Professional basketball conflicts and team cohesiveness

Conflicts are unavoidable situation when working with people. In professional basketball the conflicts and its management is a daily duty for the organization, coaches and players.

The evolution of a team during the regular season and the play-offs is full of OODA Loops and execution. It’s not usual that conflict arises during this journey.

On the other hand we have the team cohesiveness, that is one of the main things of the head coach’s head.

Let’s start defining the concepts

Cohesiveness is very crucial especially for team sports where the final score, a win or a loss, depends to a large degree on the relationship and understanding between the players.

Conflict

  • does not occur until the behavior of one of the parties interferes with the efforts of the other.
  • arises from the clash of perceptions, goals, or values in an arena where people care about the outcome. If the management of that conflict is not effective, it can totally disrupt the entire group process.
  • by itself is either good or bad. However, the manner in which conflict is handled determines whether it is constructive or destructive.
  • cannot be absent in a competitive context as it can lead teams to become complacent and not perform at optimum levels.

Organizational conflict is the discord that arises when the goals, interests, or values of different individual or groups are incompatible and those individuals or groups block or thwart one another’s attempts to achieve their objectives.

One of the main responsibilities of any basketball coaches is related to conflicts:

  • Identify and isolate the conflicts.
  • Resolve conflicts in a functional manner.
    • Remain impartial,
    • Facilitate understanding among the players. “As a team leader, one must realize the paradox that surrounds conflict.

The team needs to embrace conflict as a means of generating and evaluating ideas. While at the same time, it must shy away from it to prevent anger, frustration, or alienation. The biggest challenge for the coaches as team leaders is figuring out how to balance these two forces.

Team cohesion and potential sources of conflict
Generic source of conflicts

Closing

For the different analysis I’m doing I will be using this reference table of generic conflicts to understand the potential issues a team is suffering. In this way I can have a common nomenclature and analysis pattern when evaluating this non quantitative aspects of the game.

Sources: The Sources of Conflict in Professional Basketball Teams. The Case of Greece.

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