When it comes to building a sports team, what’s the secret sauce when it comes to winning? Having talented players and great coaches helps, but is there more nuance than that? According to Chris Anderson and David Sally in their book The Numbers Game, depending on the sport type, the degree of sport success experienced is largely dependent on a team’s link its star or weakest player. Put another way, the authors posit that in some sports a single star player can dramatically impact the team’s success (even when the remaining teammates are average), while in other sports a weak player can offset other good players and stunt the overall success of the team. Can the potential success of a team be gauged this way, or do you think a team’s success is dependent on many more factors than just one really good or really bad player?
Examining team dynamics
According to the authors, in a strong link sport a single star player can have an outsized impact and carry a team, often compensating for the mistakes of weaker teammates. Strong link sports include American football and basketball, and generally include small team size, higher scoring opportunities, and individual dominance. Michael Jordan and LeBron James are examples of athletes who had big impacts on their respective teams, and in many cases carried their teams largely on their own.
In a weak link sport, the authors argue the team is only as good as its least capable players. For example, a single mistake by a weak player can have a disproportionate, and often costly, effect on the outcome of the game. Characteristics of weak link sports include large team size, low scoring frequency, and emphasis on minimizing mistakes. Examples of weak link sport (or specific parts of a team that could be called weak link) include soccer, the line on an American football team, and defensive fielding in baseball.
Basically what link theory outlines, in a nutshell, is that in some sports the impact of a really great player can be witnessed far more than in other sports. Additionally, link theory points to how in other sports a single, below-average athlete can offset the overall talent of the team and actually decrease the likelihood for team success. While this is an interesting theory, there are many questions to be answered before accepting that specific sports are impacted more, or less, by individual players and their respective talent level:
- How exactly are players and their talent measured? There are so many metrics used in sports today that it is very difficult to properly gauge talent level, especially after the top 5% of any given sport. Similarly, what methods are used to identify players who are significantly less talented than the rest of the team?
- The theory does not account for player motivation. Players, regardless of talent, tend to play harder when fighting for a contract, or simply a place on the team. Players (including talented players) with team security, on the other hand, may play with less motivation.
- The theory does not appear to put much, if any, emphasis on coaching. Generally speaking, great coaches improve the success of average teams, and poor coaches can bring down the success of otherwise talented teams.
- Link theory puts a lot of weight on individual players, and treats them as though they exist in a static condition. Sport competition is very dynamic, and depends on interpersonal relationships, resiliency, and even factors like weather conditions and type of field surface, to name a few.
There may really be something to link theory, but it is also possible the model is too simplistic to accurately capture all of the moving pieces that occur during sport competition. Yes, logically speaking, great players generally have a positive impact on team success, and lesser players generally slow down the success of a team. The question is the degree of impact each type of player has on a team, and if this impact is exacerbated in certain specific sports?
Final thoughts
While it is a worthwhile pursuit to try and uncover the specific factors that most impact sport team success, it is also important that we not over-simplify what is a complex undertaking. Great coaches, regardless of sport type, can have an amazing impact on a team — and poor coaches can steal from what might have been a successful season. This is just one example of an extraneous variable impacting team success, and there are other factors that can have a similar effect. Team building is not easy, even when you have talented players, so it is important to take caution when using link theory to construct a team.
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