Give and Take: a revolutionary Approach to Success pdfdrive com

Glimpsing Glimmers in Chunks of Coal
As a giver, Inman built this championship team with an approach that mirrored
C. J. Skender’s: seeing potential in players where others didn’t. “Inman wanted a
complete portfolio on everybody he was interested in,” writes Wayne Thompson.
“No doubt that is what made him so successful in finding diamonds in the
rough.” Half of the top six scorers on the championship team—and five of the
top nine—were drafted late by Inman, in the second or third round. “He was way
ahead of the curve in seeing potential,” noted Steve Duin. “Stu, in the subculture
of basketball gurus, was near the apex. He was considered a genius,” said
Mavericks president Norm Sonju. In a chronicle of the 1984 draft, Filip Bondy
writes that Inman was viewed by many as “the best personnel man in the league.
He was so good, so respected, that other clubs would track his scouting missions
and listen very carefully to rumors about which players might interest him.”
In the 1970s, most basketball teams were focusing heavily on observable
physical talents such as speed, strength, coordination, agility, and vertical leap.
Inman thought it was also important to pay attention to the inner attributes of
players, so he decided to begin evaluating their psychological makeup. Before a
draft, along with reviewing a player’s statistics and watching him play, Inman
wanted to understand him as a person. He would watch players closely during
the pregame warm-up to see how hard they worked, and he would interview
their coaches, family members, friends, and teachers about issues of motivation,
mind-set, and integrity. According to the Oregonian, “Inman made his reputation
by finding undervalued players. . . . His eye for talent was as sharp as his feel for
people. He wanted players whose character and intelligence were as high as their
vertical jumps.”
In 1970, Inman joined the Blazers, then a brand-new NBA team, as chief
talent scout. That summer, he held an open tryout for people to put their
basketball skills to the test. It was partially a public relations stunt to generate
local excitement about basketball, but Inman was also looking for players who
had gone overlooked by other teams. None of the guys from the open tryout
made the team, but Inman’s fascination with unlikely candidates would bear fruit
several years later. In 1975, with the twenty-fifth pick in the second round of the
draft, Inman selected a little-known Jewish forward named
Bob Gross
. Coaches
and fans thought it was a mistake. Gross had played college basketball at Seattle,
averaging ten points a game, and then transferred to Long Beach State, where he

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averaged just six and a half points in his junior year. “The story of Bob Gross’s
collegiate and professional basketball life was that nobody noticed him,” wrote
Frank Coffey in a book about the Blazers, “until they really started looking
hard.”
Inman happened to see a game between Long Beach and Michigan State, and
his interest was piqued when Gross hustled to block a shot on what should have
been an easy Spartan layup on a fast break. Inman took a closer look and saw
more evidence of Gross’s work ethic: he more than doubled his scoring average
from his junior to senior year, when he put in more than sixteen points a game.
Inman “discovered a jewel, a consistent, hardworking, extraordinarily effective
basketball player,” Coffey wrote. Gross was praised by one of his college
coaches for “unselfish dedication to the team.” When the Blazers made the
Finals in his third NBA season, Gross delivered, pouring in an average of
seventeen points per game. In the pivotal games five and six, he guarded Julius
Erving and led the Blazers by scoring twenty-five and twenty-four points.
According to Bill Walton, “Bob Gross was the ‘grease guy’ for that team. He
made it flow . . . Bob would run relentlessly, guard and defend . . . Without
Bob . . . Portland could not have won the championship.”
Inman recognized that givers were undervalued by many teams, since they
didn’t hog the spotlight or use the flashiest of moves. His philosophy was that
“It’s not what a player is, but what he can become . . . that will allow him to
grow.” When Inman saw a guy practice with grit and play like a giver, he
classified him as a diamond in the rough. In fact, there’s a close connection
between grit and giving. In my own research, I’ve found that because of their
dedication to others,
givers are willing to work harder and longer
than takers and
matchers. Even when practice is no longer enjoyable, givers continue exerting
effort out of a sense of responsibility to their team.
This pattern can be seen in many other industries. Consider Russell
Simmons, the cofounder of the hip-hop label
Def Jam Records
, which launched
the careers of LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Simmons is often called the
godfather of hip-hop, and he was giving away music for free as early as 1978,
long before most labels started doing that. When I asked him about his success,
he attributed it to finding and promoting givers. “Good givers are great getters;
they make everybody better,” Simmons explains. One of his favorite givers is
Kevin Liles, who started working for free as an intern and rose all the way up to
become president of Def Jam. As an intern, Liles was the first to arrive at work
and the last to leave. As a promotion director, Liles was responsible for one

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region, but he went out of his way to promote other regions too. “Everybody
started to look at Kevin as a leader, because they all looked to him for direction.
He gave until people couldn’t live without him.” In selecting and promoting
talent, Simmons writes, “The most important quality you can show me is a
commitment to giving.”
Stu Inman knew that gritty givers would be willing to put the good of the
team above their own personal interests, working hard to fulfill the roles for
which they were needed. In the fabled 1984 draft, after selecting Sam Bowie,
Inman took a forward named Jerome Kersey in the second round with the forty-
sixth pick overall. Kersey came from Longwood College, a little-known
Division II school in Virginia, yet blossomed into an excellent NBA player. A
Longwood sports administrator said that Kersey “had the best work ethic of
anyone that’s ever been here,” which is what led Inman to recognize his promise
when few NBA insiders did. The next year, in 1985, Inman found another hidden
gem of a point guard with the twenty-fourth pick in the draft: Terry Porter, a
gritty giver who earned acclaim for his hustle and selflessness. He made two All-
Star teams with the Blazers and played seventeen strong NBA seasons, and in
1993, he won the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award, awarded annually to
one player, coach, or trainer who demonstrates “outstanding service and
dedication to the community.” Along with providing tickets for disadvantaged
children to attend games and promoting graduation parties free of drugs and
alcohol, Porter has given extensively to boys’ and girls’ clubs, working in