Tempo is Winning Time

The world around us frequently seems to be in chaos and disorder.

March 30, 2022

The new HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” is a dramatized portrayal of how Dr. Jerry Buss constructed the Los Angeles Lakers in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Under Coach Jack McKinney, the team went from shooting the ball with a few seconds remaining on the 24-second clock to playing fast and free. McKinney wanted a higher-tempo offense to create frequent chaos for the defense, and while the style may be commonplace now, the philosophy went against conventional wisdom at the time.

What made McKinney’s vision remarkable is that he took a page out of the United States Marines’ playbook. In the book “Warfighting,” an argument is made that “in an environment of friction, uncertainty, and fluidity, war gravitates naturally towards disorder.” Therefore, “the best we can hope for is to impose a general framework of order, on the disorder, to influence the general flow of action, rather than try to control each event. Since it is the relative speed that matters, it follows that we should take all measures to improve our own speed while degrading our opponents.”

The Marines believe speed is key, but is useless without direction. Thus, any organization that wants to improve its tempo must allow for quick decisions. According to the book:

“Decision making in execution thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo. The essence of the problem is to select a promising course of action with an acceptable degree of risk and to do it more quickly than our foe. In this respect, “‘a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.’”

When you watch McKinney install the new system for the Lakers offense in a recent episode, he followed several of the “Warfighting” guidelines for tempo:

  • Developing standard operating procedures (practice, philosophy). McKinney made it clear from the first day that conditioning and practice matter.

  • Developing simple, flexible plans (detailed, decentralized). Play fast, don’t dibble, pass the ball and be selfless was McKinney’s plan.

  • Planning for likely contingencies (anticipation/study our opponent, creativity). McKinney made changes within the team to only keep the players who could adapt and succeed in his new system.

  • Fostering initiative among subordinates (decentralized, ownership). Once it began to work, the players took ownership.

The world around us frequently seems to be in chaos and disorder. Still, we must strive to push the tempo, work through our mistakes, and not become prisoners to our stumbles.

Read “Warfighting.” Its lessons apply to our every day life.