Lakers Win Championship

Tonight, the Lakers won their 15th championship in Los Angeles.  It was Phil Jackson's tenth championship and Kobe Bryant's fourth.   It was his first without Shaq.

I love sports.  I find it a fantastic analogy to life in general. In winning this championship, the Laker's reminded me of a problem I am dealing with at work.  I run a small sized engineering team.  A team that numbers about the same as a professional basketball team.  I have all sorts of people on the team.  Some who are really fantastic, some who are less so.

Kobe Bryant has been the best player in the world for quite a long time but he couldn't win a championship by himself.  He took a team consisting of Kwame Brown at center and Smush Parker at point guard to the NBA playoffs but could not get any further than that.  Not until he got some more talent around him and realized he needed to do more than score did he finally bring the Lakers to a championship.

The lesson here?  You can't do it all by yourself.  More importantly, you can only win as a team.  It does not matter that Kobe is the best player in the world.  You can only win in basketball as a team.  (Unless you are Jerry West who won the Finals MVP even though his team lost).  I'm working on a major project at work right now.  Not everyone on my team is focused on it, but I have asked everyone on my team to roll up their sleeves and do what they can do to make the project a success.    At the end of it all, if this team fails to deliver it will have an effect on everyone else on the team.

Congrats to the Lakers in winning this championship.  Hope to go to the parade if there is indeed one.  There is a debate going on right now if Los Angeles should pay the cost of hosting a Laker Parade when it is in the midst of a budget crisis.  More on that later ...