Some Rules of the Modern Workplace: Elon Musk

June 5, 2022September 25, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

1) It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life and your job is gonna be quite miserable. – Elon Musk

I learned the hard way that when we get into an argument with a co-worker, it can make the work life miserable for as long as that argument lasts. Depending on the work we do, and how often we do it, employment situations can trap us into spending more time with people we can’t stand than those we love. With that in mind, if we get into an argument, we need to forgive and forget with strength.

“I won’t back down,” we say, “and I have a very difficult time admitting I’m wrong, especially when I’m not!” In interoffice squabbles, it really doesn’t matter who’s at fault. No matter how great people are, they will make mistakes, and if we want to be happy in the office, it’s important that we recognize that, especially when we enjoy the work we do.

It can make matters even more difficult when it’s the other party’s fault. If it’s our fault, and we’re living in absolute misery, all we have to do is apologize to end the stupid, irrelevant argument. When the other party refuses to apologize, it lengthens and strengthens the tension. I’ve done the wrong thing so many times that I learned that the best way to end relatively benign interoffice squabbles is to apologize, forgive and forget, and do it with a noteworthy level of strength.

I got into an interoffice squabble with a co-worker, and in this instance, she was in the wrong. She immediately called me to apologize. “I’m going to forgive you and forget this ever happened.” I said that with an unusual (for me) level of anger and force, “and I don’t want to hear your excuses or explanations, so I’m now going to hang up on you now.” I heard her say, “Wait, I just want to say …” before I hung up.

Who says, “I’m going to forgive you” with strength? The source of true power, we all believe, lies in refusing to forgive. We can lord their slip-up over them for weeks, months, and even years, if we do it right. Anyone who has tried to maintain an angry facade knows it can be foolish and a little exhausting. I’m not going to talk to this person at this time when I always do, we think, and when it comes to that party, I’m going to purposely walk by them without saying a word. That will get her. We have to teach people how to treat us, and this is going to extremely effective. There are only so many punctuation marks we can put at the end of a sentence. Do we pound the point home with three proverbial exclamation points, and how often do we do it before they truly understand that we’re mad!!! We’ve all been through these mistakes, and we’ve all missed out on the good times we witness across the party room floor when we see her laughing with the group we’re normally in, but we won’t step foot in because she’s there, and we’re mad at her. A simple, powerful acceptance of an apology can be so shocking that the recipient might repeat what you said in their head a number of times.

This co-worker was a very sweet, young woman who messed up big time. We both knew it, and we both moved on to have a very good relationship in the aftermath.

In another situation, I messed up bad. I was 100% to blame for committing an almost unforgivable transgression against a very sweet co-worker. I called her up the next day and apologized. She, being a very sweet person, offered me all sorts of outs and excuses. “I appreciate what you’re doing here,” I said, “but I’m not going to accept that. I want you to know that what I did was wrong, and I apologize. Full stop.” I allowed a few seconds to tick by, “Now that I’ve apologized in an unequivocable way, let me tell you what I intended to say.” I then told her that, and how it was intended to mimic what she said about herself previously, and how I mangled it up so badly. I told her how I would’ve interpreted what I said, if someone said the same thing about me and how horrible I would’ve felt. She agreed with my summation, and she offered me total and unequivocable forgiveness, and we are good friends to this day.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made, in such situations, is to enter into it from a position of weakness. Strength in the face of what should be a weak moment can be surprising, but if we remain strong throughout, we’ll experience long-term dividends for our actions.

Our relationships with our co-workers are just as important as our other relationships. If we want to have a happy work life, we need to work as hard at them as we do all of our other relationships in life, and accepting an apology with force and strength can be as effective as offering a strong, unequivocable apology.

Having said all that, there is a small percentage of horrible people in every walk of life, and some of them seem to enjoy making our lives a living hell. There are some people, as the quote from Cool Hand Luke says, “You just can’t reach. So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it; well, he gets it.”

2) Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough. – Elon Musk

What a great antonym to “failure is not an option.” That famous quote, I think, refers to ultimate or final failure, and I think it fails to leave room for small failings that teach us as we go. Musk’s “Failure is an option” almost liberates those who fail. As with the famous quote, it gives room for some failure, as long as we learn, but some of the times we read “failure it not as option” as a threat to avoid trying new things. Imagine being an employee in an innovative tech company, and your boss has a “failure is not an option” plaque on his desk. We might not try that adventurous idea, because we know it’s fraught with failure, so if failure is not an option, we might not explore the possibilities of our idea. It’s a subtle difference that might not deter a strong mind, but we’re all subjected to the opinions of authority, and we all try to please them in a way that creates vulnerabilities. Am I the right man for such a bold, adventurous idea? What if I fail? Try, fail, learn. How will we ever learn, if we don’t try. How will we ever learn if we don’t fail in the beginning and on the trail every once in a while?

The bassist from The Who, John Entwistle, once said of Jimmy Page’s idea of a New Yardbirds group, “That’s going to go over like a lead balloon.” Jimmy Page loved that condemnation so much he changed the name of his new project to match it. Instead of calling his new project the New Yardbirds. He called it Led Zeppelin.

3) Pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful. – Elon Musk

How many of our friends and family tell us that our ideas are destined to fail. Some of them don’t know why we’re destined to fail, they just know a screwy idea when they hear it. Some of them know don’t know what we did wrong, but they know how to fix it. Rather than dismiss them entirely, because they’ve never tried anything so unique, weird, and adventurous, listen to them. In my experience, there’s usually a nugget, a 10% of the 10% advice they give that actually could, slip into your round hole and come out the other side looking quite different and more beautiful.

There is a certain percentage of people who are cheering you on in life. There’s a percentage who envy us, dislike us, and think we’re fools and morons for believing in ourselves in a way they can’t. Our job in life is to find that percentage who believe in us so much that they offer us the type of constructive criticism they think we need. They’re not always right, but their head and heart is in the right place, and if we listen to them often enough, we might find something we can use. It rarely happens in the moment, and some of the times it takes so long to see the merit of what they’re saying we can’t remember who said it, but every once in a while we can find a nugget to chew on.

4) Any product that needs a manual to work is broken. – Elon Musk

As with a joke, if a story requires too much explanation, then it probably wasn’t the Great American Classic we thought it was while writing it.

As someone once said of the great Russian authors. “Yeah, they’re great and all that, but some of the times I read them and think, ‘Just get to the point already.’”

I appreciate the need for character development and setting. Writers need to help us empathize with their character, and we have to be there, but as with everything else there is a tipping point. I’ve read 1,000+ page books, but I’ve rarely read one that couldn’t use at least a little trimming.

5) You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better. – Elon Musk

I began my writing career, trying to be weird for the sole purpose of being weird. My favorite books, music, and movies were weird, and I wanted to explore the deep dark caverns of my mind for the weirdest possible plot lines I could think up.

The problem was no one understood it, and I enjoyed that. It felt great to say, “You just don’t get it,” because that made me feel like a complicated, misunderstood artiste. Yet, I’ve found that if no one understands it, then no one is going to understand it. If this is you, then you’re just writing for yourself. “Right, that’s what I’m going for.” The authors I love all said that, so I said it. Unfortunately, I neglected to learn how to intertwine writing for myself and writing for others. The authors I loved already conquered the latter, so they could go forward writing for themselves.

My advice, don’t forget the context. Context makes your writing so much more entertaining for the reader.

As John Hughes wrote for Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:

“[In me you’ve] got someone who will listen to your boring stories. I mean, didn’t you notice on the plane when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag? Didn’t that give you some sort of clue, like hey, maybe this guy is not enjoying it? You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that, that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle. Your stories have none of that! They’re not even amusing accidentally! “Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith. He’s got some amusing anecdotes for ya. Oh, and here’s a gun so you can blow your brains out. You’ll thank me for it.” I-I could tolerate any, any insurance seminar, for days. I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, “How can ya stand it?” And I’d say, “‘Cause I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.” You know what they’d say? They’d say, “I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy.” It’s like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest. You know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except that I wouldn’t pull it out and snap it back, you would. And by the way, you know, when, when you’re telling these little stories, here’s a good idea. Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”

6) I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself. – Elon Musk

I see articles that provide updates: “Edited on May, 6.” Are we supposed to do that? If I did that, my articles would all be 10,000 words, and most of those 10,000 words would be the notations on all the updates, edits, and revisions. I change everything from the big to the small. I rarely read one of my articles and think that’s just complete. There’s always something to delete or add. I take time away and re-enter with a fresh perspective.

