tip. During warm-up. Though no one really realized it but us. The way our 6’2'' leader took the floor granted us an immediate advantage over the competition. Opposing coaches and players couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Stace would bounce out onto the court— shoulders thrown back, a “look-out” expression on her face—and the other team would start to wilt. Our point guard made everyone believe that we would win.
Especially her teammates.
It didn’t matter who we were playing, where we were playing, or what was on the line. She was our dealer of hope.
Stacey Dales
In much the same way that Stacy fed the post and threaded the needle to a cutter knifing to the rim, she passed out promise to our team. One look at her and we would think whatever was on the horizon was possible. Fueled by a competence built through preparation, she propped doors open with her presence. A belief pulsated through her. It was a personal sense of confidence, for sure, but it was more than that. It was a belief big enough for others to ride on, too. She handed out hope like Santa. It begat itself.
Hope is like that. It’s a contagion. And once you wake it up within you, it changes the shape of things. Leaders have no more important job than to help their teammates find it for themselves.
It’s true both on and off the court. A basketball team looks to their point guard for direction, but they also look at her for what they really need to know. In her face she carries the lay of the land. A point guard running back on defense with confidence in her eyes sets the tone for a lock-down possession. The way she sits in a stance to meet the ball has a ripple effect on her team. As does the way she looks at her shooter, or her countenance in the huddles, or what she does with her eyes when she’s inbounding the ball. Her face delivers a message, no matter what she says.
In 2006, we signed a point guard whose signature was speed. Danielle Robinson did everything fast. She ran fast, she dribbled fast, she talked fast. Basketball depends so heavily on speed…we found a lynchpin when we discovered D-Rob. She made so much happen with the ball in her hand.
But she had to learn about all that she could influence when she didn’t. Most of it had to do with what she did with her face. D-Rob had an ever-ready smile. Unlike the kind that start in the eyes and then bleed into the mouth, hers just exploded in every feature all at once. You couldn’t see it coming, it just came. And it instantly made you feel you could do anything.
She was also an emotional player whose temperament lived plastered on her face, even though she wasn’t aware of it most of the time. Her furrowed brow intimidated her teammates. Her scowl frustrated those she was assigned to inspire. Our team rode the waves of her visage like a ship tossed haply at sea. Sometimes we capsized. So I made her a video montage—just close-ups of her face. Followed by close-ups of Russell Westbrook’s face and Sue Bird’s face and Magic Johnson’s face.
I asked her what she saw.
After hanging her head for a second or two, “Confidence,” she said. “And joy….They’re definitely in control.”
Danielle Robinson by Lorie Shaull
When I asked her how what she saw in those faces of the pros made her feel, she said, “Like they are good… and like I am, too.”
We never needed to talk about the significance of the floor leader’s countenance again.
The good face conveys hope. Danielle’s career, though indelibly etched with points, assists and steals, has been defined by how she makes others feel. I have a picture in my office of her in a defensive stance, clapping as she grins while waiting to get to guard the ball. That “good face” led not just one but two teams to the final four.
A part of any leader’s charge is to set others up for success. Point guards do it by the specificity of where and how they pass, knowing that their teammates all have differing needs. They do it by how they direct traffic-- with gumption, purpose and eyes in the back of their head. They do it by the aggressive way they steer the ball, pinning it on a side so that their teammates can anticipate to make a play. Through all these things and a lengthy list of others, they give hope away. By how they carry themselves, they make the people around them know they are capable. They infuse those for whom they are responsible with a giant dose of “Can Do.”
Hope is not a strategy, but it is what fuels one. It’s stronger than a wish; grittier than a dream. And it lives inside us all--though sometimes we can’t find it no matter how hard we look. That’s where a leader comes in. She reminds us of what it looks like. How it smells and tastes. The way it feels. Our insides open up when in the presence of a leader who wipes away dead ends. While no statistical category exists to record it, doling out possibility might just be a point guard’s most significant assist.