Special force at work for Warriors
OAKLAND, Calif. -- The question causes Dr. Chris Johnson to pause for a beat.
He's trying to search for any similarities between the two groups he has been working with -- the Golden State Warriors and the U.S. Special Operations Forces, which include elite military units such as the renowned Navy SEAL commandos.
Then he thinks of Warriors guard Stephen Curry, the NBA's 2014-15 MVP.
"One of the things that you see him do is he finds a game within the game," Johnson says, sitting in the stands at Oracle Arena here this week, with the Warriors three wins from a title.
"It's not enough for him just to make a shot -- he doesn't even want to hit the rim. That reminds me very much of the guys that I work with."
Specifically, it reminds Johnson of marksmanship, and of the elite shooters (snipers) who want not only to hit the target but to hit the exact center of the bull's-eye multiple times, and do so even when they're in a stressful environment.
"A game within a game," Johnson says.
He is in a unique position to judge. He has worked in a part-time role with the Warriors as a team psychologist this past season while also running the Navy's Operational Neuroscience Lab based in San Diego, where for nearly the past six years he has worked with thousands of SEALs and Marines.
How the Warriors' unique partnership with Johnson came to be forged is an example of the team's out-of-the-box approach to find any advantage, especially in the mental side of the game.
It also speaks to the forward-thinking mindset of coach Steve Kerr, who wasn't even sure he was allowed to discuss the topic until a team spokesman said it would be OK.
Even then, Kerr remained guarded.
"I'm not going into much detail about the things that we've done," Kerr said with a bit of a smile, "but he's made a big impact."
Johnson's work with the military has focused on brain behavior, specifically how the brain functions under stress and why, for some, it functions very well.
"We want to look at two things," Johnson says. "One is, how are they different [brains that handle stress well compared with brains that don't]. And then the $60 million question is, those mechanisms that are different, can you train them?"
He's thrilled to report that recent evidence says, yes, brains can be trained. For an elite commando, Johnson says that edge might be a small one, but obviously, it could be enough to make a difference. And in today's NBA, many teams are looking for the same thing -- anything that can provide an edge.
"If you can get somebody who's a better teammate, better character, more coachable, better learner and more calm under stress, and you get a collection of those, you get a better team," Johnson says.
Before the 2014-15 season began, Johnson was contacted by Warriors assistant Bruce Fraser, who suggested Johnson speak to Kerr.
The two hit it off immediately.
"Talking to him for me is like talking to the commanding officer of one of the special ops teams," Johnson says of Kerr. "He's got a very executive mindset, but what sets him apart is he understands the whole man."
By "whole man," Johnson means every aspect of a person, not just his profession.
"He values the whole man -- not just what you do here for 48 minutes, but who you are as a father, as a brother, as a teammate," Johnson says. "He cares about your life. He cares about your character. He cares about developing the people he works with. He's interested in developing the whole man. That's something we're very interested in within the special operations community.
"Conceivably, I could work with a lot of different sports teams, but Steve is different," Johnson says.
Kerr showed Johnson the Warriors' roster and explained potential psychological issues the coach thought certain players might face over the course of the season. (For confidentiality purposes, Johnson declined to go into specifics about any player.)
Some issues were bigger, long-term projects while some were smaller, but Kerr's attention to detail -- and how much he values mental health -- made a quick impression on Johnson.
"Can you do this type of work?" Kerr asked.
"Absolutely," Johnson replied.
Kerr asked Johnson many questions about working with special ops forces, and in return, Johnson asked Kerr plenty about the '90s Chicago Bulls, with whom Kerr won three championships as a shooting guard. (Johnson was a big fan.)
It's not as though Johnson, who played basketball when he was younger, always wanted to work in professional sports. However, he saw parallels with special ops.
"Let me give you an example," Johnson says. "Close-quarters combat is really high-stress -- confined space, compressed time. They're making decisions a lot of times under duress. So when a guy comes in for a shootout and he turns a corner, he's got 250 milliseconds to make an identification and a shoot/don't shoot decision. That's a quarter of a second. It's the same thing here.
"Of course, the consequences are starkly different -- who lives or who dies versus who wins or loses, but the stressors are similar."
As another example, he cited three factors that, if present, will intensify stress:
If you perceive that a situation is something you've never done before, stress goes up.
If you perceive the situation as uncontrollable, stress goes up.
If you perceive the situation as unpredictable, stress goes up.
"Everything we do, whether it's here or special ops, it's focused on changing those three things," Johnson says.
The team environment also seemed to be a good fit.
"Aside from the name being Warriors, I am most comfortable in a warrior culture, where men are going out and competing against men," he says. "And whether it's special operations or professional sports, to me, that ethos, that culture, there was no question."