I went to another blog on the subject of errors, rewrites, and editing. Most of the writers wrote that their readers will accept a certain error rate, so they don’t go back to fix their article and correct every stupid, little thing. “Every passionate writer is going to commit some errors, so I don’t go back and edit,” they write. “I leave it raw, as is, and I think my readers understand.”

My first thought was that these people must be way smarter than I am to survive the fear of everyone seeing our there, their and they’re type errors. I see errors in big time writers’ articles every time, and I’m mortified for them. I see errors in my own work, the ones I catch anyway, and I shudder. How many readers saw this, I think. They’ll probably never be back. Every time I write an article, it’s edited at least ten times before I hit publish, then I go back and try to catch whatever errors I missed the first 309,000 times through, and I always find something. I don’t know how these writers, who presumably write something once and never go back, live with that fear that someone out there knows that they’re less than intelligent. All the power to them for being so strong, but I could never do it.

7) People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working. – Elon Musk

I went to work for two promising, young companies at different points in my life. The only thing these companies had in common was they didn’t know what they were doing. I found this confusing and exciting when I was younger. I was on the ground floor of a ground-breaking company that would eventually become a Fortune 500 company. The rules would change on almost a weekly basis, and our method of operation, as employees, would have to adjust accordingly.

“This customer is telling me I’m doing it wrong,” I would tell the help desk operator. I called them for nothing more than confirmation of my knowledge.

“You are doing it wrong,” the operator would say. “Check your email from May 23.” The changes were so drastic, so often, that an employee could get dizzy simply sitting in their cubicle desk. Every supervisor and manager said, “The minute you get comfortable with a standard method of operation, it will change.” Working in various cubicles for as many years as I did, I got used to that overused line, but I never worked for a company where that was actually true. It was, as I said, confusing, dizzying, and a little exciting.

I went to work for another promising, young company again, later in life, and I quit quite early on. The sentiment in Musk’s quote was a primary reason why. I didn’t want to go through all that humbling humiliation all over again.

Elon Musk and Billionaires v Politicians

June 3, 2022 RilalyLeave a comment

“Who do you trust less? Billionaires or Politicians,” Elon Musk asked in a tweet.

No one cares what I think. No one cares what you think. No one cares what Elon Musk thinks. Elon Musk doesn’t care what Elon Musk thinks, in this particular poll anyway. He wants to know what we think, but he doesn’t really care what we think either. If he asked, “Who do you trust more?” that might hint at some narcissism on Musk’s part, but “Who do you trust less” is intended to reveal to virtue signalers, in the political offices of both parties, that they’re not as popular as their fellow ivory tower dwellers tell them they are. I still believe Musk missed the mark however. He should’ve asked who can do you more harm?

“The billionaire, Elon Musk, conducted this poll on his Twitter page, so he received the results he expected. As MSN.com reported, As of Friday afternoon, the poll had amassed over 3 million votes, and 75.7% of participants selected “Politicians” as who they trust less, while 24.3% selected “Billionaires.””

Again, this was Elon Musk’s poll, conducted on his Twitter page with his followers, so the results are skewed. If a politician was bold enough to conduct a similar poll on their Twitter page, they would probably receive the results they expect. If we dug deep into these polls and analyzed the results, we would find that it doesn’t matter. Trust is often based on personal preference, and it doesn’t really matter who we trust less, if neither party can do us harm.

Without going into the details of the two parties concerned, because it feels unnecessary, the politician is obviously in charge of more levers of power that can do us harm. On the flipside, an individual who favors politicians could ask, “Which party can help us more the billionaire or the politician?”

To which we would reply, “All conditions being perfect, the politician.” That’s the bullet point, but the subpoints say, “As long as that politician is honest, and their prime directive is helping people in a purely altruistic manner. If that were the case, the politician would focus their efforts at problem solving. They would seek the best solution, regardless the politics, but how many politicians in federal government do that?”

