If you’ve ever been in line at a gate waiting to board a plane and struck up a conversation with a stranger that you couldn’t stop thinking about, well, that’s how I met Sammy Gelfand.
We were boarding a flight from France back to the US. I asked Sammy what he did. He said, “I’m an NBA coach.” I said, “Wait, you’re an NBA coach?” And then he started sharing what he does, the role he plays on NBA teams, and I was so blown away that I knew I had to follow up.
Sammy is an analytics coach. He’s worked with the Reno Bighorns, the Santa Cruz Warriors, the Golden State Warriors (where he won three NBA championships), the Detroit Pistons, the New Orleans Pelicans, the Washington Wizards, and the Dallas Mavericks. The New York Times once called him “The Left Side of Steve Kerr’s Brain.”
His job? Take the numbers and turn them into a story or a message so that coaches and players can actually use them. And the reason I wanted to sit down with him is that giving and delivering feedback is at the heart of what he does, every single day, to some of the biggest personalities in the world, with no margin for error.
Most of us give feedback maybe once a day, a few times a week, or during a performance review. Sammy is watching a game, pulling the data, and packaging it in a way that coaches and players can receive, understand, and act on, often within hours. And he’s been doing it for over a decade across some of the highest-pressure environments on the planet.
Here’s what he’s learned. And honestly, every bit of it applies to how we give feedback at work.
Everybody Sees Things From a Different Perspective
One of the first things Sammy shared is something that sounds obvious but most of us forget in the moment: everybody is coming from a different perspective.
The players are on the court. They’re seeing things from their vantage point. The coaches are on the bench. They have their own view. The front office is watching from somewhere else entirely. And Sammy, sitting with the data, is seeing yet another angle.
None of those perspectives are wrong. They’re just different. And if you want your feedback to land, you have to understand where the other person is standing before you try to tell them what you see from where you’re standing.
Sammy put it simply: “If I can’t correlate what the players are doing to my numbers, or the numbers to what the players are doing, it’s useless.”
The same is true in any workplace. If we can’t connect our feedback to what the other person is actually experiencing in their role, it’s not going to land. It’s just going to feel like noise.
It’s Okay to Ask How People Want to Receive Feedback
Sammy said one of the most important things he does is simply ask people how they want to receive information.
Some coaches and players want tables, charts, and graphs. Some just want three lines. “Give it to me straight. I don’t need the fanciness.” Some want to see it on video. “Just show me doing it.”
And Sammy’s point was clear: the belief that some people “can’t handle” data or feedback is almost always wrong. They can handle it. The question is whether you’re giving it to them in a way that works for how their brain processes information.
He asks coaches and players directly: “Do you like shot charts? Do you like tables? How do you like viewing things?” And then he delivers it that way. Because, as he put it, “If it doesn’t get used, it defeats the whole purpose.”
How often do we do this at work? How often do we actually ask the people we’re giving feedback to how they prefer to receive it? Most of the time, we deliver it the way that’s comfortable for us and then wonder why it didn’t land.
Find the Right Metric for the Right Team
One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation was about how Sammy identifies what to focus on for each team.
At Golden State, the big metric was passes and ball movement. The goal was 300 passes per game. Coach Kerr would show it to the team every single day in the film session. “This was our pass number. We didn’t reach it, we lost. We reached it, we won.” It was simple, the players understood it, and it was directly connected to success.
But when Sammy moved to Detroit, he realized the same metric didn’t apply. Detroit didn’t have the same shooters. Ball movement didn’t mean as much for that roster. What mattered more was paint touches and low turnovers. So the focus shifted.
What worked in one place didn’t necessarily work someplace else.
This is such an important lesson for leaders. We often find a framework, a metric, or an approach that works in one context and then try to apply it everywhere. But the best leaders (and the best coaches) look at the strengths of the people on their team and figure out what metric, what focus, what conversation is going to help this specific group succeed.
The Hardest Feedback Often Comes After a Win
Sammy said something I found really interesting: it is often harder to deliver feedback after a win than after a loss. After a loss, the conversation is straightforward: “We did this wrong. We did this wrong. We need to fix it.” But after a win, the question becomes: did we actually play the way we wanted to, or did we just get lucky? And how do you keep people focused on growing and improving when they have just won?
That is a challenge every leader faces. It is easy to have the conversation when things go wrong. The real skill is helping people stay curious, reflective, and committed to growth when things are going right.
