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Tuesday, the basketball portal opened for 14 days. We’ve heard the stories from the 14-day football window this past January, and it was chaos.

And we’re not even talking about the player movement side of things.

Coaches barely slept. They’re trying to make roster decisions on a compressed timeline. And those decisions depend on decision trees, where the branches are hard to predict or even figure out.

Coaches don’t reach out to us during this window (they don’t have time), but do so soon after. They’re typically desperate for some guidance.

We use an idea we’ve turned into a tool (of course) that has become the backbone of our discussions with coaches about roster construction.

We believe it’s extremely helpful to all coaches at all levels. And this idea impacts not just roster additions but also how you think through and evaluate your current rosters.

It’s become such a common talking point that we wanted to share it with you all. It is even influencing the tools we are building to help coaches evaluate all roster decisions.

We call it the Talent-Culture Matrix.

There has been some very interesting research in the world of e-sports, of all places, on the impact of adding players to a team based on their talent versus “team fit” (what we are calling “culture” in this newsletter).

Why video games? Because it’s very easy to measure a player’s “talent” with numbers.

For example, a study from Cornell found that certain players consistently improved team outcomes beyond what their talent would predict, a phenomenon the researchers called the “team player effect.”

Every coach knows this effect exists. Nearly every coach has coached a player who wasn’t as talented, yet somehow made the whole team better.

And yet, even though we’ve all seen it and can point to it when we see it, we are still terrible predictors of who those players will be, how to find them, and how to value them.

That effect becomes more valuable as teams get more complex (the invasion sports like soccer, basketball, lacrosse…etc) because coordination, trust, and communication matter more than raw ability.

Imagine a matrix with two lines.

One that runs left to right is the “Culture” Axis. On the far left, it signifies players who are poor cultural fits. You can score them with -5. The middle is a ZERO (neither positive nor negative), and all the way to the right is a +5 culture player.

Then the vertical axis is your Talent Axis. Same idea. All the way at the bottom would be your walk-ons, the kids that are -5s from a talent perspective. Then your ZEROES in the middle. Then you’re the most talented kids towards the top.

This creates four different categories of players.

Low talent, Low culture fit.

They don’t help you win now, and they don’t help you build.

Priority: Move on quickly and clearly.

These are your multipliers.

They may not fill the stat sheet, but they elevate practice, reinforce standards, and make your best players better. They’re often the glue. The connectors. The tone-setters.

But if this is your whole team, you’re probably not competing for championships.

Priority: Don’t overlook them. Intentionally identify and value them more than the market does.

These are your temptations.

They can win you games, but also cause you to lose your team.

They drain energy, fracture trust, and often require disproportionate attention from coaches. The hardest part? Their talent gives them leverage, so they’re often tolerated longer than they should be.

This is where most roster mistakes happen.

Priority: Be brutally honest. These players come with a cost. Make sure you’re actually willing to pay it.

They elevate performance and raise the standard of everyone around them. They make coaching easier. They accelerate development. They compound over time.

You don’t just want these players; you build your program around them.

Priority: Retain at all costs. Identify early. Develop relentlessly.

Most coaches think they’re building a roster. In reality, they’re building a system of interactions.

And systems don’t break because of a lack of talent, they break because of poor fit.

There are plenty more takeaways from this tool and this idea.

But, we are going to leave those for next week’s edition and leave you to ponder this idea of the Talent-Culture Matrix.

But, we will leave you with this idea.

Instead of asking:

Start asking:

Get BETTER’s Culture Playbook. A system designed to install a thriving, healthy, high-performance culture. Join over 1,000 coaches who use our Culture Playbook from youth club teams to national championship NCAA programs and everything in between.