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

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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  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 happen 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.

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  "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. Epictetus 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.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  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. Epictetus's 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.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  I had breakfast two days ago on the back porch of the painted porch with my friend Manu Ginobili, 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, 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 stoicism. 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 R.C. Buford on the podcast. When are you gonna run that?"

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  R.C. Buford being the GM of the Spurs through their incredible dynasty and now the CEO of the Spurs organization. And I had interviewed R.C., actually as part of the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. So he and I went in-depth specifically about leadership and culture for over an hour. And then even members of Daily Stoic 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 Stoic Leadership Challenge is one of the best things we've 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

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  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 Manu 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,

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  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, you know, dealing with the stuff that other people didn't want to deal with and, and, and, you know, 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,

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  San Antonio FC, that's their soccer club, as well as the AT&T Center and Toyota Field. It's an enormous multimillion 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.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  And if you haven't done the Daily Stoic 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 and A's with me about how I think about leadership. You can sign up there at dailystoic.com/leadershipchallenge. And again, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get this challenge and all the other ones for free. But for now, totally for free, enjoy my leadership deep dive with the one and only R.C. Buford.

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  So Ryan, it's great to be with you today. There's an interesting story that Tim's lawyer, who is a guy named Lon Babi, shares. And they met in San Antonio. Tim came from New York, Lon 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, Lon was telling him all the great things that he had lined up for him from a promotional standpoint. And Tim asked a question to Lon.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  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 the Tim ethos. 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 overstep and wanted to be become a partner with Tim and David is or with David in a way that was not your typical first pick in the draft ethos.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  So I 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 he might make a small contribution to the team. I mean, I think he averaged like fourteen, fourteen or fifteen 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 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?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  As we've built our systems and processes for player, selection, player recruitment, there, our values are our first filter. So high character people who want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And then the 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, that all, but all the work that went before it. And so that, 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

• 10:05Speaker 02

  also a player who was graduating from Wake Forest with a 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, he would graduate from 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.

• 10:32Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:45Ryan Holiday?

  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?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  We spend quite a bit of time in learning about who these, who the people are as people. We, 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, that now can, are available from a numbers aspect. But we'll spend just as much time as, 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 that are important in

• 11:57Speaker 02

  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?

• 12:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I, I won't get you in trouble by talking about a specific player, but I was struck, uh, there's, let's just say there's a certain player in the news right now, uh, 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?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  I, it's difficult to comment on people that are outside of our program.

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  I think fortunately we've been together long enough that we know what works here and shame on us if, if we don't. There are opportunities or times where we'll manage, try to manage risk and maybe take a, take a, a chance on someone to hope that we can influence them and, and bring them towards, towards us. But the other part of that is holding ourselves accountable. If, first of all, managing the risk, both from a time and a financial aspect, and then holding ourselves accountable when they don't, when they don't fit.

• 13:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it, it seems like that, that's the tension, right? So character is 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 gonna 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, of a team who's taken problematic characters, not a hundred percent success rate, but taken problematic athletes and gotten them to buy into the system and had success together. So how do you think about, like, I don't wanna say who to write off, but how do you think about that risk management of like, who do you think we can get to, to, to buy in and who is just doing their

• 14:19Ryan Holiday?

  own thing and they're not a fit for the Spurs?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  I think we're probably more aligned with they're not a fit to the Spurs and haven't taken the, the risks 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. Pop's got an expression, "They am who they am," which is kinda like, character is, is fate. And more often than not, your, your risks don't, don't outperform the reward, would be my guess.

• 15:00Ryan Holiday?

  Well, isn't there a certain amount of ego in that too? The idea that like, we tell ourselves, "I'm gonna 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, the idea that you're gonna 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.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  That oftentimes was, you know, I think when you get in the way of yourself, ego is the enemy.

• 15:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 15:51Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things you and I connected with specifically about Duncan and Tim Robinson, because I, I wrote a daily Stoic 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.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  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. In, you know, in 19 years, Tim Duncan was never late once to, to a practice, to, to, 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. And David, when David, David was very similar. David's impact in our community will, will live on for years because of the building blocks that he put in place that he'll never see the cathedral eventually finished.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  But he set such a great example and challenged us all to, to really care for each other.

