NBA Archetypes: The Perfect Teammate
The first in a series of articles about NBA players who perfectly encapsulate one (or more) aspect of greatness
Being a good teammate, whether you’re an NBA player, in the military, or just work at an office is not a complicated thing. All it requires is that one values the team success and is willing to work towards that goal. The actual execution can be trickier. Differing philosophies need to be considered respectfully. Compromise is required to balance contrasting priorities. Personal ambition may need to be set aside in favor of team success. Most of us who work in a functioning environment have this figured out to some degree.
Being a perfect teammate is something else entirely, in the same way that being a “good” golfer who can play a scratch round at the public course is something entirely different from being Tiger Woods. The good teammate figures out their role and performs it reliably, helping out when needed, and respectfully navigating disagreements. The perfect teammate understands deeply the team’s goals, elevates anyone else who is working towards that goal to a higher level, and usually works harder than everyone else in the process. There is no distinction between their personal ambition and team success.
Most of us can never aspire to emulate an NBA player’s on-court achievements, but we can try to model their behaviors as teammates. The five following players are nearly perfect examples for how to not just fit into a team, but lead it to it’s highest potential.
Bill Russell
A few players are allowed to enter the conversation of “most impactful” player in NBA history so I won’t make the case that Bill Russell was unequivocally that. What I will argue is that he was the earliest player who’s fingerprints are still all over the league. Perhaps his most lasting impact was as an outspoken civil rights activist, defying a society that sought its black athletes to be quiet and happy with their fame and fortune. Listen to this quote from former NBA center, Bill Cartwright:
“In the 1950s and 1960s, very few people were as outspoken as he was. He was able to maintain that standard and speak out for equality not only for himself but for others as well. That separates him from other athletes, because it was the sixties and he was able to stand up for others.”
There’s a reason almost every article about the man begins with this aspect of his legacy before ever getting to his basketball achievements. Being the perfect teammate that he was, Russell prioritized raising awareness about the shameful treatment of black people around America despite the target it put on his back. Any question about what was most important to him was answered when he said, “I don’t consider anything I have done as contributing to society. I consider playing professional basketball as marking time, the most shallow thing in the world.”
It’s difficult to square the fact that the same man who uttered those words famously got himself so worked up before every game that he would puke. Despite apparently considering basketball a frivolity, Russell loved winning. To borrow a common refrain from premier league commentator Roger Bennet, to him, basketball was “the most important unimportant thing in the world.”
Russell spoke regularly about how the only stat he cared about was the score at the end of the game, but to anyone paying attention to his play this would have already been evident. The order in which Russell’s on-court contributions are generally remembered goes:
Defense
Rebounding
Passing
Scoring
Pretty much the reverse order of what garners the most attention. In the 60’s his biggest strength, blocking shots, was not even tracked in the stat book. He was obviously willing to put his head down and do the dirty work, but a perfect teammate does so much more than just that.
Stories abound about how Russell forged a winning culture on the Celtics. A particularly illuminating anecdote comes from the locker room after winning the 1968 NBA Championship. The team was celebrating in the locker room and Russell paused to ask Bailey Howell to lead the team in prayer, despite not being a religious man himself. This story tells us two lessons about how to be a great teammate.
The first is to de-center yourself and focus on what is important to others, what motivates them and what makes them feel important.
The second lesson is to practice the first lesson genuinely. In this story, the Celtics had just won the championship. If there was ever a time to stop worry about anyone else and just bask in glory, this was it. But that just wasn’t BR’s style. I imagine it would be as hard for him to make the moment about him as it would be for most people to give it up.
Magic Johnson
Pairing two consensus top ten all-time NBA players on the same team seems like a surefire strategy for winning championships, but due to the scarcity of GOATs, no one but the Lakers have managed to test that strategy out. The results: five championships from Magic and Kareem, and three championships from Kobe and Shaq.
Pretty good.