Sammy has also learned that people need feedback at different times. Some coaches and players want the data immediately after a game. They want to get it off their chest, address what went wrong, and move on. Others do not want feedback after a single game. They want to see trends over a week or ten games. They know one game might be bad luck, and they would rather wait until a pattern emerges before acting on it.
Sometimes You’re Not the Right Person to Deliver It
This was one of the most humble and practical things Sammy shared. He said there are times when he knows the feedback is right, but he also knows he’s not the right person to deliver it. If he tells a player directly, they might not respond the same way. But if he gives the insight to one of the coaches and the coach delivers it, the player responds amazingly and acts on it.
His philosophy: “I would rather the person uses it than for me to be the one who delivers it or gets the credit.”
How many of us hold on to being the one who delivers the feedback because we want the recognition for the insight? Sammy is willing to let go of that entirely if it means the feedback actually gets used. That’s what it looks like when you’re truly in service of the people you’re supporting.
The Cupcake Strategy (and Why It Works)
When Sammy started at the Washington Wizards, he needed to present data and reports to the coaching staff. So he did something unexpected. He brought donuts and cupcakes to the meetings.
He said it was amazing how that one small act diffused everything. People were happy to see the food. A couple of players grabbed six pastries and sat in the back in a sugar coma (which was fine by him). The atmosphere shifted from “here’s another meeting we have to sit through” to something lighter, more open, more human.
And once that happened, the feedback started flowing more naturally. The questions started coming. The conversations became real.
It wasn’t about the cupcakes. It was about removing the threat. When people don’t feel like they’re walking into something intimidating, they’re more open to hearing what you have to share.
Meet People Where They Are (The Printer Story)
One of my favorite stories from our conversation was about an old-school coach, about 80 years old, who had been in basketball for over 60 years and had a well-known history of hating analytics people. Sammy was sending him reports by email every morning. For about two months, the coach was complaining that Sammy wasn’t giving him the reports.
Turns out the coach didn’t know how to check his email.
Once Sammy found out, he started printing every report and putting it on the coach’s desk each morning. That small change (literally the difference between hitting “send” and hitting “print”) became the foundation of one of the most meaningful relationships of Sammy’s career.
Today, that coach is like a basketball grandfather to Sammy. They talk all the time. The coach wanted to ride to the gym with Sammy every morning during summer workouts. This is a person who had every reason to brush Sammy aside, someone who had accomplished everything in basketball and had no incentive to learn about analytics at 80 years old. But because Sammy met him where he was, a real relationship was built.
When I asked Sammy what he was most proud of in his career, it wasn’t the three championships. It was this relationship.
And I think that tells you everything you need to know about what makes feedback work. It’s not about the data. It’s not about being right. It’s about the relationship you build with the person, and whether they feel like you’re there to help them or to prove something.
What This Means for the Rest of Us
You don’t have to work in the NBA to apply what Sammy has learned. The principles are the same whether you’re coaching a basketball team or leading a department.
Ask people how they want to receive feedback. Don’t assume. Some people want it direct. Some want it in writing. Some want to see examples. Ask, and then deliver it their way.
Understand their perspective before sharing yours. Your data, your observation, your feedback is only useful if you can connect it to what the other person is actually experiencing.
Find the right focus for the right team. What worked somewhere else might not work here. Look at the strengths of the people in front of you and figure out what matters most for this group.
Pay attention to timing. Not everyone wants feedback at the same time. Some want it immediately. Some need space first. Watch and learn what works for each person.
Be willing to not be the one who delivers it. If the message lands better coming from someone else, let it. The goal is for the feedback to be used, not for you to get credit.
Remove the threat. Whether it’s cupcakes in a meeting or humor in a hard conversation, find ways to make people feel safe enough to hear what you’re sharing.
Meet people where they are. Sometimes the difference between feedback that gets ignored and feedback that changes everything is as simple as knowing whether to hit send or hit print.
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That’s the thing about feedback. When it’s done with humility, when it’s delivered with care, when you take the time to understand the person you’re serving, it doesn’t just change performance. It changes relationships.And that, at the end of the day, is what makes all of it worth doing.
You can watch the full conversation with Sammy here: https://youtu.be/H8MaaiRD7rs
And if you want to help your leaders get better at delivering feedback that people can actually hear, reach out here and let’s talk about what would make the biggest difference for your team.
