Team USA head coach Gregg Popovich offered some interesting thoughts on how to build stronger inter-team relationships:
“As we all know in team sports, when you feel responsible, when you care about somebody, when you love somebody, you have empathy for somebody, things go better.
Going to dinner and spending time off the court, just learning about them and their families. We don’t know their wives and girlfriends and children like we do our own teams back in the NBA so it’s a slow process, but we try to get a little more familiar every day.
We go to dinner without phones and people actually talk to each other, ask questions and learn about how each other grew up and that sort of thing. Because it’s a brand-new basketball team you have to start, not skip steps, and try to learn about people, and you get as far as you can in a short period of time,” Popovich said.