• 17:19Ryan Holiday?

  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, 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?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Well, I think. They create the culture. We're people who work with them, but when your best players, when your leaders, when the people who are the examples for your organization and the community, uh, set the culture, then it's, it's up to us, the rest of us to, to, to, to buy in and to take ownership of it in a way that, that we all want to build the culture together.

• 18:03Ryan Holiday?

  I think what's fascinating about the Spurs is that like, uh, obviously it's a dynasty. Obviously it's a, it's a place that players wanted to go. Um, I, 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 know, you're not New York City or Los Angeles or, or whatever. Uh, it, 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 wanted 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

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  both sustainable and desirable in, in the market that you were in?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  The people are the ones that created that. The, the, starting with David and, and the people in our organization from, we're, we'll be celebrating our 50th anniversary next year. And the sustainability of the success is, is built around the people and the people who others wanted to come play with. And then I think the structure that Pop put in place, the, the community, uh, one great thing about our community is that our community allows these superstar players to live their lives and they don't have to live reluctantly going through life because they will get overwhelmed. Uh, South Texas,

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Central Texas does a great job of letting people be who they are and, and, uh, supporting and sharing in their success in a, in a non-judgmental and also a non-invasive way.

• 19:53Ryan Holiday?

  I think Manu 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?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  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, in our new environment that we'll 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.

• 20:41Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  So Tim is one of the great examples, now Manu. But once Tim retired, he didn't have any interest in 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. 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 able, because of the knee surgery, hadn't been able to work out hard. One of the first days he was back on the floor,

• 21:51Speaker 02

  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,

• 22:33Speaker 02

  with his national team, you know, over the course of Manu's career, Manu played for Argentina a total of about 24 months, which, which in NBA seasons is three extra years.

• 22:46Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  On a career. They've won Olympic gold medal. They won world championships. They've won in ways that Argentina had never been before. One of the, one of the best team environments I'd ever seen in 2002. The, the summer before Manu joined our program, they lost in the finals of the world championships in Indianapolis to Serbia. And it was a devastating blow. It's 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 Rus Chris in Indianapolis.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  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 going to be together. And that they were going to 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.

• 24:00Ryan Holiday?

  And what do you, what do you think some of the hallmarks of a good culture are? Like what, what do you, when you look at a team or an organization and you, you see like, oh, that's a culture we can learn from. What, 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?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  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. Right, that's the first one. Then I think the standards that they set for each other, that they hold themselves accountable to, that that provides the structure for them to go out and then be successful at the at the details of their of their mission, whether it's a, you know, a McDonald's, or a basketball club, or NASA. The great cultures all have people that are part of something bigger than themselves.

• 25:00Ryan Holiday?

  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 have have decided not to be vaccinated and their 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

• 25:43Ryan Holiday?

  have built a culture that is bigger than the individual in a way that's pretty unique among professional sports.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  It's the lessons that Pop shares on a daily basis with our team. It's the opportunities of of people who come speak with us and join and join and tell us about how they're successful, what made their journeys unique, that continue to emphasize we're in, 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.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Tim Manu, Patty Mills, Boris Diaw, 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.

• 26:46Ryan Holiday?

  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 why it's 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 I'm thinking about anything other than winning, it will come at the expense of winning, but maybe that's not true.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  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, 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

• 27:59Speaker 02

  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, it's, you have to care to be able to

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Demand excellence of others. If they don't know you care, it'll be difficult to demand excellence.

• 28:31Ryan Holiday?

  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 the concept, which is now very common in the NBA of load management, right? So so Pop might 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, I, I care about these people, and I'm going to actively

• 29:13Ryan Holiday?

  work so they don't get burned out, is probably a good idea, a good example of not just saying you care about players, but showing that you care about players. And and you you took big fines for for doing that in the early days as well. It wasn't free to do it.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Now, that 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 hadn't played since Saturday. We were coming off. The Miami game would have been our fourth game in five nights. So we

• 29:55Ryan Holiday?

