Since leaving Microsoft in 2014, Steve Ballmer has occasionally taught a class at Stanford's business school called "Leading Organizations."
And when teaching, Ballmer has often talked about muscle: building it and using it. Adapting in highly competitive business, Ballmer has told scores of graduate students over the past decade, is "like getting in the weight room. You may not know how you're going to use your capability, but you've got to be stronger. You've got to learn new things."
Ballmer has a challenge on his hands with his core business now, the LA Clippers. He and the team have made a huge investment in the current roster with the expectation -- the demand, frankly -- of championship-level success.
Two years into his grand plan, it hasn't happened. The reasons don't require spaghetti code-level analysis.
Even in the superteam era, no franchise has survived losing its best player and been able to win a title. The Clippers kept a stiff upper lip when Kawhi Leonard's MRI results came back before Game 5 of the conference semifinals in Salt Lake City. Ever the cheerleader, Ballmer's spirits outwardly never faltered, but deep down he had to know the truth.
Leonard is a brilliant player -- and also a fragile one. He injured his left ankle twice in the 2017 playoffs and was out. He missed the entire 2018 playoffs rehabilitating a right quadriceps injury. No one can see the future, but Leonard not being able to finish the postseason one out of three years isn't the most outlandish projection.
Guarding against an unfortunate turn was the point of the huge investment to acquire Paul George, of course, but that's also misaligning expectation with reality. On balance, George had a wonderful playoff run, but he is not Leonard, LeBron James or Kevin Durant. George has proven he can lead his teams to playoff wins, but expecting him to carry a team through a coin-flip playoff series isn't a sustainable strategy.
It was a coin-flip series with the Phoenix Suns too. Games 2 and 4 came down to the last minute; if the Clippers had Leonard, these are almost certainly wins. George was the difference-maker in Game 5. The Clippers, with their two stars healthy, are probably in the Finals and maybe even winning it all.
But that's not to suggest LA had an undue share of misfortune: Chris Paul missed games with COVID-19, Devin Booker's vicious broken nose absolutely wrecked his rhythm; Donovan Mitchell's ankle was messed up; and Mike Conley had a bad hamstring and a strained calf. Still, Leonard's bad landing on his right leg will feel like the root of an opportunity lost.
So what does the billionaire, the former CEO, the professor who specializes in leadership, do about it? How does he build muscle and wield it with the hand the Clippers are now holding?
When Ballmer was CEO at Microsoft, he encountered huge challenges not unlike this one: massive competition from rivals. Ballmer became famous for running around on stages in front of large crowds, sweating through his blue shirts, screaming about Microsoft products and services.
But there was always Steve Jobs, dressed in black without a bead of perspiration, holding up the iPod. And then the iPhone. And then the iPad. Squint and you could scare yourself into believing it's Pat Riley, holding up his pouch of rings when free agency commences.
This, however, is not a basketball letdown equal to that of the Zune, the Ballmer-led MP3 device that was a billion-dollar failure in the late 2000s. When Ballmer finally admitted defeat on that one, he simply redirected the company into another area of focus. Microsoft, of course, is doing just fine these days. Ballmer's push toward cloud computing and development of Xbox has driven huge growth long after he left.
What is the Clippers' Xbox, though? What is their pivot? That one is tough.
"In the tech world, you have version updates. We can do a major upgrade in the summer, and we can do a minor upgrade at the trade deadline. So you think about things in a little bit different perspective," Ballmer said in an interview with ESPN's Rachel Nichols earlier this year.
"Sports are more final. Tech, you can say, 'Oh, we'll improve the product next release.' No, [in sports] every 24 seconds, you know how you stand. Every game. Every season. And there's no, 'Hey, I'll make it up in the future.'"
Clippers 1.0 led to a lack of cohesion and focus in the Orlando bubble -- resulting in the firing of Doc Rivers and not re-signing Montrezl Harrell in part because of chemistry issues and, later, the trade of Lou Williams.
This season's version was undoubtedly an upgrade. Instead of a summer of lamenting a collapse, the Clippers can hold their heads high after coming back twice from down 2-0 deficits and threatening to do it again before succumbing to fatigue. The move to Tyronn Lue as head coach and his now-famous mid-series adjustments appears brilliant.
But how to write a Clippers version 3.0 is a reasonable question.
This season, the inability to find a much-needed shot-creator froze the team like the infamous Windows blue screen of death once Leonard sprained his knee. Reggie Jackson has played admirably, but the Clippers' replacement players failed. Rajon Rondo was a nonfactor in the playoffs, Luke Kennard did not fill a role commensurate with his contract extension and Serge Ibaka was injured almost the entire season.
Ballmer built his team's proverbial muscle with the massive swings in 2019-20, trading away most of the team's future draft assets and spending cap space. If Leonard re-signs -- trying to infer his intentions is a fool's gambit, but Leonard remaining with LA is the betting favorite -- the Clippers will be a luxury tax payer that will further restrict their ability to build the roster.
"I'm learning about sports in ways that might've helped me better when I was at Microsoft," Ballmer said. "I learned, at the end of the day, two things. No. 1, that sometimes change is important. Sometimes people get locked in their ways and you just have to shake things up a little bit ... The second thing I learned is it is a team effort. It is our players. It is our coaches. It is our front office. It's our medical staff. Everybody's to do their job right, and we took a look at everything and said, 'How do we get ready for next season?'"
Those lessons might lead Ballmer and the Clippers to come back with Clippers 2.1 rather than 3.0. For all the data, the analysis and the hand-wringing, it might just come down to Leonard staying healthy and some general improvement. Unlike last season, Ballmer is convinced he has the right pieces after watching Lue work in the postseason and young wing Terance Mann blossom in the playoffs.
There's still time to make this work. But ingenuity is needed, and patience is sure to be tested.