The NBA is a league of change. Recent roster turnover has been spurred by a number of factors, from an inflated salary cap and shorter, more exorbitant contracts, to restless owners, to star players progressively embracing their own power. Teams have been forced, at breakneck speed, to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Before the NBA went on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, chaos was its new normal: compelling, delightful and anxiety-inducing. But the constant shuffle also sparked an existential question among hundreds of affected players, coaches and front office executives: How can chemistry be fostered in an increasingly erratic era of impatience, load management, reduced practice time and youthful inexperience?

Every year you have six new teammates, Houston Rockets guard Austin Rivers said in an interview with SB Nation. Its like gaw-lly! In some ways you wish that would stop.

Its a new NBA, man. Guys are playing on a new team every year now, and it has nothing to do with how good of a player you are, its just how the NBA is. I have teammates whove played on eight, nine teams. I mean, thats fucking nuts. I dont ever want to go through something like that. (Rivers is 27 years old, and on his fourth team in seven NBA seasons.)

Over the past six months, dozens of players, coaches and executives across the NBA spoke with SB Nation about the state of the leagues chemistry, and why creating cohesiveness now is more difficult and demanding than ever before. Their responses sketched a blurry future for the league.

Its amazing how fast players change in todays NBA, Indiana Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said. From when I got over here two years ago, Myles [Turner] is the only player whos still here.

I have teammates whove played on eight, nine teams. I mean, thats fucking nuts. - Austin Rivers

Last summer, nearly half of the leagues talent pool swapped jerseys. Seemingly every roster in the league was forced to learn complicated new personality quirks and on-court tendencies. Honed locker room dynamics and hierarchies changed dramatically.

Chicago Bulls forward Thaddeus Young has played for four teams in the last six years after spending his first seven with the Philadelphia 76ers. Few people know better just how precious chemistry can be.

With how the salary cap is going, teams are not locking themselves into long-term deals anymore, where they have four to six guys on four-year deals, Young said. Its definitely tough because you dont know each other. The communication is gonna be off. The teams that you came from before, you might be driving the basketball and you might be used to a guy being in the corner and that guy might not be in the corner.

The NBA may be long past being able to reverse the course of roster turnover, but teams are doing their best to mitigate any downsides. The teams that have done the best job tend to think of chemistry in two buckets: personal and performance. The former contains how players interact away from the game, and the latter contains what happens on the court. However, personal chemistry often informs performance, and vice versa. Once players are comfortable off the court, their on-court relationship improves.

Take Los Angeles Lakers forward Jared Dudley, for example.

When I got here Id turn the ball over throwing to our centers because they expected a lob, Dudley said. I dont really throw lobs, Im more of a bounce passer.

Dudley solved his problem by initiating conversations with LAs big men, verbalizing his own in-game habits so that everyone could get on the same page. Not all NBA players feel so comfortable expressing themselves, however. Especially when an on-court situation is more complex than what to do on basic pick-and-rolls.

When the personal chemistry exists, the performance chemistry is often very easy because the performance chemistry is sometimes a function of hard conversations, one Western Conference GM said. The personal chemistry allows a guy to say, Hey man, in the second quarter last night there were like four straight defensive possessions where four of us were back in transition and you werent. You really put a ton of pressure on us to cover a five-on-four when you were lobbying the officials for a call. It took you forever to get off the deck. Come on, man.

Over the past 20 years, no organization has been more conscious of team chemistry than San Antonio. The Spurs are also far and away the modern eras most influential organization: Nearly one third of the leagues rival head coaches and front office executives can be traced back to head coach Gregg Popovich.

Drafting multiple Hall of Famers undoubtedly factored into the Spurs success, but their efforts to maintain an open atmosphere for stars and role players alike one that obsessed over values of tolerance, respect and empathy also separated them from everyone else.

However, San Antonios year-to-year continuity is also becoming progressively rarer, if not extinct. When Chicago Bulls head coach Jim Boylen was a Spurs assistant during the 2014-15 season, they had brought back 14 members of the previous years 15-man roster.

