I have been a lifelong University
of Michigan basketball fan. When I was a
student there, they had won the national championship in 1989, where I had a
front row seat as a member of the basketball band to see Rumeal Robinson’s hit his game winning free throws to beat Seton Hall.
But since then, it had been 37 years without a national title, and the passionate
U-M fan base was aching for another championship. U-M had gotten close a couple times, in 1992
and 1993 with the Fab Five, and again in 2013 and 2018 with John Beilein’s
gutsy teams, but we just couldn’t summit the mountain. That was until Dusty May was hired in 2024,
after U-M’s worst season in their history, finishing with a dismal 8-24 record. His two-year turnaround to a 37-3 national
champion will go down as one of coaching’s greatest accomplishments. This post will highlight a few of his
leadership lessons that you can apply to your businesses.
Who is Dusty May?
The 49-year-old coach’s history with
college basketball went all the way back to 1996, when he was a 19-year-old student
manager for the legendary Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers. He worked his
way up through the coaching ranks from Eastern Michigan to Murray State, UAB,
Louisiana Tech and Florida, before getting his first head coaching gig at FAU,
where he lead the Owls to an unexpected Final Four in 2023 as a significant
underdog. Dusty May was officially the
hot up-and-coming coach, and Michigan wasted no time in hiring him in 2024 to
replace Juwan Howard.
Why He Was So Successful?
There were several reasons Dusty
May was so successful as a coach. First
of all, he was a wicked smart student of the game, understanding how to put
high level schemes, game plans and side-line coaching adjustments in
place. Second, he knew how to assemble
unlikely rosters of under-appreciated players that he saw promise in through
the transfer portal, and get them to succeed and gel in a short period of
time. Third, he got his players to
believe in a “Team Before Self” mentality, which is hard to do with a bunch of
elite basketball players that had previously thrived in the individual
limelight at their previous schools. And
lastly, his calm/consistent demeanor, and treating his players as “family”,
endeared him to his players. Let’s dive into
each of these traits at a deeper level.
Crafting The Right Strategy
Matters
Dusty knew that competing in the
Big Ten against some of the best teams in college basketball (sending 5 teams
to the Elite Eight) required him to have a better strategy to win. And in crafting the best strategy, Dusty was
a pro and breaking down the film on his competitors, finding their weaknesses
and leaning into those to create his advantages. That allowed his team not only to win, but to
win big by an average margin of 18 points during his championship season (and by
an average of 22 points during the NCAA Tournament when it mattered most). Michigan finished their regular season with a
record of 19-1 during Big Ten play, a record four-game advantage over the
second place teams with a 15-5 record.
And they didn’t lose a single game on their opponent’s court, which is
so hard to do with home court advantages.
How well thought-out are your business strategies and how well
researched are you on your competitors?
Get The Right Players That Fit
Your Desired Strategy
You don’t normally see a
basketball team with more than one 7 footer on the roster. But Dusty’s rosters typically have multiple
big men on the floor at the same time. And
these “giants” were not only great at rebounding, blocking shots and scoring
inside, most of them are also good when shooting from three-point range. His centers were basically playing like
guards, flying around the court with an ease not typically associated with big
men. Dusty knew that basketball is a
game of inches, and those extra inches in height and wing span, would matter
come tournament time. Do you have the
best, most-versatile team members filling your employee rosters to give your
business that extra “inside edge”?
But it just wasn’t setting the
right strategy of using a lot of versatile big men, it was also picking who
those exact big men were. His transfer players
like Vlad Goldin, Danny Wolf, Morez Johnson and Aday Mara were good players on
their previous teams, but not all-star great players. He saw “diamonds in the rough” that he
believed he could coach up into all-star players, and sure enough Goldin and
Wolf were drafted into the NBA last year, and Johnson and Mara were drafted to the NBA this year.
And players that were criticized for underperforming, like Elliot Cadeau
at UNC, were now most valuable players of the NCAA Tournament under Dusty May’s
tutelage. How good are you at developing
your employees and turning them into all-stars for your business?
Put the Team First, Before the
Individual
Yaxel Lendeborg, the Big Ten
Player of the Year and consensus First Team All-American, only averaged 15
points a game this season. He could have
easily been like any of his fellow All-American’s averaging 20-25 points per
game. But Dusty May emphasized to his
players, that the team results were more important than any individual
statistics. That extra pass to an open
team mate, may hurt your personal scoring stats, but it could help seal a
victory. And all this team cared about
was winning in a self-less way, which is why 8 different players lead the team
in scoring this year. Opponents never
could predict which one of them would be the star of the night, which was
really hard to defend against. That was
a very special group of players that listened to their coaches and led Michigan
and became their most-accomplished team in history. What are you doing in your
organization to promote team work and getting the staff to act as one unified
group committed to winning?
Calm and Steady Wins the Race
When you would see Dusty May on
the sideline, you would never even think he was coaching in the middle of a
game. The expression on his faced was
calm and collected. He never let himself
get wrapped up in the high and low emotions of the game. It was all business following his proven
playbook. And his players followed suit;
they appreciated his style of leadership and they knew the “ship” was in good
hands with Dusty at the helm. And they
applied that same calm approach in their style of play. They just knew every team member had each
other’s back and they would figure out how to win, regardless of the opponent
they were playing. And the bigger the
stage, the better they performed, often blowing out some of the best teams in
the country. How do you think your staff
is responding to your vision and leadership style?
Closing Thoughts
Dusty May knew what the goal was
from day one of this season—win a national championship or bust with the talent
he had around the table. He instilled an
“April Habits” mindset from day one of the pre-season practices, knowing that
the work they put into over the course of the year would propel them to
championship heights in the Final Four in April. He was even seen on the sideline of the first
Final Four game between Connecticut and Illinois, scouting those two teams,
when you would have guessed he would have been in the locker room with his team
getting ready for their big game which would follow. But when a reporter asked him about him not
being with the team, he calmly responded, “nothing I would tell them in the
next hour would change the result of the game—the results of tonight’s game
would be decided months earlier in the work they put in leading up to
tonight.” He knew they were prepared, he
knew they would win in the Final Four and he was getting a step ahead to ensure
they would win on championship night. I
hope you are all putting in that same level of work and discipline in your
businesses.
Now, if you can figure out how to get Dusty May back to Michigan after the Dallas Mavericks stole him as head coach last month, that would be great! Hopefully, the new U-M head coach, Mike Boynton, a Dusty May assistant, continues in Dusty’s winning ways. Go Blue!
For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.
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