  And one of them had been an over an overtime game, right?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were exhausted. We had a private plane ready to send Tim, Tony, Manu, 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, early time of, of cell phone pictures and, and Twitter.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  And so here, the whole plane's tweeting pictures of Manu and, and Tony sitting in middle seats. And Timmy's sitting on an aisle on a Southwest plane. So the league knew about it before we got to the arena that night. And Commissioner Stern came up, made a, made a big statement. He'd fined us $250,000. That, that for, for resting the guys that night. But our, the rest of our team was, had a two-point lead with under a minute to go. And Ray Allen makes a three-pointer and we end up losing the game by one or two. But the opportunity to let a new group play and compete and, and play at the highest level

• 31:24Speaker 02

  against the defending world champions, I think raised the expectations and the, and the opportunities for the rest of the team. We had several players play better that night that then would put them in a position to grow for the future. Um, 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. Tim, uh, 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 the Olympics. And, yeah, in the Olympics and all, which is another three NBA seasons.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  So in dog years, these guys played a long time. And it was because Pop did what was best for them to, to, to help them maximize their, their careers, their opportunities, their impacts, not only as players, but as people in the world.

• 32:32Ryan Holiday?

  Another illustration of you guys culturally that I wanted to share that I was very struck by is I went to a game. This may be two, 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, but I was taking the elevator and I noticed that the guy sitting, uh, he was the elevator guy who's sitting on a stool. Uh, he's pretty old, uh, 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, um, how'd you get that championship ring? And they said, oh, when this, he said, when the Spurs win a championship, everyone who works for the team gets a ring.

• 33:15Ryan Holiday?

  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, 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, uh, 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.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  There's a, there's a great example from a NASA, uh, a custodian at NASA where they ask him, you know, what do you do for NASA? And I think his response was, I help put men on the move.

• 34:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. By taking out the garbage.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Everything, everybody has a role in the success of the program.

• 34:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and it could probably be easy not to think about those people because you're managing, you know, people making hundreds of, of millions of dollars. You're, you've got celebrity, you've got all this stuff, but I imagine it's, 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, uh, working together. And yeah, who knows? Maybe that guy delivers the, the, the fan to their box who celebrates. It, it all contributes to a great home environment and, uh, maybe, 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.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  You're exactly right.

• 34:57Ryan Holiday?

  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? Walk me through what that role is and how that has challenged you.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  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 retire 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

• 36:10Speaker 02

  across all the different aspects and to take it from a basketball side and a business side and an arena operations 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 20, we would have a pandemic that has challenged us organizationally, but has challenged us 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,

• 36:55Speaker 02

  we had a really stable team. We had a stable business environment to try to grow.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Adding the opportunity to engage both Austin and San Antonio, all the way 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 corridor together in a way that we not only expand our brand, but we help build the brand of Central Texas to Mexico.

• 37:29Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Challenging, but it was also really exhilarating. And I think that the NBA created, through their legal offices, through creating the bubble, through reimagining the fan experience. You know, we had to go from an environment where now that the fans can't come to us, how do we go to the fans? And how do we reimagine 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

• 38:48Speaker 02

  compete, go through the playoffs and complete the season. 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.

• 39:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, in some ways, he's kind of like your boss, or 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.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  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,

• 40:37Speaker 02

  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...

• 41:15Speaker 02

  The circumstances around the LA Clippers and Donald Sterling and the racial

• 41:21Speaker 02

  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 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 a million dollars a year for 10 years and then to raise another 600, 700

• 42:01Speaker 02

  million dollars 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 Africa League, 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 influences influenced and impacted us all, mostly because of his empathy.

• 42:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it strikes me, there's kind of a Steve Jobs, Tim Cook analogy there. You know, Steve Jobs is the charismatic, TV, you know, sort of media centric, powerful leader. And then Tim Cook comes along and is quieter and less assuming and, you know, isn't isn't blowing anyone's mind with these genius innovations, but actually manages to 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 Silver isn't the isn't Perhaps people don't even know who he is, but he's done a really good job of

• 43:25Ryan Holiday?

  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, front and center leader that people often assume that a leader is like.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  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.

• 43:53Ryan Holiday?