And of those guys, a bunch of them had been together for years, Boylen said. Now theres approximately 6.5 new guys per team. Thats unheard of.

To ignore San Antonios sprawling influence would be like praising observational comedy and never once mentioning Jerry Seinfeld. But even the Spurs are vulnerable in a league where turnover is the status quo. Prior to the 2018-19 season, they traded Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, and lost in the first round of the playoffs for the second year in a row. Prior to this seasons hiatus, they were on track for their first losing record in 21 years.

The Spurs dont have an advantage anymore, Dudley said. We all have a disadvantage. Now its who has the most talent. Talent is gonna win out. Talent and vets.

In 2012, James Tarlow was an economics student at the University of Oregon when he presented a paper titled Experience and Winning in the National Basketball Association at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Tarlow wanted to know how roster continuity relates to team chemistry, so he pulled data from 804 NBA seasons played by 30 franchises between 1979 and 2008. He defined chemistry as the number of years the five players playing the most minutes during the regular season have been on their current team with one another.

I got an actual measurement of how important [chemistry] is, Tarlow said in a conversation with SB Nation in March. And its pretty dang important. If you keep your team together its like a third of a win for a year, which, people dont appreciate that and it doesnt seem like much, but if you have a team that stuck together for several years, that turns into another game or two. Thats going to get you into another round in the playoffs.

Bill Russell once wrote, There is no time in basketball to think: This has happened; this is what I must do next. In the amount of time it takes to think through that semicolon, it is already too late.

Its an intuitive idea: The longer were around people, the better we know how theyre going to behave under certain circumstances. Just think of the short-hand forms of communication youve established with your closest friends, family members and coworkers. Those subtle gestures and glances are especially helpful in sports, where a split-second miscommunication can be the difference between winning and losing.

You go back to those San Antonio days, the winks and blinks and the nuances [where Tim] Duncan would find Tony [Parker] on a backdoor, or Manu [Ginobili] would find Timmy on a lob, that evolved over time, and lots of times [time] isnt afforded, said Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown, who spent nine years as a Spurs assistant. You need time to have that sophisticated camaraderie, gut feel, instances on a court that require split the moment decisions.

Continuity by itself doesnt lead to winning, of course. In some cases, it might only extend mediocrity. And if winning a championship is an organizations goal, then it should first pursue star power. But continuity is a boon to coaches, who can implement more complex strategies if theyre able to retain a core group of players year after year.

Right now with the influx of new players, youre having to really keep your playbook and your schemes at a basic level because you are teaching more, Charlotte Hornets head coach James Borrego said. Youre just starting almost at a ground level every single year in a lot of different ways, where the teams that have had success for years and years, theyre building on every single year.

You never actually practice anymore like when I first got in the league, everybody had a million plays. Steve Clifford

The lack of in-season practice hours only compounds coaches frustrations. With shorter timeframes to fold new players into their system and culture, coaches around the league feel they need to adapt quicker than they ever had before.

As Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens joked, We get three weeks to get ready for a season, then we never practice again.

Orlando Magic head coach Steve Clifford believes that the league office did the right thing by limiting back-to-backs across every teams schedule. During his first two years as head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, they played 22 back-to-backs each season, while only 11 were on the docket this season for Orlando. But the schedule shift has hurt in unforeseen ways.

When you play a back-to-back you usually get two days off, most times, right? Clifford said. So you give them a day off and then when you come in you can practice. Theyre rested, you bring referees in. You practice. You actually practice.

You never actually practice anymore like when I first got in the league, everybody had a million plays, and you had to know the plays and stuff, and now if you do its an advantage but people dont look at it like that.

A side effect of so much player movement may be a simplification of the product. NBA teams have evolved to emphasize an up-and-down, free-flowing style of play that is largely the byproduct of an analytical revolution to prioritize threes, layups and free throws. Modern basketball is filled with pick-and-roll heavy offensive actions that dont require the same on-court intimacy as a stockpile of elaborate set plays.

