The 92% Rule: What Basketball Teaches Us About Real Leadership [28]

The 92% Rule: What Basketball Teaches Us About Real Leadership [28]

Great leadership happens when nobody is looking

If you know me (and my basketball-crazed wife, Faith), you know we are a basketball family.  So, when I saw this post about Billy Donovan a couple of important dots were connected.

When Donovan was the coach at the University of Florida had his managers take out a stopwatch during games. Not to clock plays. To track how long each player held the basketball.

He asked one of his starters how much time he thought he had the ball during a 30-minute game. The player guessed 15 minutes. Half the game. A reasonable assumption for a key player in a high-tempo offense.

The actual number? Less than three minutes.

A backcourt player spends as much as 92% of their minutes without the ball. Frontcourt players spend up to 95% of their time without it. Yet players obsess over the 5 to 8 percent of the game when they're holding the ball and looking to score.

Donovan, now a Hall of Fame coach who led Florida to back-to-back national championships and currently coaches the Chicago Bulls, understood something fundamental about winning. The moments that get you on SportsCenter are not the moments that win championships. What separates good from great is what you do when nobody's watching.

Screening. Running the floor. Diving for loose balls. Rebounding. Taking charges. Setting up teammates. These are the things that create wins, and they all happen during that 92% of the game when you don't have the ball.

Donovan spent a decade in NBA draft rooms. He said they never talked about scoring averages. Never discussed how many points a player averaged. The only question that mattered: Can you help us win?

Points are a lagging indicator. Winning habits are the leading indicator.

This applies directly to leadership in any organization. Most executives obsess over the moments when they're "holding the ball." The big presentation. The board meeting. The strategic announcement. The moments that get noticed and celebrated. These represent maybe 5 to 8 percent of your actual leadership impact.

The other 92% is where real leadership happens.

How do you show up when there's no audience? Do you run the floor between meetings, meaning do you prepare properly and follow through consistently? Do you set screens for your team by removing obstacles and creating opportunities for others? Do you dive for loose balls by tackling small problems before they become crises? Do you take charges by absorbing blame and protecting your people when things go wrong?

When I think about my time at Brookstone during its turnaround, the moments that mattered most were not the quarterly earnings calls with bondholders or the “strategic” announcements. They were the daily decisions about how we treated suppliers during a difficult transition. The conversations with store managers about what was actually happening on the floor. The willingness to hear hard truths from people closest to the customers. None of that made headlines, but all of it determined whether we would succeed.

The same was true at Sony and every other leadership role I've held. The glamorous moments of leadership are a tiny fraction of the job. The grind, the discipline, the consistency in how you treat people and approach problems, that's where transformations are won or lost.

Here's the uncomfortable truth for leaders: If you only show up when you have the ball, your team notices. If you disappear during the hard work and reappear for the glory moments, they notice that too. And over time, that pattern erodes trust faster than any strategic mistake ever could.

Donovan's 92% Rule forces a great question: What are you doing when nobody's keeping score?

Are you building relationships with your team members or only engaging when you need something? Are you actively removing obstacles for your people or waiting for problems to escalate to your attention? Are you present in the daily work or only visible for the big moments?

Purpose-driven leadership is not about the moments when you're in the spotlight. It's about the accumulated impact of thousands of small decisions, most of which no one will ever see. It's about who you are during the 92% of the time when no one is watching, measuring, or applauding.

That's where championships are won. In business, that's where cultures are built, and transformations succeed or fail.

So ask yourself the question Billy Donovan asked in every draft room: Can you help us win? Not just during the highlight reel moments, but during all the minutes in between.

The answer lies in how you spend your 92%.  So, get out there and take the charge!

Be well,

Ron

(c) 2025, Ron Boire, and The Upland Group LLC. Lead with Purpose™ and The 51% Rule™ are trademarks of Ron Boire

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