Hidden Talents, Winning Teams (part 1)
What Your Business Can Learn from Liverpool FC and the Houston Rockets
When PJ Tucker entered the 2006 NBA Draft, no one doubted his basketball talent. A former North Carolina High School Player of the Year, Tucker had averaged 16 points and 9 rebounds per game as a college junior, leading the University of Texas to the winningest season in its history and earning himself Big 12 Player of the Year honors.
No, PJ Tucker’s problem was never basketball ability. But he did have a problem.
Here is how DraftExpress.com described Tucker before the 2006 draft:
Tucker’s size has to be considered his main (weakness). If he was just 2-3 inches taller, he’d be a sure-fire top-20 pick as it would be much easier to see him becoming a real power small forward. At 6-5, he is shorter than most NBA shooting guards, but is more bit stuck between the 3 and the 4 spots when talking about his true position skill-wise. Defensively is where the biggest concerns come out, as it’s unclear whether he has the experience or lateral quickness to defend the perimeter.
Tucker is most likely a small forward in the NBA, but doesn’t have the same type of range on his jump-shot that most small forwards do. He never really attempted to shoot from behind the collegiate 3-point line, let alone the NBA 3-point line, not with his feet set and certainly not off the dribble.
NBA scouts tagged Tucker with the dreaded “tweener” label: too short to be an effective interior player, not quick enough or skilled enough to be effective on the perimeter. In a league that had become increasingly specialized over the previous two decades, Tucker’s game was like a square peg in a round hole. PJ Tucker, NCAA All-American, fell to the second round of the NBA Draft, the 35th overall pick by the Toronto Raptors.
And the naysayers were quickly proven correct. Tucker played just 83 total minutes in his rookie season—less than two full games—before the Raptors waived him. With no other NBA team interested in signing him, Tucker headed to Israel. Then to Ukraine. Then back to Israel. Then to Greece, Italy, Puerto Rico, and Germany. He was successful everywhere he went—top scorer in Ukraine, league MVP in Israel and Germany—but no NBA team called again until 2012, when Tucker was now 27 years old and nearing the end of his prime.
When he returned to the NBA this time, things were different. Tucker became an immediate impact player, based not on his scoring or his rebounding, but on what would become his calling card: hustle, grit, and defensive intensity.
Here’s how nba.com described Tucker heading into the 2013-2014 season, his second real season in the league:
What he brings to the table: Hard-nosed, in-your-face defense. Tucker boasts the rare combination of speed and strength that allows him to both keep up with and stand up to his defensive assignment. Hustle plays are commonplace, producing momentum-swinging sequences that don't show up in the box score.
PJ Tucker is still in the NBA today, playing for the Los Angeles Clippers at age 39. He is one of just two players from his draft class still playing in the NBA, and he is so old that another player drafted on the same day he was—JJ Redick—is now the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. He spent his entire mid-30s making important playoff contributions for the Houston Rockets, and was a full-time starter in the NBA as recently as 2023.
And here’s the strangest part: He made all those contributions as a Center. Not shooting guard (“Tucker is shorter than most NBA shooting guards”), not small forward (“Tucker is mostly likely a small forward in the NBA”), not power forward, or the “4”, (he is “stuck between the 3 and 4 spots”), but center. The spot reserved for the tallest players on NBA teams, where his opponents typically measured 7 feet or taller, towering over him.
How the heck did that happen?
Before we answer that, let’s consider one other story.
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Home of the “beautiful game,” hotbed of soccer talent, Brazil produces waves of young attacking players year after year, players who delight fans with their skill and flair and seem, even as teenagers, destined to set the world on fire.
Roberto Firmino Barbosa de Oliveira was not one of those players.
At age 15, at a time when many of peers were already rising up the ranks of some of the top youth academies in the world, Firmino was unable to find a club. He only found his way into the country’s vast professional training setup when a local dentist believed he saw something in the boy, and convinced the second-division hometown club to give him a chance. The coach didn’t bother to learn his name for two weeks, calling him “Alberto” instead.
He made his professional debut at age 18, as an athletic and industrious defensive midfielder. What Firmino lacked in trickery he made up for in speed, technique, and work ethic. His performances in Brazil’s second division earned him a contract with Hoffenheim, a mid-sized club in Germany’s Bundesliga.
Over the next five years at Hoffenheim, Firmino grew into a solid if unspectacular player. He scored 49 goals in 153 matches over five years. His coaches used him everywhere on the field: defensive midfield, attacking midfield, withdrawn striker, winger, and more.
Firmino played well enough in Germany to earn both his first call-up to the Brazilian national team and a transfer to an exceptionally talented but underachieving Liverpool side that had finished 6th in the English Premier League the previous season.
Even as Liverpool dropped to a disappointing 8th in the league the next season and replaced manager Brendan Rodgers with Jurgen Klopp, Firmino thrived, scoring a respectable 10 league goals and securing his place as Klopp’s first-choice central striker.
After achieving consecutive 4th place finishes in the next two years, the team seemed poised for a step backward when it lost its most decorated and creative attacking talent, Philippe Coutinho, before the 2018-2019 season. Instead, Liverpool lost just one match all year, earned the third-most points in the history of the Premier League. It barely missed out on the league title, coming in second to a seemingly unbeatable Manchester City squad. Then, in 2020, Liverpool set a league record for wins in a season as it cruised to its first title in 30 years, leaving both Manchester City and the rest of their competitors in the dust.
Firmino played 52 matches for Liverpool that season, all of them in the role of the “number 9,” the central striker, the most glamorous position on the field. And in those 52 matches, Firmino scored a grand total of 12 goals.
If that doesn’t seem like a lot, that’s because it’s not. Liverpool Right-winger Mohammed Salah scored 23 goals. Left-winger Sadio Mane scored 22 goals. Firmino’s goalscoring production from the center-forward spot was closer to defenders Alex Oxlade Chamberlain (8 goals) and Virgil Van Dyke (5 goals) than it was to his attacking partners.
For a central striker on a team that attacked as successfully as Liverpool did, this was a rather feeble return. Strikers are traditionally judged almost exclusively on their goalscoring statistics. Ronaldo (the Brazilian version) is frequently cited as one of the best 10 players of all time, despite having frequently wandered around the field all game at a mild trot, contributing nothing to his team until the moment he sprang to life and scored a spectacular goal.
And he should be highly regarded for that contribution. Goals are really important!
Virtually every club in the world with resources approaching Liverpool’s would move a striker scoring less than 1 goal in 4 games to the bench, and find a high-priced replacement with a better goalscoring track record as soon as they could.
But not Liverpool. “What can I say about Firmino?” Klopp asked, rhetorically, in 2017. “He’s the engine of the team.”
He grew so well respected that a BBC commentator at the time suggested that a struggling Manchester United side needed to find a striker like Firmino, “not necessarily a striker who scores goals.” It may have been the first time in the history of soccer that anyone unironically suggested that a team needed a striker who did not score goals.
How, indeed, did we get here?
Firmino’s and Tucker’s success appear, at first glance, like unlikely, irreplicable once-offs. It seems like the only lesson from these stories is the always relevant “nobody knows anything.” And perhaps it is.
We contend, however, that there is more to these stories than that. We believe there are important lessons to be learned from these stories about talent identification and team-building not only in sports but in business, academics, politics, and everywhere else. We believe that Tucker and Firmino—and their coaches and teams—have recognized something about how to maximize the performance of a team, something that anyone charged with team-building or team management would do well to consider.
Coming next week
Thanks,
The Impactful Executive Team
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