Some suggest the primary goal of every politician in Washington D.C., is to get reelected. If that’s the case, how many politicians help us solve our problems in a way that doesn’t serve their favorite special interest groups’ cause? When we see those three words, special interest groups, we naturally think of the other political party’s special interest groups, but special interest groups come in all stripes, and they influence politicians of all stripes. Just about every politician claims they don’t accept special interest money, but just about every politician does, Having said that, the relationship between the two might involve a genuine hand holding mission, but how often do politicians pick winners and losers in an industry, because one corporation aligns with their views better than the other? (Note: We can usually tell when a politician is picking winners and losers, if their primary defense is “We’re not picking winners and losers here.”)

Between the two, I think we could make the general point that politicians care more than the billionaire does. A billionaire, if they’re any good at what they do, is focused almost entirely on what’s best for their corporation. Their corporation provides a good or service that helps their fellow man, but their mission is not altruistic. They’re interested in whatever generates the most profit for their company. If their corporation happens to help their fellow man, that’s gravy, but it’s not their prime directive.

The very idea of entering public service suggests that the politician is more concerned with their fellow man, but how many of them know anything about private industry? If they’re going to solve problems, regardless the politics involved, they should be able serve public and private concerns, so some experience in private industry could prove helpful. Yet, some politicians consider working in private industry the equivalent of working behind enemy lines.

Most politicians, from both sides, appear to have the best intentions, but how often do they break what doesn’t need fixed? They might write, or vote for, legislation with the best intentions in mind, but they often campaign, in the next election, on the idea that they need to fix what they just broke.

It doesn’t matter if we trust or distrust a billionaire, because their ability to directly help or hurt our lives is minimal by comparison. Who’s the most powerful billionaire in the United States? What’s the most powerful move he could make? If they fulfill our worst fears, what recourse do we have? We can go to their competition.

Bashing billionaires and politicians is so easy. As much as we hate to admit it, both parties have accomplished more in their lives than most of us ever will, and that leads to jealousy, hatred, and a desire to boycott, protest, and demonize everything they do.

“Billionaires spend their own money, whereas politicians spend our money.” Stephen Crowder responded to Elon Musk’s tweet. “I think it’s obvious who we should be more concerned about.” Those who trust billionaires less could argue that they spend our money, because we give them our money for their products or services, but if those products or services are inferior, or too expensive, they won’t receive our money, and the marketplace will eventually crush them. If government officials provide inferior services, and we decide not to give them our money, based on their performance, we could face stiff penalties and possible jail time. As Crowder alludes, why would we be concerned if a billionaire is dishonest, greedy, or a criminal? How much can their actions affect our lives? Why should we be concerned about dishonest, greedy, or criminal politicians, because they can have a much more direct effect on our lives.

What happens if a billionaire goes on an irresponsible spending spree with their money? They can help the economy, create jobs, and they can spread the wealth around to those who create products and services around the world.

What happens if a politician goes on an irresponsible spending spree with other people’s money? They’ll need more of our money to spend, so they’ll take more. If they cannot find a way to do that, they’ll print money, or borrow it, which will create inflation, increase deficits and debts, and damage the long-term economy for their short-term goals. Even if some of their money reaches its intended source, how much of it will be siphoned off by various bureaucracies? How much of it will be wasted through various redundancies, fraud, and abuse? We’ve witnessed such examples through various stimulus packages that were ravaged by waste, fraud and abuse. In the meantime, money equals power and greater freedom, and the net result for the citizen they represent is less power and freedom.

It’s not the politician’s fault that we take advantage of their best intentions, right? We could analyze this from a number of perspectives, but the final answer should end with a big fat “no one cares what they intended”. The numbers show results. The numbers show the politician failed. We should hold them to account for their failings, so that future politicians might insert whatever oversight they can to prevent fraud, waste and abuse. They don’t, and we reelect the politician based on their intentions. The billionaire’s best intentions are often held in check by numbers and meritorious results.

Who can do you more harm? Circa 2014, the federal government raised corporate taxes in the United States to some of the highest in the world. American corporations began moving their operations to other, more competitive countries to escape those taxes. Some politicians proposed that the best way to combat these moves was to make them illegal. If a governor, or a mayor lost a business to another state, and they threatened to make it illegal for a business to move to another state, they would be laughed out of their reelection campaign.

