Purpose: This study explored one piece of the leadership puzzle (level of expertise) and focuses on one specific context (professional basketball) to better understand if expert players make better leaders.

Methods: This study examined the link between playing experience and coaching performance from three perspectives. First, the top head coaches in NBA history were studied to determine their playing background. Second, the top players who later became NBA head coaches were studied to determine their coaching performance. Finally, all head coaches from a single NBA season were evaluated to determine the relationship between coaching performance and past playing experience. Coaching and playing excellence were selected through a combination of peer selection and objective measures.

Results: Instead of finding further support for the theory that expert players make better head coaches, this study revealed three examples of the opposite trend. First, expert players were a minority among the top head coaches in NBA history. Second, former expert players that became coaches were, as a group, low performing head coaches. Finally, among the current cohort of NBA head coaches, expert players ranked, as a group, last in coaching performance. the highest performing group was the NBA insider who was not the expert performer.

Conclusions:  Case study evidence supports a theory as to what is behind this phenomenon. Expert players, non-expert players, and non-players seem to differ in the amount and type of training coaches receive on their way to the head coaching seat. If expert or “star” players are more likely to skip the assistant coaching step then a pattern might develop among these groups that offer them significantly different training experiences.