Players Win Games. Teams Win Championships.
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard this saying and it really had an impact on me. I was on an airplane with two of my sons coming home from a golfing trip. We were all talking about my favorite hockey team. Actually, it’s my favorite sports team of all sports - the New York Islanders. I had just gotten a news alert that the Islanders best player, John Tavares, was leaving the team to fulfill his childhood dream of playing for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs. I was devastated and figured there was no way we would ever recover from the rejection.
A few minutes later I read an interview with the Islanders general manager at that time, Lou Lamoriello. Lamoriello started by praising Tavares saying that he wasn’t just a great player. He was the captain, the centerpiece, the face of the franchise. However, Lamoriello didn’t sound defensive or rattled.
He didn’t talk about filling the gap with another star or chasing the next big name. Instead, he spoke calmly about the idea that teams are bigger than any one player, and that championships are built on something deeper than individual brilliance. “Players win games. Teams win championships”, Lamoriello said. His tone mattered as much as his words. There was no bitterness, no panic, just a steady confidence that the organization would move forward because the organization itself was the point.
That moment stayed with me longer than I expected. At the time, I couldn’t fully explain why. It just struck me as leadership that wasn’t reactive, leadership grounded in a clear belief about how winning actually happens.
Not long after, I found myself looking into that quote, its origins, and the background behind it.
When Individual Greatness Wasn’t Enough
I soon learned that the phrase “players win games, teams win championships” is most often associated with Michael Jordan. While there’s no single, cleanly documented moment where Jordan formally coined it, the idea reflects a realization he spoke about repeatedly later in his career. Early on in his career, Jordan quickly became recognized as the most talented basketball player in the world. He could take over games, dominate opponents, and deliver performances that felt almost unreal. And yet, championships didn’t come easily.
What changed wasn’t his talent. It was how he began to see his role within the team. Under the coaching of Phil Jackson, Jordan came to understand that being great was not enough if that greatness didn’t lift the people around him. He needed to trust his teammates, involve them, and help them grow into their own confidence and capability. When that shift happened, the Bulls became something more than a collection of elite players. They became a team in the fullest sense of the word, and a bunch of championships followed.
What has always stayed with me about that story is that it isn’t really about humility. It’s about effectiveness. Jordan didn’t become less dominant. He became more impactful because his dominance no longer crowded out the rest of the team.
Between Lamoriello’s calm conviction and Jordan’s hard-earned realization, I started to notice a pattern, one that quietly shaped how I thought about leadership and success in business.
The Line I Found Myself Drawing as a Leader
As my own leadership responsibilities grew, I found myself leading teams with truly exceptional individual performers. These were people who were fast, smart, and technically outstanding. Early in my career, I assumed that assembling the strongest individual contributors was the secret to creating a great team. Over time, experience reshaped that view.
I remember the first time I said “players win games, teams win championships” out loud. I was standing in front of a team I had just been asked to lead by the management team at my firm. It was our first full-team meeting together with me at the front of the room. I told them that excellence would absolutely be recognized and rewarded, but it would not be enough on its own. A great performer who did not make others better was not very valuable to me, or to the team. What mattered more was whether the people around them became more capable, more confident, and more effective because of their presence.
That didn’t lower standards. If anything, it clarified them. The definition of success shifted from individual output to collective performance. I explained to my new team that the people who stood out were not always going to be the most visible or the most vocal. They were the ones who listened carefully, shared information generously, and helped others see possibilities they hadn’t seen before.
Those were the people teams trusted. Those were the people clients gravitated toward. And over time, those were the people teams quietly depended on when the stakes were high.
How a Book Clarified This Even Further for Me
Last week, I finished a book that amplified this message and prompted me to write this article. The book, Partnering: Building the World We Want Through Collaboration by Jean Oelwang, described behaviors that successful team members show up with when they are trying to build something important with others.
Oelwang is clear about the conditions that allow teams and partnerships to work over time. Trust. Mutual respect. Shared goals. Collective accountability. But beneath all of that is the quality of connection between people. She places real weight on deep listening, genuine understanding, and the discipline of seeing the world through someone else’s perspective, especially when doing so is inconvenient.
Partnership, as she describes it, isn’t transactional. It’s relational. It’s built through consistent choices, particularly when pressure rises and shortcuts would be easier. Teams don’t unravel because they lack talent. They unravel when people stop listening, stop respecting one another’s realities, or stop aligning around what actually matters.
What I appreciated most about her work was how familiar it felt. It put language to patterns I had already seen play out across teams and client relationships, often under significant pressure. It brought “players win games, teams win championships” to a new level of importance for me.
The Question I Keep Hearing, Even When It Isn’t Asked
This theme shows up constantly in my coaching work, sometimes directly and sometimes just beneath the surface. Leaders talk about improving performance or breaking down silos. Partners wonder how to deepen relationships with clients who have more options than ever. Professionals ask how to stand out in a way that still feels authentic.
Underneath those conversations, I keep hearing a quieter, more personal question forming. How do I create more value with others, while not disappearing in the process?
I find myself paying close attention to how people experience themselves and others inside teams. Do they feel understood when they speak up? Do they feel respected for what they bring? Do they believe that they are truly valued by the people they work with?
The teams that seem to perform best are not the ones stacked with stars. They are the ones where people feel safe contributing, questioning, learning, and succeeding together. The same pattern shows up with clients. Relationships last not because the work gets done, but because people on both the client and the service provider sides of the equation feel seen and valued when the pressure is on.
This is where performance and humanity quietly converge.
Why This Has Become a Real Leadership Imperative
What has changed recently is the context around all of this. Technical excellence is no longer a differentiator on its own. AI is rapidly absorbing large portions of white-collar work, accelerating tasks that once defined roles, careers, and professional identity. Work that used to take days now takes minutes. Knowledge that once lived in individuals now lives everywhere.
What I keep seeing is that as individual contribution becomes easier to replicate or automate, collective contribution becomes the real source of value.
AI doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t notice hesitation in a meeting. It doesn’t recognize when alignment is fragile, when people are disengaging quietly, or when a team is drifting toward compliance instead of commitment. AI can make individuals more efficient, but it is teams that determine whether that efficiency turns into better judgment, better decisions, and better outcomes.
The teams navigating this moment well are not just adopting tools. They are learning how to think together again. They listen more carefully. They challenge assumptions without tearing one another down. They turn speed into efficiency, and insights into meaning. When teams function well, AI becomes a multiplier. When they don’t, AI simply accelerates fragmentation and dysfunction.
This is where human worth shows up most clearly now. Not in how much someone can produce alone, but in how effectively people work together to create something better than any individual could produce, with or without technology.
And this is where coaching matters.
The leaders and teams I work with are not broken. They are capable, accomplished, and under real pressure. What they are missing is space, perspective, and disciplined support to strengthen how they work together at a moment when the cost of getting that wrong is higher than it has ever been.
In a world where AI is reshaping roles and tasks, the ability to unlock the full value of a collective team is not a “nice to have.” It is how relevance, impact, and meaning are sustained.
The Thought I Keep Returning To
When I look back on the teams I’m most proud to have been part of, it was never about one standout performer. It was about how people showed up for one another, how they listened, how they grew, and how they stayed aligned when things became difficult.
I see the same pattern today in my coaching work. Momentum builds when people stop focusing solely on how to win on their own and start paying attention to how they win together. That shift changes outcomes, but it also changes relationships and staying power.
Players do win games. Individual excellence matters. But teams, real teams built on trust, respect, shared purpose, and a genuine commitment to making others better, are the ones that win championships.
That’s true in sports. It’s true in business. And from where I sit, it’s true wherever meaningful work gets done.