When politicians pass legislation that affects lower-level operations that most of us will never see, this affects the cost of doing business, and that cost is then passed onto the consumer through higher prices of their products and services. Some politicians propose fixed pricing to solve the problem of higher prices. Their intent is to prevent the consumer from getting hit by the corporation raising prices, but the primary reason the corporation raised prices was to pay for the politicians’ rules, regulations, and taxes. When the government imposes costs on corporations, and those corporations pass the costs onto the consumer, economists call this an incidence tax.

The rising costs rarely affect the politician, because the natural inclination of most consumers is that when prices rise, it is due to a CEO’s whim of wanting more profit. Increase the price, increase the profit, right? This line of thinking neglects the market. If corporation A raises prices because they want more profit, it opens the door for corporations B through F to sell more of their products at market prices. Their volume of sales will increase, until such point that the CEO of A realizes they don’t control the market as much as they thought. If one billionaire CEO were to raise prices, we would go to the competition. When an entire industry raises prices, however, it is often due to politicians’ whims.

If a politician raises taxes to force us to help pay for their spending, where are you going to go? If the politician is local, we can move to another locale, city or state. If they’re federal politicians, we can go to another country. We have options either way, of course, but I don’t think we’d get much push back when we say the politician can do more harm in this regard.

What’s the worst thing a billionaire can do to harm your life? They can raise prices, they can avoid paying taxes, and they can create a monopoly that harms the marketplace. They can also contribute money, time, and endorsements to a politician, but in the competition between who has access to the more levers of power over the individual, it’s not much of a contest.

Does a politician employ people? We hear politicians talk about creating jobs all the time, but what jobs do they create? New York Times Economist Paul Krugman once talked about how he thought politicians should create temporary jobs to help the economy over the hump. He suggested politicians create ditch digging jobs, where one set of workers digs a hole and another set of workers fills it up. I should thank Krugman, because this is the first time I’ve heard of someone state that politicians can actually create jobs. The jobs Krugman proposes would be pointless, of course, but at least it would put people to work, temporarily. That needless work would also be funded by taxpayers who worked hard earned for that money. How about the politicians in the federal government temporarily lift some needless regulations or temporarily lower corporate taxes, so private industries can temporarily hire more workers to get us over the hump? Krugman’s proposal keeps the levers of power in the hands of the politicians, who don’t create products, services, wealth, or jobs.

If the billionaires appease local politicians, and vice versa, the billionaire can almost single-handedly revive a community, a city, and in some cases an entire state by deciding where to locate a plant. The local politician’s job is to placate the billionaire, in this instance, with tax breaks and real estate, and to be present for the ribbon cutting ceremony. Other than that, the ability of a politician to create jobs obviously pales in comparison to the billionaire’s.

In the current era, the billionaire also has to be in an industry that will help the politician get reelected. The modern politician has more bullet points than they’ve had in the past, so creating jobs is no longer the prime directive of most politicians, unless the politician favors the corporation or industry. The politician can then run to their phones to contact their broker to buy shares in that company with their insider information.

How much oversight does an enterprising billionaire have on his daily activities, as it pertains to his business? The billionaire has to answer to the consumer, the media, shareholders, the corporate board, the security and exchange commission, the IRS, local and state governments, and other federal bureaucracies, and all their rules and laws. The politician has to answer to much of the same, but whose oversight is more intense?

Everybody hates the billionaire. We don’t trust them. We think they attained their wealth through ill-gotten gains, and we don’t trust them to use their place on the stage responsibly. We won’t buy their products or services to prove our point, and … and it just doesn’t matter. The billionaire will go on to sell their products to those who will buy them. If no one does, they’ll go out of business, and no one will talk about them anymore a month later. It doesn’t matter if we trust billionaires to be responsible, honest, or quality managers of their company. If they’re incompetent, dishonest, or even criminal, their company will eventually fold up. Whatever consumers, shareholders, workers they have left will be deeply affected, and the city, state, and locale their corporation called home will also be affected, but that pales in comparison to the damage a politician can do before being turned out of office. As we’ve witnessed in bygone years and modern times, it is often very difficult to expose them and get them out of office if they’re popular enough. In the meantime, a corrupt politician can do grave damage to those that they’re elected to represent.

Jack McKinney: The Forgotten Man

April 24, 2022October 15, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

“He created “Showtime!” Norm Nixon said. “That should never be forgotten. You can talk about me, Kareem, Earvin, and Pat Riley all you want. But Jack McKinney created “Showtime!”

