How do sports teams honor the diversity of their players while working together to win? Tommy Amaker, coach of the Harvard men’s basketball team, speaks with David B. Wilkins, faculty director of the Center on the Legal Profession, about what building student athletes for success.
David B. Wilkins: This issue of The Practice focuses on teams. All professionals work in teams, but in law, we don’t think enough about how to compose a great team or be part of a great team. I want to start with this basic but foundational question—for you, somebody whom I view as one of the greatest team leaders I’ve ever met—how do you define a team?
Coach Tommy Amaker: First of all, thank you for this opportunity and the honor to be a part of this with you and The Practice. I think of a team as a collection of parts—individuals. You have a lot of different moving pieces and layers. And then, I ask, how can we organize and have all of that come together for a common good and a common goal?
We’re going to be part of teams the majority of our lives. That’s what I try to teach our players. We’re a basketball team here, but you’re also part of a team in a family, part of a team in an organization, part of a team in a company, a law firm, your faith, your community. Are you capable of being a great teammate? First and foremost, if you’re going to be on a team, you need great teammates.
We have a saying written on the wall in the Harvard men’s basketball team locker room: good teams have good players; great teams have great teammates. I’ve never been part of a great team that wasn’t composed of great teammates. To be a great teammate, you have to be able to sacrifice. You have individuals that are going to have different talents. Can you sacrifice for the good of the group? We have another expression: not everyone can be first team, but everyone can put the team first. And the last piece of this is: Are [you] willing to accept a role that’s been assigned to you? Sometimes we can’t just accept it; we have to embrace it. Because you can always reluctantly accept something, but embracing something is a forward motion and [the] energy and attitude of wanting to be a star in your role. And now, when you have those components of a team, you’re probably going to have a great team.
Wilkins: One of the challenges, in sports and otherwise, is that teams are made up of a diverse collection of individuals. There’s racial diversity, socioeconomic diversity, political diversity, geographic diversity, and more. How do you honor that team-first mentality while still honoring the diversity of the individuals who make up that team?
Amaker: That diversity is so critical for a great team. If you’re not willing to embrace the differences in individuals as part of that team, you’re really doing a disservice to that group. Because that’s what makes a great team is that we come from different places, we have different ideas, different backgrounds. Are we willing to embrace our teammates’ different thoughts, their ideas, or their skill sets?
We have a saying written on the wall in the Harvard men’s basketball team locker room: good teams have good players; great teams have great teammates.
Tommy Amaker, coach, Harvard men’s basketball
On our team we also talk about something I wish we could do more in society: Are you willing to understand before wanting to be understood? How cool would it be if we could start there with any team? We start to make everyone feel like they’re valued. We have players from around the world, and something might be happening in that part of the world I want our whole team to know. I can’t tell you what that brings about in that individual who’s from that area, what that means to them that we’re thinking of them through who they are, where they’re from, what languages they may speak. When we do those things first, there’s more willingness to be part of everything else and everybody else, which, again, strengthens our team and our core.
Wilkins: Of course, one of the inherent diversities in a team, particularly in a sports team, is diversity of ability. So how do you think about balancing the needs of stars and showcasing their abilities while not letting the others feel that they’re not fully a part of the team or that their voices or their contributions don’t matter?
Amaker: You would hope that there’s tremendous value assigned to every player, whether that’s a student manager or a player that sits on the bench. We’ll make sure to film our bench in games, because I want our players to recognize how enthusiastic your teammates are on the bench cheering for you and they didn’t get in the game. But they practice every day as hard as you do. I try to show that there is care and value in everyone’s role. Everyone’s role is important to the success of our group.
As a team, we always watch ESPN Sports Center’s Top 10 plays. Then we dissect the list and ask, “Well, how did they get to that point?” There are a lot of different things that happened along the way before that moment in time was captured and became that highlight reel. Someone set a screen or someone dove on the floor or someone got a deflection or someone made the pass. Three or four things had to happen to contribute to that moment.
I think about that in music—all the different notes and instruments in one song. It’s not just the lead singer that’s making that beautiful piece of music.
We’ll make sure to film our bench in games, because I want our players to recognize how enthusiastic your teammates are on the bench cheering for you and they didn’t get in the game.
Amaker
We can’t get to that point in that highlight reel or that particular hit song if we don’t have all these other pieces and ingredients and layers. Then we need to make sure that we all show how we value and appreciate what helped us get to the point and now we can celebrate that one moment.
Wilkins: I love the idea of showing film of the players on the bench and how excited they are. And that energy plays a huge role in the stars doing what they do.
Amaker: It’s not sustainable to have a great season, a great program, a great company, a great law firm, without showing how much you care about those details and the impact that those pieces can make for the stars.
I think about this as building a house. Bricks are monumental pieces to the puzzle. As you know, there’s a mortar that goes between those bricks. It’s critical. It may not be as visible, but it is really valuable. We know it keeps the house together but isn’t as visible. But those who are astute to building great structures, they know the value of that mortar. We can’t do it without the bricks, but we need that mortar, too.