It’s a shame that second pair couldn’t stick together longer. Kobe saw basketball as life or death and couldn’t accept that Shaq didn’t take it as seriously as he did. They both seemed to care deeply about being the best player on the team, only really setting aside their differences in the Finals. Oh and there was that time Kobe publically accused Shaq of cheating on his wife.
Everything that went wrong between Kobe and Shaq went right between Magic and Kareem. Magic Johnson was the first pick in the 1979 draft, and already a star after leading Michigan State to a National Championship over Larry Bird’s Indiana State. Magic was uniquely comfortable in the spotlight and clearly thought very highly of his basketball abilities.
He joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a one time NBA Champ from almost a decade earlier (1971). It’s a cliche to call Kareem “prickly” at this point, but it is true that his personality was quite different from Magic’s. It would not have been overly surprising if this story had been a prequel to the Kobe and Shaq show. Magic could have come in and tried to be “the guy”. He could have bristled at Kareem’s initial distrust of his outgoing nature. Instead, Magic deferred to Cap for years and years without complaint.
And by all accounts, it wasn’t that Magic was keeping his feelings to himself. He accepted Kareem for who he was, however different, and valued his one-of-a-kind talents. Any time Magic was asked, he said that Kareem, not him, was the best player in the NBA and together they sustained greatness to win five rings in seven years.
Magic was a flashy player. This may seem like something that would disqualify someone from being a “perfect teammate”. It places the player at the center of attention over their teammates. But Magic’s flashiness was fun for his teammates. And it was functional. When you played with Magic Johnson, you knew that if you got open, Magic would find you so everyone played hard. He didn’t just do a behind the back pass because it looked cool, he did it because it was the best way to get the ball to a trailing teammate while he used his momentum to clear out the opponent’s transition defender.
Magic’s career was cut short by his HIV diagnosis and the ignorance surrounding the issue at the time. He apparently considered keeping it a secret, but at the encouragement of grassroots activists, decided to become the face of the disease. Calls to testing centers doubled the day following the announcement and Magic is often credited with reducing the stigma that around the disease in the early 90’s. I don’t want to go too far in giving one guy all the credit for shifting attitudes, and disparities definitely exist in HIV/AIDS treatment to this day, but I do want to highlight the courage it took to go public with something so incredibly personal and I do believe it supports the thesis of this article.
Tim Duncan
Magic Johnson may be the flashiest of the NBA greats. Tim Duncan is almost certainly the least. And yet, they share a lot in common when it comes to how the approached being a teammate. It seemed like the combination of Duncan, Manu Ginobli, and Tony Parker would continue making deep post-season runs in perpetuity, so much so that they were portrayed as the white walkers (unkillable zombie enemies from Game of Thrones) in Bleacher Report’s fantastic spoof series “Game of Zones”.
There is one word that is associated with Timmy’s basketball skills; it starts with F-U-N it’s not “funny”. Let’s just say that dad’s everywhere use to love to generically point out his footwork. Tim Duncan scored the vast majority of his points from post-ups, slightly further out than anyone else could score from, and was a master at finding open shooters and cutters.
A player does not develop the greatest fundamentals (dang it, I was really trying not to use that word) of all-time without being immensely coachable. Duncan’s work in practice was to the highest standard, but Coach Greg Popovich held him to an even higher one. A different player of Duncan’s stature might have resisted the level of coaching that went on in San Antonio, but not Timmy. His example made it impossible for other teammates to complain and as a result, the Spurs were able to get high production out of otherwise marginal players. As one Spurs assistant put it, “How could a guy like Stephen Jackson complain when Pop was motherf------ Tim every day?”
Outside of Tony and Manu, Duncan played with a few other NBA greats fitting smoothly every time. He started his career as a twin tower alongside David Robinson, winning a championship in 1999 together. He played with Kawhi Leonard from 2011-2016, winning a ring in 2014.
