I took Allen Iverson off my all-time NBA roster and replaced him with Magic Johnson.
That is not an argument that Iverson was overrated. He was an NBA MVP and four-time scoring champion. I changed the selection because choosing the best individual player and building the best team are different decisions.
My other nine players were Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Wilt Chamberlain, John Stockton, Dennis Rodman, Larry Bird, Stephen Curry, Tim Duncan, and Gary Payton.
Ten stars can still create one very crowded possession.
That roster had no shortage of people who could score. It needed someone whose greatest value was creating better opportunities for everyone else.
Magic gave me that.
The list looked like a ranking. It was really a test of how I think about building a high-performing team.
Key Takeaways
- Build teams around complementary strengths, not just the most impressive individuals.
- Look for candidates who make the rest of the team more effective.
- Use stalled projects to identify the contribution your next hire must make.
A roster is a system, not a ranking
A candidate can be extraordinary and still be the wrong next hire.
That is difficult to remember when résumés, interviews, and reputations encourage us to evaluate people one at a time. Teams do not perform one person at a time. Each addition changes how the other people work.
At first glance, Magic may look redundant. My roster already included three point guards in Stockton, Curry, and Payton. Bird was also an exceptional passer.
That objection becomes more useful when I define the job each player performs.
Stockton gives the team control and distribution. Curry changes where opponents must defend. Payton pressures the opposing ball handler. Bird supplies shooting, passing, and decision-making from the forward position.
Magic adds a different kind of orchestration. The Basketball Hall of Fame describes him as a 6-foot-9 point guard in a power forward’s body. His résumé includes four assist titles, five championships, and three Most Valuable Player awards. On this roster, I would use that size and passing to organize different lineup combinations without asking him to lead them in scoring.
Calling all four players “guards” would hide the differences that make the roster work.
Companies make the same mistake when they treat titles as capabilities. Two people can both be labeled marketers, strategists, or operators while solving entirely different problems.
A roster is not a collection of impressive names. It is a theory of how different strengths produce a result.
Hire the multiplier your team needs
Iverson’s clearest value on this roster was creating his own shot. Magic’s job would be creating better shots for the people around him.
That difference sharpened the business lesson for me.
A great hire can fill a gap. A multiplier changes what the existing people can do together.
Calling someone a multiplier is easy. The evidence must appear in a decision, handoff, or output.
Imagine a marketing team that produces campaigns quickly but struggles to explain why customers choose its product. The team may already have customer interviews, sales-call notes, and product expertise. The problem is that those inputs never become a clear campaign brief.
Hiring another campaign producer may increase output. The team would produce more work from the same incomplete inputs.
The multiplier may be someone who can connect customer research, sales knowledge, positioning, and campaign execution. That person does not need to own every deliverable. Their contribution appears in the work other people can now complete.
Before opening a new role, I would inspect the last two projects that stalled:
- Where did the work stop?
- Which decision remained unresolved?
- Which information failed to reach the next person?
- Was a capability missing, or was the handoff broken?
If the capability is missing, define the role around that work. If the handoff is broken, repair it before adding headcount.
A résumé cannot tell me what the team is missing. The work can.
Make candidates show how they multiply a team
The next step is to test the capability consistently.
I would ask every finalist the same questions about a relevant project:
- What did the team need?
- What did you change?
- Who had to work differently?
- Which decision became easier?
- What happened afterward?
- What would you do differently now?
I would also use a relevant work sample. For the marketing role above, I might give candidates an incomplete campaign brief and the available customer and sales notes. I would ask what they would change, whom they would involve, and what evidence they would need before approving the message.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management reports that structured interviews tied to job competencies improve validity and agreement among interviewers. Its guidance on work samples supports asking candidates to perform tasks that resemble the job when those skills are required on day one.
A polished presentation can be persuasive. A consistent set of questions and a relevant work sample make the evidence easier to compare.
This also changes how I evaluate competitive drive. A loud personality is not proof of it. In business, drive appears in preparation, ownership, recovery after a miss, and the willingness to improve work that may carry someone else’s name.
Do not confuse contribution with sameness
There is a limit to the roster analogy. People are not interchangeable pieces.
“Fit” can become a comfortable excuse for hiring people who think, look, or work like the current team. Complementary capability requires difference. The useful question is whether someone’s strengths expand what the team can accomplish and whether the conditions exist for that person to succeed.
Rodman and Payton illustrate another part of that judgment. Rodman won seven rebounding titles and twice earned Defensive Player of the Year. Payton won that defensive award in 1995-96. Neither needed to lead this roster in scoring to justify his place.
Their jobs were clear.
That is the standard I want in hiring. I should be able to explain the contribution before a candidate’s reputation, charisma, or familiar title distracts me.
Change the roster when the logic changes
I admired my original choice. I still changed it.
The decision did not produce a universal ranking between Iverson and Magic. It exposed the constraint I was solving: ten seats, abundant scoring, and a need for someone who could make the pieces work better together.
Hiring decisions carry much higher stakes than an imaginary basketball roster. A role costs money and time. A new person changes the work of everyone around them.
I did not learn how to hire from choosing basketball players. The exercise made my decision logic visible. It showed me which strengths I valued, where I had created overlap, and what argument was strong enough to change my choice.
Before you post the next role, pull up two recent projects that stalled. Mark where each stopped. Then decide whether you need another scorer, a specialist, or someone who helps the whole team play better.
The most impressive candidate may be excellent.
The better hire is the person whose contribution makes everyone else more valuable.