My gut tells me that roster turnover is whats causing the thinning of playbooks, one western conference general manager said. And the thinning of playbooks is whats causing this standardization of playing style.

Players feel it, too. Most teams dont do anything. Really its just take the ball out the basket, pick-and-roll, and run, Rivers said. The coaches are really here to guide you now. Its crazy. Its more ATOs (after time-out plays) and out of bounds, and late clock, fourth quarter, thats when coaching really comes in play. Thats all we go over in shootaround. Most of our stuff involves defense because our offense is fucking ridiculous, man. We dont really do anything on offense.

Even teams that have gone out of their way to maintain continuitylike Cliffords Magic, which returned 85 and 82 percent of their minutes over the past two seasons, respectivelyare not immune to change, and all its myriad effects on strategy.

The game is what they wanted it to be when they changed the rules, and the level of execution is still high, obviously, Clifford said. Its not nearly the gameplanning league that it was even seven or eight years ago.

Sustained success is not possible without collaboration, and collaboration becomes habit when several contributors spend thousands of minutes battling together in the same system. The Golden State Warriors had the benefit of several superstars as they won three championships, but they also had an iron collective grasp of what they wanted to accomplish on every possession.

I think there is a level of beauty that exists with the game that is tougher to reach with the turnover, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. For example, if Draymond [Green] ever caught the ball in the pocket off of a high screen with Steph [Curry], Andre [Iguodala] knew exactly where to go and Draymond knew exactly where he was going to be. We didnt even have to practice it. And thats why you saw, frequently, either the lob to Andre along the baseline or Andre spaced out.

NBA teams have been thinking about how to manufacture chemistry for years, long before this accelerated era. None of these billion-dollar corporations can ever be sure how well their efforts actually work, however. Their adjustments have always been based on in-game progression, but success also depends on other obvious factors, like talent, injuries and dumb luck.

A difference between then and now is that players are driving roster decisions to a greater extent. They have much more leverage within organizations, and the biggest stars can take their talent elsewhere if the locker room doesnt jell quickly enough. For many teams, that means they have to proactively foster strong bonds among teammates by encouraging new and returning players to stick around the practice facility during the offseason.

The summer time is big for us, Borrego said. We cant demand it, but we encourage it Guys can really settle down and connect, really understand their teammates, understand their coaches, and its just a much more comfortable situation that allows for chemistry to be built and grown.

The Hornets also organize team dinners when theyre on the road, a practice Borrego borrowed from his time in San Antonio. When asked if those dinners are mandatory, he gave a wry smile: They are team dinners. Then there are others that happen organically on their own, and I want our players to do that. If theyre doing it on their own thats even better than me organizing something.

If theres somebody in your organization that hasnt gotten over himself or herself theyre a pain in the ass ... they cant be happy for somebody elses success. Gregg Popovich

As one former Spur told ESPN: To take the time to slow down and truly dine with someone in this day and age Im talking a two- or three-hour dinner you naturally connect on a different level than just on the court or in the locker room. It seems like a pretty obvious way to build team chemistry, but the tricky part is getting everyone to buy in and actually want to go. You combine amazing restaurants with an interesting group of teammates from a bunch of different countries and the result is some of the best memories I have from my career.

Of course, Popovich was also good at finding players he wanted at the table.

The more you can stay together, the more the chemistry builds. But still chemistry is more a function of the character of the players than it is anything else, Popovich said. I always talk about getting over yourself. And if theres somebody in your organization that hasnt gotten over himself or herself theyre a pain in the ass and they make it harder for everybody else because they can only feel about their success. They cant be happy for somebody elses success. It has to be about them. If you dont have that then nothing else is gonna help you have chemistry. You cant make it happen.

Still, every coach tries to get everyone on the same page. As players digest their new surroundings, its important that everyone coaches, players and executives understand their expectations for one another. Rockets head coach Mike DAntoni boiled his own approach down simply: Dont ask somebody to do something they cant do. If youre gonna have to change a guy, you might not want to bring him in in the first place.