  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?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  So, 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 in September of 19. And I spent the last two years really continuing to learn in a much more business-focused curriculum, but also crisis management.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  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 was something that I've always enjoyed. I wish I'd have started back into an executive education as a 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's been fantastic. The other part of this is I think you have to listen. And there are experts throughout our organization, throughout our world,

• 45:58Speaker 02

  that know more about specific tasks and details than I ever will know. And so listening to them, empowering them to take, to, to, you know, to take ownership and be a part of something.

• 46:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a story about Marcus Aurelius. He's, you know, he's emperor and, and he's seen leaving the palace like carrying these tablets. And someone says, where are you going? And he says, I'm, I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher. And the guy says, um, why would you be doing that? You know, you're wise and powerful and all these things. And he says, um, to learn that which I don't yet know. Uh, and I, I love that story because I have to imagine for a person in your position who's, you know, top of the, the world class at a thing, you, you've accomplished, you, you've, you've won multiple championships. You're one of the best people in the world to ever do your job.

• 46:50Ryan Holiday?

  To then go into a new environment and not be, uh, 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, to say, I need to go back to school. And, and, and that there's, to even admit that there's stuff that you need to learn. I think people really struggle with that.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  It was clear that that was a part of the, the journey if I was going to be successful. But again, I think, you know, as I've, as I've learned through reading your books, your ego, you know, is gonna, is gonna get in the way more often than it's gonna help you. Use the opportunity obstacle to to grow and you know 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 what is going to happen next and it's going to be messy and there's not going to be we don't I can't we can't give each other the answers but we'll do this together

• 47:53Speaker 02

  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 uh before we went into the pandemic 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 um at the murder of George Floyd organizationally I didn't know what the hell 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 times he got us all in a room and

• 48:38Speaker 02

  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 we and many of the people throughout our organization of color shared their experience with racism and I think it opened our 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 their 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

• 49:21Speaker 02

  each other to support each other during times of challenge and change and the Spurs Voices campaign that that is online is a great example of of

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Taking a step back and listening to each other. And now I think we can have harder conversations because we're building a a skill set that necessarily isn't it isn't easy within a business environment.

• 49:52Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was gonna, I was gonna say, one of the things that I've always loved about the Spurs that 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 that as a result of this diversity, not only have you had a great on the court product, finding talent that that perhaps other people would have overlooked. But you also have such a beautifully diverse fan base as a reflection of that diversity.

• 50:35Ryan Holiday?

  So if we want to talk about the benefit, the self-interested benefits of diversity. It's, you know, you're probably one of the the most Spanish heavy markets of all the NBA teams because of the overtures that you've made to all these different communities.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  First of all, our community is 60% Hispanic, you know, we are. We are a part of a community that the minorities are the majority. I think also it was a great way. 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 is stories that we talked about with with the Argentinian national team. We, our, our 2014 championship team, 11 of our 14 guys were born outside the US, outside the continental US.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  And the the shared life experiences that those.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  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 on our coaches' meetings and challenged us to think differently in ways

• 52:26Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:50Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  It's just part of building the best team that we can. Let's find the best ideas from wherever.

• 52:58Ryan Holiday?

  No, and I think, you know, I was with you once when someone was sort of dismissing some of the virtues, dismissing some of the efforts inside the NBA as virtue signaling. But I think there's a real self-interested case to make for stuff like that, like 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?

• 53:37Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's and Manu brought a lot of crazy stuff with it. It was a real challenge for for pop to coach Manu early because of Manu's lack of fear and his ability to try things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes somebody's gonna get bean in the head with a stray pass. But over the course of time, you saw how Manu's creativity elevated the engagement of his team, of his league, of a worldwide basketball population.

• 54:23Ryan Holiday?

  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 that image of the of the guy pounding the rock, which I know is sort of an expression inside the Spurs. The idea that you, you know, 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 on the on the free agency market each

• 55:06Ryan Holiday?

  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 going to do over the long term. But it does seem like everyone is always chasing what's new or what will work right now. And and does that come at the expense of building something that lasts?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  I don't think there's only one way to do things. And I think that's your consistency has 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.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  You know, there's, there's a great team in Brooklyn that has been built by one of our closest brothers, Sean Marks, and you know, 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.

• 56:41Ryan Holiday?

