WhPictures Source: Alejandro Cantu, Laredosun.us, Hardwooddiva.com What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the San Antonio Spurs? Could it be the teams four (4) NBA championship titles? Or maybe, the Spurs style of play? One obvious, but not spoken of often, is that the San Antonio Spurs is the most international team in the NBA. In the 2013/2014 NBA season, the Spurs had a total of ten international players on its roster. Leveraging a team’s cultural diversity has proven to be successful, especially for the Spurs. There are three lessons we can learn from the Spurs cultural diversity: 1. Create an inclusive team culture. The environment encouraged conversations to learn about each other’s background and develop trust, like Patty Mills (Australia) says: “The more differences you have, the more you talk about it. And we have so many that you never get bored of it,…” (ESPN, June 4, 2014). 2. …show more content…
Lead with a global mindset. “I think what we did was very important. It was different. The way we played, the way everybody got involved in every possession, it was a lot of fun. I don’t know if it was unprecedented, but it’s not as common for sure” responds Spurs star guard Manu Ginobili (Argentina) (SportFitnessNetwork, July 3, 2014). 3. Don’t let bias get in the way of using the best available talent. “Let’s not worry where they’re from, let’s worry about how they play and what their character is and their interest in being part of a team.” (NY Times, October 14,