It is impossible for any team to keep all 15 players in the locker room happy at the same time; theyre human beings who are all going through their own real life issues. But a haphazard onboarding process will create headaches down the road. According to Buchanan, coaches have to be able to anticipate players questions.

Why am I not getting to do this? or Why am I not getting to play more? or Why am I not playing with that guy? or Why am I not starting?, Buchanan said. You try to get that communicated up front so the player knows what hes stepping into, because lots of times chemistry issues evolve from a lack of communication.

When general managers and coaches are unaware of loose frustrations, they risk one player venting to another, sewing animosity that does irreparable damage to the entire team. Left unattended, a team can spiral into soap opera.

Its not difficult to create chemistry, Atlanta Hawks head coach Lloyd Pierce said. Its more about sustaining it through the course of 82 games with so many ups and downs. Obviously [we had] some of those moments with John [Collins] being out and Kevin [Huerters] injury. Roles start to shift and some guys werent ready for it, so the frustration of that kicked in.

The Hawks have done two things to stave off that seemingly unavoidable discomfort. The first is an all-in dedication to how they play, in which everything revolves around pick-and-rolls with Trae Young and a rim-rolling big. By keeping the gameplan simple, they can plug in pieces as needed.

When Trae masters it and everybody else understands it, you know, you roll a little bit harder and you shake up a little bit better, and you slash a little bit better. Thats who we will become, Pierce said. Any big that comes to our roster [knows,] I can play here because I know Im gonna get the ball at the rim.

The Hawks also have a breakfast club that Pierce took from his time as an assistant under Brown in Philadelphia. Every time the club meets, players stand up in front of their teammates and discuss something that matters to them. Earlier this year, Collins enlightened the room with a powerpoint presentation about what it was like growing up in a military family. Huerter talked about growing up in upstate New York and losing high-school friends in a drunk-driving accident.

Former Hawks center Alex Len gave a particularly tender presentation last season that moved his head coach.

Youre barking at Alex Len. This fucking guy, he doesnt compete, he doesnt appreciate this, Pierce said. Well, Alex Len talked about why he couldnt go to the Ukraine for the last seven years. Wow, I didnt know you had such a tough time with that. Im over here fucking yelling at you for not rolling in the pick and roll. I dont know youre dealing with this Ukraine thing for the last seven years and not being able to go home and see your grandparents. My bad. Ive got to get to know you a little bit better.

Three years ago, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive asked a communications coach named Steve Shenbaum to work with his team. In 1997, Shenbaum founded a company called Game On Nation, which helps corporate executives, military personnel and government employees in addition to professional sports teams.

Within the past decade, Shenbaum has been brought in by the Lakers, Trailblazers, Nuggets. Cavaliers, Grizzlies and Mavericks, and agent Bill Duffy has asked Shenbaum to assist several of his clients, including Carmelo Anthony, Yao Ming and Greg Oden. He has more than 100 improvisational and conceptual exercises to help clients build self-awareness, selflessness, confidence and other traits that enable character development.

A favorite is called last letter, first letter, in which two teammates have a conversation with one rule: as they take turns speaking, they must start with the last letter of the other persons last word, and keep the conversation going. The exercise forces both parties to listen, let one another finish and focus in ways they otherwise might not.

My hope is I am planting seeds and empowering the players and the staff to take what theyve experienced and run with it and multiply it, Shenbaum said. I want them to see each other in another light.

Shenbaum has many telltale signs of good and bad chemistry, but a big one is how well veterans are buying in. In a league thats getting younger and younger, its imperative that older players command respect in the locker room and impose a will to succeed.

Dudley believes veterans who might not even be in a rotation can earn their money by bringing everyone together in ways a coach or GM cant. During his one year in Brooklyn, he organized dinners, trips to the movies, parties and other events away from the game that involved the whole team.

Then, when we were in film sessions and I would call them out, they took it as love and not criticism, Dudley said. Youre developing a relationship and then you can tell them, Spencer [Dinwiddie] or a guy who thinks he should play more, this is why youre not playing. This is your role for this team. Rondae [Hollis-Jefferson], he got benched: Hey Rondae, for you to stay in the league, this is what you gotta do. On this team youre not a starter anymore but theres gonna be times they call on you. He stayed ready.