If you were paying any attention at all in the 1980’s, you knew the Lakers, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Pat Riley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and “Showtime!” A fella didn’t have to watch the NBA to know the names Magic Johnson or “Showtime!” We didn’t even have to enjoy watching sports to know these names. They were in the news, on the news, and the news. Decades later, the names “Showtime!” and Magic Johnson still resonate so well that networks like HBO and Apple+ are willing to pay top dollar for retrospective broadcasts that recall how special this era was in sports and entertainment.

Lakers former head coach Jack McKinney on the sidelines cheering on the team from sidelines in first quarter action.

The term “Showtime!” is still so flashy that this writer feels compelled to surround it with quotes and follow it up with an exclamation point. Even though we weren’t yet teenagers, we knew the names Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Norm Nixon, Byron Scott, Michael Cooper, Jamal Wilkes, James Worthy, Kurt Rambis, Pat Riley and Earvin “Magic” Johnson. We knew the big names, we couldn’t escape them, but as with all sports franchises, title runs, and dynasties, those names not in lights often contributed far more than we ever knew. The name almost criminally absent from this list was the architect of the “Showtime!” game plan of the run the Lakers enjoyed in the 1980’s: Jack McKinney.

Jack McKinney might be the last name we think of from this era, but the first name that comes to mind when talking about the Lakers 1980’s “Showtime!” run is Magic Johnson. He was the superstar, the smile, the face of the franchise, and a celebrity on and off the court. He was one of the few athletes of his era who lived up to such over-the-top billing. Prior to the ’79-’80 Laker season, Magic lead his college basketball team, the Michigan State Spartans to a college basketball championship, then he was the number one pick out of college. In his rookie season with the Lakers, Magic was one of the few to prove the hype machine correct when he awarded the Lakers for using a number one draft pick on him by winning an NBA Championship in his rookie season. He had some help, of course, including a man named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who many argue was the best basketball player of all time, and if statistics matter, Jabbar still has the most points ever scored by an individual over the course of his career.* In the 1979-1980 season, however, the 21-year-old rookie from Michigan State had every spotlight the national media owned on him, and he succeeded beyond all expectations.

Just about every highlight of the Lakers in the 80’s contains something Magic did. Whether it was some crucial shot, powerful dunk, or one of his highlight reel passes. Magic Johnson could get anyone the ball at any time, at just about anywhere on the court.

Was Magic the best fastbreak point guard of all time, perhaps, but we might also ask the question was Magic Johnson so great because he fit McKinney’s scheme so well, or did owner Jerry Buss hire McKinney, because he wanted the scheme, and he knew his first draft pick would flourish in it?

As Jeff Pearlman wrote in the book Showtime, the Lakers’ strategy prior to the arrival of Magic and McKinney, was “See Kareem, wait for Kareem, pass to Kareem, watch Kareem shoot and hope ball goes in.”

Was Magic better in McKinney’s scheme than he would’ve been in Jerry Sloan’s with the Chicago Bulls? (The Bulls lost a famous coin flip for the rights to draft Magic Johnson in 1979.) Was Magic so great that he would’ve been great wher eever he played, or did the “Showtime!” game plan play to his strengths? If McKinney didn’t fall prey to the accident, and he coached a different team, with all of his facilities intact, would he have succeeded regardless? Or was the Magic/McKinney gameplan a marriage made in heaven?

Would Joe Montana have succeeded regardless when and where he played? Was he so driven to be great that it would’ve happened no matter where he played, or did he fit the scheme the coaches implemented? We could ask this of any coach, scheme, and player marriage, but while most of the credit is given to the player, most sports nuts divide the credit more equally. How many sports nuts, the freaks of sports knowledge, know enough to know the name Jack McKinney.

