CLIP: Is Your Superstar Really Worth Building Around?

**Wes Goldberg** (0:00)
Let's talk about star players, though, Mike, when you think about a top star player, the ideal star player in 2026, what qualities does this player have?

**Danny Leroux** (0:08)
Yeah, so in direct contrast, I think, to head coach, where it took us a little while to get into like, oh, what's their tactical acumen or whatever, you know, the strict X and O's. If you want to be a star player, you need to be an efficient bucket getter and bucket maker for teammates. I think that's like criteria number one. I'm happy to hear some pushback here, but if you're not able to generate a lot of points at a pretty high volume for your team, unless there are some very few exceptions, like you could be a literal galactic level defender on the Wimbenyama level, and then you can get there otherwise. But if you're going to be the bus driver on a championship team, you just need to be able to generate offense for your team, for yourself, and for your teammates at a high level.

**Jared Dubin** (0:45)
Jared.
Sorry, I was muted for a second. Yeah, I had like, one of the things that I had on there was just shot creation, whether it's for yourself or others. Like you absolutely have to be able to get shots for your team that go in the basket. Like I think the, I had one thing above that, which was just consistency. Like you got to be the same guy and bring the same effort every single day, or the other guys on the team won't do the same. Like you have to be able to set the culture that way.

**Mike Shearer** (1:20)
That goes to what I was going to say, which is actually be a culture setter, right? And like maintain the culture that's been set, and having that understanding of where you can kind of be. Like KG is a great example.
Was all those things. Bucket getter bat, you know, in Minnesota could score, could do everything, was unbelievable defensively. He's an absolute maniac. But the most important skill he had was policing the locker room and maintaining the culture that was set. To the point that when he got traded to Boston, Doc never had to do any of that stuff. Like I've heard Doc talk about it where it's more just, I just got the coach. That was one less thing the coach had to worry about. I just got the coach, worry about X's and O's, rotations, everything we talked about.
I always knew the locker room was going to be right because KG was going to make sure the locker room was right. He gave up shot creation and scoring as much, focused more on defense, but was the guy in the locker room. Remember, he made Big Baby cry on the bench because he's trying to continue to uphold the culture.
How he does it, maybe a bit too far with some things. But I think having that ability to kind of, it's lead, set the culture and lead is one of the most important things to being that guy. Brunson is a leader of the Knicks team. Shea leads the Thunder. Wemby leads, there's no question about it, right? Like, Luka is going to be interesting, because now Luka has to lead this Laker team, right? And he's already doing it, right? Find the whole team, you know, private to Slovenia to work out with him. Would have been cheaper if he just flew to LA.

**Jared Dubin** (3:03)
Except for Cameron Clark.

**Mike Shearer** (3:05)
Maybe he's busy.

**Jared Dubin** (3:06)
Rookies got to fly their own.

**Wes Goldberg** (3:08)
It's the rookie symposium or whatever. He's not feeling bad for me.

**Mike Shearer** (3:13)
But having that sort of just ability to just like, I can galvanize guys and get them all going and get them all pushing in the right direction is really something I think that's important from your star player that you want to see from your star player.

**Danny Leroux** (3:29)
Can I push back on that a little bit though?
I agree it is important. Ideally, you would always get that. I don't know if it's necessarily required for short-term success. However, just because so much of the time, I feel like the culture comes on the back of winning. And I think of like Kauai Leonard on the Raptors, right? He was your best player. I don't know based on some of the reports we've heard that he was necessarily like the number one culture setter.

**Mike Shearer** (3:51)
You have to talk to be able to do that.

**Danny Leroux** (3:54)
Well, yeah, exactly. And I think about some of the reports that have come out from Milwaukee after Giannis' left, who knows how much of that is true, but about the horrible culture that had developed there under Doc Rivers and Giannis. Was that there when they won the championship or not? I'm not close enough to the team to say, but I do think a lot of the times it's like, we look back at the culture in retrospect and be like, oh, they have a good culture because they have won a lot of good games. And it's hard to tell when you're on the way up and you fall short if there was really a good culture there at all.