  LaMarcus?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, LaMarcus is back this year. We're thrilled that he's healthy and, 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 like of Kyrie disrupt that in a, in a debilitating way.

• 56:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and, and it does strike me though that, that, 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, and that, that I, I still think that's an underrated strategy.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Again, we, we, we can only control what we know works here. Unfortunately, the, the investor leaders of our, of our organization have allowed us to establish culture. I think 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, I don't know this across all industries, but the, the constant change of the head coach and player movement makes the development of some consistency and stability really difficult. And I think it, it takes time to, to build.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Sustainability.

• 58:05Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read this, um, this, this new Seth Wickersham book about the New England Patriots?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 58:11Ryan Holiday?

  It's really good. It was something I was, I was going to ask you about, um, because I found it really interesting. I'm going to interview him on the podcast, but, um, 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. It's sort of a knock against building a dynasty. But what, one of the really interesting arguments he talks about in the book, and, 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, he loved basketball and wanted to keep playing, uh, sorry, he loved football and wanted to keep playing football, but that it had sort of stopped being fun, that the system had

• 58:53Ryan Holiday?

  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, in a culture that's more fun and accommodating and, and whatever. But I, I thought that was interesting because I remember you told me something about one of your players, and I don't know if you want to share who it was or whatever, but

• 59:35Ryan Holiday?

  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, uh, 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, uh, and accommodating players and their needs inside the organization.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  So that's a big part of, of Pop's.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Ethos is, this is, this is bigger than basketball. We're not just here to, to focus on winning games and we want to engage the families. Steve Kerr talks about this. One of his real, his 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 at, I, I can't comment on New England, but I think you run

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  the risk of taking the fun out of the joy of, I think that's, I've listened to Steve quite a bit lately about that aspect as we transform to our next generation team with a, with a new coach at some point in time, recognizing that the next person is going to have to have the opportunity to be himself and to be, to, to come as their, as their authentic self.

• 1:01:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  In a way that they don't feel the responsibility of, of replacing pop and, but really come with a sense of joy as well.

• 1:01:30Ryan Holiday?

  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 them, their best selves if they're being ground into dust or used, you know, like fodder. And, and so I, 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.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. We play a game. We're, we're blessed to have an opportunity to make a lot of money playing a game that we loved playing as kids.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  And you know, for nothing. And so too oftentimes, especially when we're challenged, I think we lose, we lose that perspective. And that's oftentimes when, when you, you have to focus on stillness and, and getting, getting back to why you love this game or why you love what you do. Like, you know, fortunately, in my career, I've never been to work one day. I get to go to, to be a part of my passion. And when you start losing, losing that joy and that passion, I think is when you know you need to, to step away.

• 1:03:05Ryan Holiday?

  And, 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, keep, keeping it interesting?

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  I, the, the learning, the interesting part of it, yes. I also, we were, we had some great young talent in place that I wanted to provide the opportunity for growth for, for others. I think that's, that's been one of my joys in our, 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 me. Now there's, you know, there've been a dozen head coaches that grew up within our program. There's, you know, 10 people who, who lead organizations

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  or who have led organizations who we all shared the journey with. And to see people, you know, to, 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, I'm honored and proud to, to be able to be part of a team and hopefully help us transition to our next generation.

• 1:04:27Ryan Holiday?

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

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Well, I think another great example of this is Manu, who was the greatest player ever from his country. Comes to the NBA and had an entire career as the sixth man on their team. And he got over himself early and recognized in the best interests of the team. It's best for me to come off the bench and be the wildcard 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

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  from South America, like, how the hell can Manu Ginobili 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.

• 1:05:50Ryan Holiday?

  Because he could have gone somewhere else, right? And he decided to stay.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Several times.

• 1:05:57Ryan Holiday?

  Beautiful. RC, thank you so much. It's been too long. I hope we can see each other soon.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  I look forward to being in the Painted Pony bookstore.

• 1:06:09Ryan Holiday?

  Painted Ford.

• 1:06:13Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Have not.

• 1:06:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's right down the street from you. You got to go check it out.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:23Ryan Holiday?

  All right. You're the best. We'll talk soon.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:06:29Ryan Holiday?

  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.