Prior to being hired by the Lakers, Jack McKinney was a basketball lifer who lived and breathed basketball. He was a college basketball assistant coach and a head coach, then he was an assistant coach for five years in the NBA. At the age of 44, he was hired to coach his first NBA team, the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s not an exaggeration to say his whole life had been leading up to that moment. How many hours, months, and years of his life did he sacrifice to one day see his dream to fruition? How many dark, quiet rooms did he sit in all alone, watching tape, learning the game, developing game plans, and correcting and perfecting it when others were out living a life? He sacrificed his life for basketball, and when all his work finally started to pay off, it was all taken away from him.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would’ve devoured Jack McKinney’s narrative as a modern tragedy of epic proportions. He probably would’ve started his production with McKinney’s solo bike ride in which his gears locked up. Jack McKinney was thrown off the bike, and he landed in a manner that put him in a coma. The serious injuries he experienced would plague him for the rest of his life. It took him so long to recover that the Lakers named Paul Westhead coach, and then they named Pat Riley, the man credited with the Lakers fast break offense that we would eventually all call “Showtime!” This accident happened 14 games into Jack McKinney’s tenure as coach of the Lakers. He would never coach them again.

Prior to the accident, Jack McKinney implemented his revolutionary fast break offense, and the Lakers used that game plan to win the ‘79-’80 NBA Championship, their first of that era. When McKinney’s successor Paul Westhead later tried to institute a different gameplan, it didn’t work for the talent on the court. Pat Riley took over, re-instituted McKinney’s gameplan, and the rest is history, Pat Riley’s history. The Jack McKinney story is interesting whether you are a Lakers fan or not, but it also interesting because prior to HBO’s retrospective broadcast Winning Time, based on Jeff Pearlman’s book, this sports aficionado had no idea how instrumental Jack McKinney was. The Jack McKinney story is interesting because it highlights the “forgotten man” in sports history.

“This is the guy who made my career possible,” McKinney said that Lakers’ coach Pat Riley always said when introducing McKinney, “This is the guy.”

The question author Jeff Pearlman put to Lakers’ point guard Norm Nixon decades later was, “Is Jack McKinney universally acknowledged as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NBA?”

“I have no doubt that he would be [were it not for the accident],” Nixon said. “No doubt whatsoever.”

How many forgotten men and women, like McKinney, have changed the landscape in their world? How many little guys and girls helped the names in lights edit an otherwise flawed premise, or rescued an otherwise flawed scientific finding by disproving it so well that the genius had to go back to the drawing board to find a more perfect resolution? How many little-known advisors instructed world leaders to follow a different plan that resulted in a different outcome that defined history? We all know the names in lights, the names that sell newspapers and collect internet hits, but how many lesser-names who shunned the spotlight defined history as we know it.

I don’t know these names, and either do you. I didn’t know the name Jack McKinney prior to this year, and unless you’re a die-hard Lakers fan, or you’ve watched the story of the Lakers in the 80’s Winning Time on HBO, you didn’t either. I heard some foggy details about a coach who started out with Magic, but I heard he died weeks into Magic’s rookie season. I didn’t know what role he played, if any, and I had no idea how instrumental he was. I just thought he was hired, and he died shortly into his tenure as coach. Jack McKinney didn’t die. He went onto coach a couple other teams, and he won coach of the year in ’80-’81 coaching for the Indiana Pacers, but after working so hard, as a coach in college and an assistant in college and the NBA, he never achieved the dream he could have with the talent Jerry West, Jerry Buss, and the rest of the Lakers’ brain trust amassed in ’79-’80, and the years that followed. McKinney is recognized by those in the know as one of the great basketball minds of his generation, but how many outside that very small world have even heard his name?

“McKinney is not a bitter man,” Jeff Pearlman writes to close his intro on the now-deceased McKinney, “but he is human.”

“Life isn’t always fair,” McKinney said. “I’m OK with how everything has turned out. I’m loved. But, well, it’s not always fair…”

“Jack McKinney is the man more responsible for the birth of the Showtime era of professional basketball,” Pearlman writes, “If only he could remember it.”

If that doesn’t give you chills on how unfair life can be, then I don’t really know what I’m talking about. We talked about the scheme, player marriage earlier. Magic Johnson might not be “Magic!” today, were it not for Jack McKinney, James Worthy might have been an all-star and nothing more, Jerry Buss might have been nothing more than an American businessman who tried and failed to resurrect the Lakers franchise, and Pat Riley might’ve ended up nothing more than a failed sports announcer. What if’s, and could’ve been, should’ve beens dot history, but the ’80’s Laker dynasty we know today, probably wouldn’t have happened were it not for one forgotten man in history, the late-great Jack McKinney.