Kobe-Nash, Contrasts in Leadership

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Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant, contrasts in leadership

 

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Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash are both leaders with different, but effective, styles. Will this work in L.A.?

 

Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash together are really something, as a backcourt. The point guard playing alongside the shooting guard. That promises to be a huge national basketball story all season.

 

But vastly more fascinating to me, and something I predict I'll write about again and again, is how differently these new teammates work as leaders.

 

It's an interesting time for the NBA in this regard. Team USA and the NBA's two dominant teams of last season -- the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder -- are unabashed about blatantly loving each other. But for the occasional Mario Chalmers incident, the tone of how they talk about each other is not about berating each other. It's about engulfing each other in support, loyalty and fist bumps.

 

That fact is dissatisfying to anyone who sees Michael Jordan's scowl as the ultimate sign of leadership. But it's undeniably working in basketball, as predicted by a thousand modern books on leadership. In a business where you win by being up, why be down?

 

And, even though he's a card-carrying member of Team USA's love-bomb squad, there is no more overt icon of the old-school Jordan "berate 'em into professionalism" approach than Bryant.

 

Jordan's best-known teammate, Scottie Pippen, even refers to Jordan's scowling at teammates as "doing the Kobe" in Jack McCallum's book, "Dream Team."

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