This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
Zaza Pachulia played 16 years in the NBA with six teams. He is now a consultant for the Golden State Warriors. These are the three best leaders he played with.
Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors guard
I was so lucky to watch him work out. Before games, after practice, drills.
It was also how he treated people. It was just fascinating. He treated everyone in the organization the same.
I’ve seen it myself so many times with employees at the Warriors. He walks up and just asks them: “How are you doing?” Just a simple question. But to me that is leadership. That is caring. That is the type of leader you want to work with and work for.
One day I was talking to Jeff Addiego, who is in charge of the Golden State Sports Academy and works with youth players. Jeff and I were having a conversation while Steph was lifting weights.
Steph came over and asked Jeff how he was doing. And then he asked how Jeff’s daughter was doing with basketball; he knew Jeff’s daughter was playing basketball.
{“endpoint”:”https://api-prd-nyt.theathletic.com/graphql”}
Jeff answered him, and the conversation lasted two or three minutes. Then Steph left to go back to his workout, and Jeff turned to me and said: “Zaza, this is why I enjoy coming here every single day.”
That care and leadership you feel from your best player motivates and inspires you.
Jalen Brunson’s “constant” that helped him level up throughout his career
Elise Devlin
{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”VideoObject”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/TlnjuavLJJEpcuY/”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/TlnjuavLJJEpcuY/”,”name”:”Jalen Brunson’s “constant” that helped him level up throughout his career”,”description”:”Brunson said he’s never been afraid to fail, and it’s always been a way for him to learn and grow.”,”uploadDate”:”2026-07-22T03:37:32.836Z”,”duration”:”PT2M22S”,”thumbnailUrl”:”https://cdn-media.theathletic.com/video-stream/auto-thumbnail/TlnjuavLJJEpcuY/tQh6wfCq30Yi.0000000.jpg”,”contentUrl”:”https://video.nyt.com/athletic/streams/TlnjuavLJJEpcuY/tQh6wfCq30Yi/tQh6wfCq30Yi.m3u8″,”transcript”:”There’s a piece of advice that Jalen Brunson gave to a younger NBA player recently, and he said it’s basically been the one constant for him that has always helped him continue to level up. He said he has to embrace failures instead of being afraid of them, and the way that he was talking about it, it was almost like he was insinuating. That certain failures that have happened maybe have even accelerated his growth. He was talking to Khan Knipple when he gave this advice, who then I interviewed afterwards. And then after I talked to Khan, I called up Manu Kapoor, who is a failure expert, and this is where it gets really interesting. So first, Manu addressed that obviously there’s a big difference between failure that is born from careless. and then failure that is coming because you stretched yourself. For example, missing a shot because you didn’t prepare is one thing versus missing a shot because you’re trying out a new technique or a different skill that you haven’t mastered yet. The latter, Mao said, is really important because I guess basically when people attempt something challenging and they fall a little short. A few different brain systems are activated from that, so it’s cognition, emotion, and then in sports motor systems are all activated at once. Then this is where the productive part kicks in. So the productive part of failure kicks in after the struggle. So you try something, it doesn’t work, then your interest in finding out why it didn’t work rises a lot, and then maybe you check in with a teacher or a coach to find a better way to get it to work, basically. In life, everybody wants to know the why to most things, and when you allow yourself to fail, you have more of a specific itch, I guess, to find out that why. So it’s like allowing yourself to fail can lead to more discoveries. The way Manu explained this to me was that it increases motivation and attention in that way because. It leads to frustration. Failure leads to frustration, and in the right environment that can just sharpen our focus is how he explained all of that. Obviously you don’t want mistakes in the big moments, but productive failure is not about embracing errors when the stakes are high. It’s actually not that at all. It’s the opposite where it’s like you’re using smaller opportunities to. Into a little failure when the stakes are low enough where you can learn from it. That’s what Jalen Brunson was kind of scratching the surface on with K Knippel. He was kind of like, lean into it, lean into the uncomfortable situations. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try, because if you do that in the offseason and you make a mistake, then you’re preventing yourself from making mistakes when it’s actually a bigger moment later on.”,”ineligibleRegion”:[“BI”,”BY”,”CD”,”CF”,”CU”,”IQ”,”IR”,”KP”,”LB”,”LY”,”ML”,”NI”,”RU”,”SD”,”SO”,”SS”,”SY”,”UA”,”VE”,”YE”,”ZW”],”publisher”:{“@type”:”NewsMediaOrganization”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/#publisher”,”name”:”The Athletic”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/”,”foundingDate”:”2016-01-25″,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”@id”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”url”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”contentUrl”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”creditText”:”The Athletic”,”height”:”60″,”width”:”435″},”publishingPrinciples”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/edit-guidelines/”,”sameAs”:”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athletic”},”author”:[{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”Elise Devlin”}]}
Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas Mavericks forward
One of the things that made Dirk so special was his ability to keep it fun. His humor was next level, and he understood when it was the right time to do it.
He had great work-humor balance.
It was just so fun to be around him in the locker room. He would bring jokes to you, but he would also take them as well.
He dedicated his time to his teammates and to conversations with them.
Every day was fun with him.
But when the preparation for the game started, he would have his game face on. I remember one time we played in Madison Square Garden against the Knicks and Kristaps Porzingis. Fans and media love to compare players to others, and everyone was comparing KP to Dirk.
Dirk was getting old at the time. It’s not easy to perform at the highest level when you’re older.
There was so much hype around that game. Dirk just wanted to remind everyone.
To me that was leadership: This is how you respond to outside noise. This is what it takes to be great. It pushed him. It was a cool moment for me to watch.
Jason Kidd, Milwaukee Bucks head coach
He was such an important part of my career.
I had the best year of my career with him in 2014-15 with the Milwaukee Bucks. I believe it was why the Warriors later showed interest in me.
It was because I had a chance to play for Jason Kidd.
Everything was so structured with him. Even how he would run practices. He helped everyone on the team to become proactive instead of reactive.
That was one of the things I truly learned from him: be proactive. Read the play ahead of time. Understand what’s going to happen.
Not every coach can do that. There are a lot of coaches who are great with Xs and Os and different parts of the game, but this guy flat-out taught us how to see the play before it actually happens.
He knew what it took to motivate players, and he was so smart.
I was so lucky to spend a year with him.
— As told to Jayson Jenks