Tony Horton has a quote from the fitness program P90X…
“Don’t let your ego get in the way to mess with your success.”
I did that program a few times growing up and sometimes his voice still plays that in my head.
That is a quote that a former Detroit Lions GM needed to hear when they had a generational talent in Barry Sanders.
At a reunion where Sander’s statue was revealed in Detroit, his first NFL coach, Wayne Fontes told him that they could have had Joe Montana and Warren Moon during Barry and Wayne’s time together with the Lions because of this principle from Sam Hinkie.
A Players Compound.
The kids say, ‘real recognize real’. Or at least they used to…
We think that ‘Super Teams’ started recently with the Big 3 in Boston, Miami with Lebron, Bosh and Wade… The Golden State Warriors, and wherever Lebron goes and teams up with others of similar status… But this principle existed back before the Big 3 in the NBA.
Great players will bring you other great players. That is this Hinkie principle in action.
Why did Detroit have a no-name QB after Rodney Peete left? The GM’s ego.
Fontes told Sanders in that private moment the cameras captured that the GM said Joe Montana and Warren Moon were ‘too old’.
Sanders said, ‘It would have been nice to have them.’
The generational talent knows better than the old guy in the front office that is decades removed from being a real stakeholder… A player on the field.
Another great talent was looking to team up with Barry Sanders to make the Lions more dynamic because they recognized his talent and wanted to be a part of making the team even better… If the GM would have asked for something unheard of… Player input, they might have made the playoffs more than they did with the greatest running back to ever play on their team.
Your A Players are assets if you use them and worthless if you don’t. This doesn’t just go for playing them on the field, why not ask if they have coach/player recommendations? The way current GMs hire and fire, they might as well be venture capitalists with their current approach which sounds something like…
“This is my 5th hire in my tenure, I hope this is the one that works out.”
Hope isn’t a strategy but seemingly at the ‘highest level’ of sports… It is the ‘go-to’.
Do you want McDavid or Sanders recommending an A Player because ‘real recognize real’? Or do you want your 85-year-old GM to recommend his golf buddy?
That’s the question you have to ask, the answer becomes very clear.
They can do more than ‘shut up and run/dribble/skate’, they can bring you your best people if you’ll allow it.
If you think DeBrincat had no influence at all in Kane signing with the Red Wings, I think you’re wrong.
The principle at work…
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