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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 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 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 partnership with his former teammate Jerome Kersey.

Perhaps Inman’s best investment occurred in the 1983 draft, when the Blazers had the fourteenth pick. Inman selected shooting guard
Clyde Drexler
, who was passed up by other teams because he wasn’t regarded as a very strong shooter. Although he was the fifth shooting guard chosen, Drexler is now widely regarded as the steal of the 1983 draft. He outscored all other players in the draft, averaging more than 20 points a game in his career, and was the only player in that draft to make the all-NBA team, at least one All-Star game (he made ten of them), the Olympics, and the Basketball Hall of Fame. By the time he retired, Drexler joined legends Oscar Robertson and John Havlicek as the third player in NBA history to rack up more than 20,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 3,000 assists. Like Walton, Drexler was designated one of the fifty greatest players of all time. How did Inman know Drexler would be such a star when so many other teams let him slide by?

As a giver, Inman was open to outside advice. While at San Jose State, Inman met Bruce Ogilvie, a pioneer in sports psychology who “came onto the sports scene when psychologists were referred to as ‘shrinks’ and any player going to visit one was seen as a problem.” Most general managers and coaches avoided psychologists like Ogilvie, approaching the so-called science skeptically. Some viewed psychological assessment as irrelevant; others worried that it would threaten their own expertise and standing.

Whereas takers often strive to be the smartest people in the room, givers are more receptive to expertise from others, even if it challenges their own beliefs. Inman embraced Ogilvie and his methods with open arms, requiring players to undergo several hours of evaluation before the draft. Inman worked with Ogilvie to assess players on their selflessness, desire to succeed, willingness to persevere, receptivity to being coached, and dedication to the sport. Through these assessments, Inman could develop a deep understanding of a player’s tendencies toward grit and giving. “Other NBA teams were taking psychological looks at draftable players, but none to the degree that we used it and trusted it,” Inman said. “You had to like the talent before you would consider it in your evaluation. But it provided a clear barometer as to whether the guy would fulfill his potential.”

When Ogilvie assessed Drexler, Inman was impressed with his psychological profile. Inman interviewed the coaches who had seen Drexler play at Houston, and there was a consistent theme: Drexler played like a giver. “Clyde was the glue on that team. I was taken by the almost unanimous reaction from other coaches in that league,” Inman explained. “They said he did what he had to do to win a game. His ego never interfered with his will to win.” According to Bucky Buckwalter, who was then a scout, “There was some reluctance from teams . . . He was not a great shooter.” But Inman and his team decided that Drexler could “learn to shoot from the perimeter, or somehow make up for it with his other talents.” Inman was right: Drexler “turned out to be a more skilled player . . . than I would have expected,” Buckwalter said.

Even Inman’s bad bets on the basketball court have gone on to success elsewhere; the man knew a giver when he saw one. LaRue Martin has worked at UPS for twenty-five years, most recently as the community services director in Illinois. In 2008, he received a letter out of the blue from former Blazers owner Larry Weinberg: “you certainly are a wonderful role model in the work you are doing for UPS.” Martin has played basketball with President Obama, and in 2011, he was elected to the board of directors of the Retired Players Association. “I would love to be able to give back,” Martin said.

And remember Terry Murphy, Inman’s worst player at San Jose State? Inman gave Murphy a chance but didn’t see a future for him in basketball, so he encouraged him to go out for volleyball. Inman was spot-on about his work ethic: Murphy ended up making the U.S. national volleyball team. But Murphy didn’t leave basketball behind altogether: in 1986, to raise money for the Special Olympics, he started a three-on-three street basketball tournament in Dallas. By 1992, Hoop It Up had more than 150,000 players and a million fans. Five years later, there were 302 events in twenty-seven different countries, raising millions of dollars for charity.

Perhaps the best testament to Inman’s success is that although he missed out on
Michael Jordan
as a player, he outdid Jordan as a talent evaluator. As a basketball executive, Jordan has developed a reputation that conveys more taker cues than giver. This was foreshadowed on the court, where Jordan was known as self-absorbed and egotistical. As Jordan himself once remarked, “To be successful you have to be selfish.” Coaches had to walk on eggshells to give him constructive feedback, and in his Hall of Fame speech, Jordan was widely criticized for thanking few people and vilifying those who doubted him. Back in his playing days, he was a vocal advocate for a greater share of team revenues going to players. Now, as an owner, he has pushed for greater revenue to owners, presumably to put more money in his own pockets.
*

When it comes to betting on talent for too long, Jordan’s moves as an executive offer a fascinating contrast with Inman’s. When Jordan became president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards, he used the first pick in the 2001 draft to select center Kwame Brown. Brown was straight out of high school, loaded with talent, but seemed to lack grit, and never came anywhere near his potential. Later, he would be called the second-biggest NBA draft bust of the decade and one of the one hundred worst picks in sports history. After Brown, the second and third picks in the drafts were also centers, and they fared far better. The second pick was Tyson Chandler, who went on to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. The third pick was Pau Gasol, another young center less than a year and a half older than Brown. Gasol won the Rookie of the Year award, and in the coming decade, he would make four All-Star teams, win two NBA championships, and earn the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Both Gasol and Chandler swamped Brown’s performance in scoring, rebounding, and blocking shots.

Brown’s disappointing results appeared to threaten Jordan’s ego. When Jordan came out of retirement to play for the Wizards alongside Brown, he routinely berated and belittled Brown, whose poor performance was hurting the team—and making Jordan’s draft choice look foolish. In his first season, Brown put up paltry numbers, averaging less than five points and four rebounds per game. Yet in his second season, Brown’s minutes on the court doubled.

Jordan was fired from the Wizards after that season, but he wasn’t ready to give up on Brown. Nearly a decade later, in 2010, Brown signed a contract with the Charlotte Bobcats, a team owned by none other than Michael Jordan. “Michael was very much a part of this,” Brown’s agent said. “He wanted this to happen.”

By that point, Brown had played ten seasons for four different teams, averaging under seven points and six rebounds in more than five hundred games. In his previous season, he was spending just thirteen minutes on the court. When Brown joined Jordan’s Bobcats, his playing time was doubled to twenty-six minutes a game. The Bobcats gave Brown more minutes than he had played in the prior two seasons combined, yet he continued to struggle, averaging under eight points and seven rebounds. Jordan “wanted to give Kwame another opportunity,” Brown’s agent said. “There’s been so much written about the fact that this was Michael’s first pick and so much criticism directed at both of them when it didn’t work out.” A giver might admit the mistake and move on, but Jordan was still trying to turn the bad investment around. “I love Michael, but he just has not done a good job,” says friend and former Olympic teammate Charles Barkley. “I don’t think Michael has hired enough people around him who will disagree.” Under Jordan’s direction, in 2012, the Bobcats finished with the worst winning percentage in NBA history.

Conversely, Inman’s teams achieved surprising levels of success. In addition to building the 1977 team that went from last place to the title in just a year with a large number of unknowns, Inman’s draft picks made the Blazers a formidable team for years to come. After he left the Blazers in 1986, the team flourished under the leadership of Drexler, Porter, and Kersey. The three hidden gems, discovered by Inman in three consecutive years, led the Blazers to the Finals twice. Once again, Inman rarely received the credit. To the casual fan, it may appear that Inman was a failure, but basketball insiders regard him as one of the finest talent evaluators the sport has ever seen. Inman’s experience, coupled with research evidence, reveals that givers don’t excel only at recognizing and developing talent; they’re also surprisingly good at moving on when their bets don’t work out.