Almost everyone interviewed for this story agreed that chemistry cant be forced. Players on contending teams have to go through organic hardships together before they can become comfortable enough for the difficult conversations that facilitate progress. Some teams dont believe its necessary or appropriate to ask their players to spend more time together than they already do. They believe that players should figure out issues among themselves, and that a front offices biggest role is doing good background research on everybody they bring aboard. Coaches are there to take a teams disparate pieces and position them to succeed.

I think everybodys budgets on team meals now has skyrocketed league wide because of the San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra laughed. The more important thing is getting a team on the same sheet of music about your style of play and an identity on both ends of the court, understanding whats important, what the standards are, the expectations, role clarity. These things fasttrack, in my mind, chemistry. Its always nice if guys like each other and they go out to eat on the road, have dinner together. But that doesnt guarantee anything.

Spoelstra knew early on that Jimmy Butlers oft-misunderstood persona would have no trouble fitting in with several players on Miamis roster because they all shared the same sense of duty.

Its always nice if guys like each other and they go out to eat on the road, have dinner together. But that doesnt guarantee anything. Erik Spoelstra

Ive noticed with Goran and Jimmy in particular, they have such a beautiful on-court chemistry because theyre in their 30s, theyre only about winning right now. They dont care about anything else. If you want to define on-court chemistry, in my mind its how willing are you to help somebody else. And how willing and able are you to enjoy somebody elses success when it happens.

The character vs. talent debate isnt new among NBA decision-makers. But going forward, we may see teams value the former more than they have.

If you get a group of four new players who you bring onto your team and theyre all team-first, unselfish, competitive, self-motivated players, theres a decent chance that the chemistry is gonna have a chance to be good, Buchanan said. Doing a ropes course, thats great in theory and may work for a business, but professional athletes, they develop chemistry by knowing they can trust each other because theyve been together through tough times on the court.

Chemistry is worth deep investment, but perhaps it can be overanalyzed, too.

We try to make the simple complicated at times, ESPN NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy said. Going out to dinner is a far different chemistry than playing chemistry. You read a lot about, We play paintball together. Who gives a shit, you know?

I dont believe its the reason why a team is either good or not good. I think youve gotta get great players, and when you have them you gotta try and keep them.

There are endless ways to cultivate chemistry, but teams can still only guess at what will work in every situation. Statistics arent a good guide. They cant quantify personality flaws or gauge emotional intelligence. When intuition is the best way to make a decision, some front office executives lean too hard on what they can measure instead.

I think a lot of these GMs, they really dont take [chemistry] into consideration, Utah Jazz center Ed Davis said. Theyre starting to treat the NBA like 2K and more just looking at numbers instead of, are these two players going to get along? And I think youre gonna start seeing GMs lose their jobs.

Top-tier skill, athleticism and on-court awareness is very often the bottom line for NBA teams, but those still trying to crack chemistrys mysteries have good reason to believe they arent running a fools errand, as vulnerable as their circumstances may make them feel.

Theres something very powerful about newness, Shenbaum said. And if you embrace it early, whether its a new coach, five new players, the star left, if you embrace it early you can actually create a very authentic bond.

Defining chemistry can feel like trying to catch the wind. It is omnipresent and elusive at the same time. Until the NBAs best and brightest crack the formula, they will have to deal with increasing levels of uncertainty in what was already an uncertain business.

Time will tell if NBA teams ever learn how to overcome their mounting challenges from the shifting ways teams are built, to how on-court strategy is implemented, to the quality of the game itself. But theres no denying that chemistry is a force multiplier, complex and intractable. And in an era of basketball that demands urgency more than ever, that fact can be frightening.

A lot of players and teams will continue to fail in familiar ways, well-laid plans crumbling because players, coaches and executives never understood each other on or off the court. Only now, they may not realize their mistakes until they find themselves starting all over. Again.

See the rest here:
The NBA has a chemistry problem - SB Nation