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Alvin Williams on the importance of identity to team success

On the latest episode of Hustle Play, Alvin Williams joins the show to discuss why all great teams have an identity that helps create their success. Listen to the full episode on the podcast feed or watch on our YouTube.

Video Transcript

- Alvin, do you think all good teams have to have some type of identity?

ALVIN WILLIAMS: They do. They do have an identity-- whatever it is. A lot of times, it's-- good teams-- a lot of times, it's togetherness, or they look like they're together. Sometimes it's a veteran team. It's a lot of things. The whole cliché is like identity or culture and all that. At the end of the day, you got a lot of young men coming together from different walks of life, different agendas, different things, and trying to put that into one to win. It's not always everybody all together. It's not everything's all good all the time. You got to build--

That's why the good teams can get through those moments. You got to have good players. You got to have good coaches. You got to have luck. You got to have a lot of things. But it's not just the identity, but the identity-- it flourishes-- you know what I mean? With certain teams, and usually those are the better teams.

- And you look around the league. You could see certain teams-- they have a high-powered offense. Some teams can have a crazy defense. What is the identity of this team for the Raptors?

- I think we're still searching. Obviously, we still got the-- [? trying ?] to win the heart of champions and go there and work hard, disrupt teams, and try to beat them-- offensive rebound, get more position. The identity's still the same. It's just-- like I said, you get moments sometimes that we don't have the same energy while we do it. We'll give you good-- two or three good quarters and then just give you one flat quarter.

And in the NBA, you can see there's a lot of talent. Guys go on the 50-point score and stuff like that. And that one quarter could kill you, you know what I'm saying? You could literally be up 10 and then, [? under ?] three minutes, they do a 10-0 run, and then they do another 10-0. And now it's 20 to 5. You're down 15. Can't do nothing about it, you know what I'm saying?

And obviously, we've done that to teams, too. Obviously, that just shows you that any team can come in and bust your ass if they wanted to. But we have some young guys. We got some vets. And we're still trying to figure out how to mix it all together. You can see-- like I said, some games would show up and you could be like, this team is special. We have so many [? talented. ?] We got leaders. And sometimes we just-- it seems like we're still figuring it out what we want to do. And sometimes it costs us. It costs us games. It costs us quarters. So obviously, something we're still working on.

- So that energy. And Alvin, you know. You've been there before, right? How do you find that type of consistency to make sure you try to bring it every night?

ALVIN WILLIAMS: It's on your team. It's on the team. It's on the leadership. It's on how they receive the coach's word. But take, for instance-- take Chris. It ain't never a game where you don't see his energy. I don't care how the games go. I don't care if he done played, he didn't play. The energy never changed. That never changed.

So if I'm a coach, if I'm a fan, if I'm anything, you always want to come to the game and you always want to go into a game knowing what you're going to get from your players. So when you have players like Chris and you have players that have that energy, the shot ain't always going to go in. You're going to be matched up against somebody. He's going to get it rolling. He might light you up. That'll happen.

But when you have players that don't come in with that same energy and that same focus and that same thing that-- this is how I'm going to be and this is what I'm going to give to this team every single night, that's when you got problems. That's when you got problems. So you look for those players that's going to bring you that energy, first and foremost. I don't care about nothing else. Now we're going to get into the details. Now we're going to get into the skill set. But that energy and that approach every night-- it has to be there. And it's just like Chris said-- if you don't come with that, you might get ran out of the gym against the Orlando Magic or--