This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Follow Peak here.
Richard Jefferson played for eight teams over 17 years. He is now an NBA analyst for ESPN and a co-host of the podcast, Road Trippin’ Show.
These are the three best leaders he played with during his career.
Jason Kidd
He showed so many tiers of leadership that I’d never seen before.
As a rookie in 2001 with the New Jersey Nets, he took me around to every one of the officials and said, “This is my rookie. Rich, introduce yourself.” I’d introduce myself and ask them their name. He told me: “Don’t ever say, ‘Hey ref.’” He immediately showed me, a 21-year-old, his respect for the game. He taught me to talk to them, to say hello and introduce myself. That always stuck with me.
Every referee will tell you all I ever did was crack jokes with them all game. Because I was taught as a rookie that that was important, that those guys were part of our league.
As a young player, he taught me that everything was not about scoring. He could dominate the game without scoring. He would have 8 or 9 points and still be the most dominant player on the floor.
He showed me that all of the little things can add up to a total sum of greatness. That was so impactful. That was leadership by example, and it was so powerful.
But he also spoke on it. He told me: “Bro, I don’t care if you miss three or four shots; I’m shooting 42 percent from the field.” He would joke about it. But then he’d tell me: “Go get me a rebound. Go get me a block.”
He instilled that in me and all the young players on the team. That was why we had the turnaround we had after he got there. He instilled confidence in the group. We were picked to finish second to last in the NBA that season. The Nets had won 26 games the year before. But he said: “I believe we can be a playoff team.”
He basically said: “This is my expectation, and I’m going to work that hard, and if you guys work as hard as I do, we will be a playoff team.”
And we ended up going to the NBA Finals that year because of it.
Tim Duncan
He’s a lot funnier than people think. He’s actually kind of a smartass.
One night we were all sitting around dinner, laughing and telling jokes. One of our teammates started talking about his draft number: “I was this pick in the draft.” That kind of stuff.
Tim cut him off and said: “Listen, we’ve all got a scrapbook, OK?” Everyone laughed and it was funny. But that was Tim.
His whole thing was: Let’s all stay humble here. Let’s all just chill out. Let’s just be basketball players. That’s what he loved, and that’s the environment he enjoyed and created.
There was a consistency and humbleness to his approach that allowed everyone else to have a level of humility. He was the best player on the team and allowed himself to be coached the hardest. You see it now: Players can get coaches fired in the NBA. If you allow that humility as the best player, it forces everyone else to fall in line.
Pop knew. Pop would cuss Tim out first and then go down the line. Tim would just be like: “You’re right.” So what was I or anyone else going to say?
His leadership style was that he allowed himself to be coached the hardest. That will always impress me. Tim received that day in and day out because he wanted greatness for himself and he wanted greatness for his teammates. That’s true selflessness.
Pop and the coaches would joke and do a little toast: “Cheers. Thank God for Tim Duncan.” Pop knew — everyone knew — how lucky they were to be around Tim.
LeBron James
I’d never had a teammate say: “Just follow my lead and I’ll take us to the promised land.”
I was like, Holy s—.
From a leadership standpoint, he wanted to take on the biggest task. Think about the pressure of being the hometown kid and you have to deliver the first championship in any sport in 50 years — and he welcomed that. What?!? We gloss over how psychotic that is.
I’d never seen anything like it. He knew if we won, it was all on him. And if we lost, it was all on him. He still walked forward like, “Hey, where are we going to dinner, guys?”
I’ve always said that he was one of the great camaraderie leaders I’ve been around. He can’t really go out in public so he did a lot of team dinners: “Hey, guys, we’ve got to the Monday Night Football game on at this steakhouse. Just come hang out.”
He does that in almost every city. We would go to dinners and just sit there and talk about sports — football, basketball, who we thought was the greatest small forward of all time. He took the team and did yoga. He ingratiated himself with his teammates and that was a beautiful thing.
One time during the Finals, he put on a speech by Steve Jobs that Jobs had given at Stanford. It was about connecting the dots. It was before Game 6 of the NBA Finals in 2016. LeBron had a little speaker on the side and just played the speech:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
This was year 15 for me in the NBA. I’d never heard an inspirational speech quietly in the background as everyone was getting ready. He put that higher purpose in the air. Think about that from a philosophical standpoint. That’s what he curated in the locker room. And yes, some guys might not have heard it. But I took my headphones off and just listened.
When we were on that journey in the Finals, we knew we were trying to overcome insurmountable odds: the greatest team, defending NBA champs, and we had been down in the series 3-1.
So for him to play a speech like that, quietly in the background while guys were doing their own thing, in their own world, that type of energy, even subconsciously, was different. That was just different.
— As told to Jayson Jenks