Besides the f-word I ended up using to describe Timmy, the other most notable thing about him is just how low maintenance he was. The NBA changed dramatically during Duncan’s 19 year career, including the rise of the player empowerment era in which players can jump teams much more freely than they could before. This is mostly a good thing, but it does have the side-effect of some players jumping ship at the first sign of trouble instead of sticking it out. Never so much as a whiff of that with Duncan. He knew he had a good thing going, and he knew how to convince everyone else to buy in as well in his soft-spoken way.
Stephen Curry
Gleeful, giddy, infectious joy. That’s what it’s like to watch Steph Curry play. Some of the shots Curry pulls off go beyond impressive and are just humorous. If I made a shot worthy of a Steph Curry highlight reel, I would laugh at how lucky I got. When he makes it, the joke is how little luck was involved.
Curry’s the first guy on this list who is a score first type of player. It is particularly challenging to be a “perfect teammate” when your primary skill involves you doing the thing that everyone else wants to be doing. So how does Steph pull it off?
First and foremost, it’s that joy that I mentioned. His shots are so crazy that his teammates seem to have the best time in the world watching him do his thing. As much as his teammates revel in his success, Curry celebrates theirs even more. His goofy, uninhibited celebrations are incredibly endearing and he doles them out with as much gusto for a Moses Moody and-one in the second quarter as he does for his own buzzer beater threes in the playoffs.
The second reason it works is because Curry makes the right basketball play at a high rate, even if that is occasionally a shot from the logo. His passing skills aren’t underrated but maybe a little under discussed just because of how great the shooting is. He uses his passing opportunistically, allowing his teammates to take advantage of the extra attention he draws.
Curry has come up even more squarely in the player empowerment era than Duncan and yet he’s had the same steadfast dedication to his team. The Warriors have built a very family oriented atmosphere, where the kids are allowed to run around, hang out, and grow up together. The players and coaches certainly have their differences, mostly stemming from Draymond Green, but the fact that they’ve been able to stick together this long in this day and age is a true testament to the man at the center of it all.
Nikola Jokic
Jokic has almost all the tools you’d want in an NBA player - he’s 7 feet tall, unbelievably coordinated, hardworking, brilliant, and creative. He’s just not super athletic. You’re never going to see him blow by anyone off the dribble, jump over someone for a dunk, or sky for a rebound over Giannis. But therein lies his super power. Jokic knows he can’t do any of those things so he never tries them, and he has all the skills to do literally everything else there is to do on a basketball court.
If your team is going against the Nuggets, you can expect:
A barrage of hook shots from the center of the paint.
Weird floaters banking off the top of the glass and going in.
The most unexpected passes you’ve ever seen done so casually that you might not even recognize how mind blowingly difficult they are.
Your team is probably going to lose
I’m beating a dead horse here, but in the same way that Russell, Magic, Duncan, and Curry’s ability to make the right basketball play inspires their teammates to put forth their best efforts, Jokic may be the greatest of all-time in that specific regard.
The world fell in love with Jokic after the Nuggets won the NBA Championship in 2023 and all he wanted to do was go home to Serbia to be with his family and his horses. He hilariously got upset when he found out he had to stay in America a couple extra days to attend the parade, and then subsequently got super drunk at the parade and proclaimed his love for parade.
These players have a lot in common with other NBA greats. They’re hypercompetitive, dedicated, singular athletes. What really makes them unique is where they place their priorities on and off the court. They value family, community, hard work, and integrity and as a result the winning culture follows springs forth inherently.
This list includes 26 championships, with two players still hoping to add to their count. More importantly, they leave behind legacies of deep respect and fondness. I dare you to find someone (outside the NBA memes comment section) who will say a bad word beyond “I hate that guy, he beat my team” about one of these guys. I dare you to find a teammate, coach, or GM who complains them. If you do find someone hating on Russell, Magic, Duncan, Curry, or Jokic, it will probably make my point clearer to you than these 2500 words ever could.