Wilkins: Tommy, one of the great houses that you have built goes well beyond not just the basketball team and Harvard, and that’s the Breakfast Club. We originally started the Breakfast Club to welcome you as the first Black coach at Harvard Athletics. But you’ve turned around and built a community and a team around the Breakfast Club, bringing leaders to Harvard to speak to your basketball players and the larger Harvard community about leadership, social justice, and more. You’ve hosted some pretty notable figures to campus, including President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Celtics player Jaylen Brown, among many others. Could you talk about why you’ve done that—because it takes a lot of your time and energy and the energy of your staff—and how you thought about that team in relationship to the team that you manage every day?
Amaker: You and the legendary professor Charles Ogletree started it 18 years ago to welcome me to the Harvard community and make sure I felt supported. We continued it to welcome other new professors at Harvard. Most of the time it was an African American person. “This new person is coming to Harvard Law, this new person is coming to Harvard Business School. Would you mind inviting them to the Breakfast Club to meet some of the members of the Black community?” This is how it started with me, and now this is what we’re doing for others.
We have to be intentional with inclusion.
Amaker
Now I have my basketball players attend where they can hear you and others discuss various topics in the world, whether that’s social justice or politics. It has now grown and we’re able to host special guests and people are asking to be invited. As you remember, former governor Deval Patrick once burst in the door at Henrietta’s back room and said, “Hey, I’ve been hearing about this group and nobody’s ever invited me!”
Wilkins: One thing that you’ve done over the last few years is to host the Breakfast Club on a regular basis, every month, as well as invite the women’s [basketball] team. As you know, this has been an important moment for women’s basketball and women’s sports. But we still live in a world where there is a lot of gender inequity. I wonder, first of all, how do you think about that?
Amaker: First and foremost, we have a great women’s coach, staff, and program. When I came here, one of the things that we were trying to do, to be very honest, was see if we could be as good as our women’s program, which was winning titles and championships. We have been chasing them since.
We try to say, “Hey, we’re Harvard Basketball.” That includes women and men. That’s the umbrella we use. To have our women’s program be engaged and involved, it makes us all better. They’re sensational athletes and people. We support them and they support us. One of the things I’m hopeful that our players can always see, just like in the school of law or in law firms, is that you have to model the topics that we’re talking about. We have to be intentional with inclusion.
When we had John McEnroe come to the Breakfast Club, we invited our tennis program. We had the great Edwin Moses come to the Breakfast Club, and we invited the track team. I give a lot of credit to former president Drew Faust. She was here and one of our great presidents and the first female president history of our institution. And one of the things that she really ran on her presidency was “One Harvard.” We’re all in this together. I look at that as saying, for me in my world, we all wear the same jersey and it says Harvard on the front.
One of the goals for our program is to do well and do good. We expect you to do well. We’re hopeful that you’re going to do good.
Amaker
Wilkins: I’ll close with this: one of the great things about Harvard is all the things that it has to offer, including athletics. But as President Obama said when he came, most of the athletes in the room are not going to be in the NBA or the WNBA, or wherever the professional league might be. I wonder what lessons do you hope they take with them into the workplace to be more effective, more collaborative, more inclusive in teams wherever they end up going?
Amaker: Well, I’m thrilled you touched on their futures beyond this time as student athletes, as we refer to our guys as scholars and ballers beyond this.
One of the things I’m hopeful that you will see when you come to the Breakfast Club is that my team knows to look around and appreciate that this has been a special place and these are special people that are imparting this with them and for them. Remember, when it becomes their turn and their time, remember that this is what you’re supposed to do. You’re modeling it for us by your presence.
One of the goals for our program is to do well and do good. We expect you to do well. We’re hopeful that you’re going to do good. My team would tell you that that is ingrained in who we’re trying to have them become in this world—to be the citizens and the leaders and the scholars and the mentors and eventual resources for others when it’s their turn.
It’s all here at Harvard—all the resources. It’s a matter of us tapping into it, making sure we’re looking across this campus and this community and appreciating it. But we got to make sure that we’re on point, that when it becomes our time and our turn, that they do their part. And it’s coming. God willing, it’s coming.
Wilkins: Well, Tommy, I have had the great pleasure and privilege now for 18 years of watching you be a leader of young people and most of the members of the Breakfast Club and seeing you help create women and men of character. I’ve had the privilege of seeing and interacting with them. I know that the world is going to be a better place as they move to become not just the leaders of teams but also teammates who make great teams. As you say, Lord knows, in this world we have today, I can’t think of anything we need more than a group of women and men who will come into the world recognizing all that it takes and all that is required to create a great team. Thank you.
Tommy Amaker is head coach of the men’s basketball team at Harvard College and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. He has led the Crimson to seven Ivy League championships (2011–2015, 2018–2019), four NCAA tournament appearances (2012–2015), and seven 20-win seasons (2010–2015, 2020). Amaker is the all-time winningest coach with the Crimson.
David B. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