Soon, he would start commuting to the Bay Area twice a month for games, or traveling on the road here and there. But first Johnson had to meet the players.
Naturally, when they heard about his special ops work, their eyes grew wide.
"There's a fascination with that, and that's fair," Johnson says. "I tell them, they're pretty regular guys."
Likewise, he says, members of the special ops were just as interested in what Johnson was learning about the Warriors players.
"They were very open to the idea that, 'Hey, maybe there's something you're going to learn from them that you can bring back to us,'" he says. "They thought it was cool."
Johnson's initial message to Warriors players was simple: "You guys are here because you're at the top of your game. I'm here to help make you 1 or 2 percent better."
Did it take time for them to adjust? Not really.
"Maybe they're unique, but the transition has been seamless," Johnson says. "There wasn't much of a socialization, other than just me being around. Next thing you know, guys are asking me questions. Then it's, 'Hey, I can't get out of my head. What do you tell the [special ops] guys?' Then I lay it out on the table for them and say, 'Here's what we do, here's how we approach that.'"
Johnson keeps a stack of 50 or so 3-inch-by-5-inch white index cards filled with notes in blue ink in one pocket, and in another is a small notebook with a pen.
Much of the information is compiled from his chats with players.
"What we talk about stays between us," he says.
Johnson did explain what he might tell a player who is stuck in a shooting slump, which seems to be a rare occurrence on a team featuring Curry and Klay Thompson.
"I want to find out two things," Johnson says. "One is: What's going through their mind when they're playing -- what are they telling themselves?"
"Secondly, step back from it -- so what does it mean to you that you're in a shooting slump? Most likely, they're making some very global, comprehensive statements about themselves -- it means I'm not good anymore, etcetera. [With NBA players], it's amazing. They're so hypercritical. They need a little bit of instilling confidence.
"One of the things I tell the guys is: I don't want to teach you how to be a glass-is-half-full guy. And I definitely don't want you to be a glass-is-half-empty guy. I want you at the end of the day to say, that glass of water has 6 ounces of H2O in it right now. That's it. Anything else you put in it is on you.
"Then we get into perfectionism and being willing to screw up, being willing to be vulnerable. Whether it's the special ops guys or these guys, as soon as they're vulnerable to being imperfect, that's when they start learning."
Johnson will watch games either in person or at home and look for body language and facial expressions, "just to see where they are," he says.
If he sees something that looks off, he'll send the player a message.
"'I'll say, 'Where are you?'" he says. "Because I want to know what's going through your mind. What are they thinking about? Sometimes, they don't know. Sometimes it's family stuff. Sometimes it's self-doubt. Sometimes it's, 'I'm not doing well.' It just really depends. So I find out where they are and what's bothering them."
It might sound a bit like therapy.
"It is all performance-related," Johnson says. "I am clinically trained [in therapy], but that's the thing -- the stuff that works in therapy works outside therapy. If you have some beliefs about yourself and what's going on that are distorted, it's going to affect you. And that's where sports psychology misses the boat. They aren't trained in these things."
Johnson is 6-foot-4, a burly, barrel-chested man with a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard and the tough look of a man who spends his days around the manliest of men.
But Johnson, a father of three (two girls and a boy) and the son of a pig farmer, is also a humble, compassionate listener, which helps him ask questions that players might have never considered, questions such as "who are you and what are your values?"
"I think the psychological side of sports is a really big deal, getting in the right mindset both individually and as a team," Kerr says. "So we brought Chris in to help in that regard."
Johnson says the biggest task is understanding, "How does this stuff apply to me?
"But I'd say the biggest thing is, it's 2015, and I think about my background and who I work with, and that makes it OK for these guys to seek help."
The very phrase -- seeking help -- might not seem to fit in the macho world of professional sports, where mental health can still be a taboo subject.
To Johnson, though, it's all about improving the "whole man."
"I've had people come to me and say, 'You're a clinical neuropsychologist. Why are you doing anything performance-related?'" Johnson says. "I said, 'Because performance is not binary. It's not sick and healthy. It's not bad and good. It's dimensional. It's the same mechanisms.' Who hasn't been depressed or anxious? It doesn't mean you're a mental health patient."
He says he knows he connects with players once they start disclosing personal information. "Then I know I've got their trust," Johnson says. "It's the same with special ops. Those guys are closer with each other than they are with anybody. That's what allows a team to be better than its parts."
And more than anything, teamwork is perhaps the biggest element that translates between special ops and professional sports.
Late in the regular season, on a day between games, the Warriors gathered in a conference room at their practice facility for an hours-long team meeting with two recently retired Navy SEALs.
"It was a sobering moment for all of us just by listening to those guys," says Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams.
One of the main topics of discussion was teamwork, "about leaning on team" and "out-teaming your opponent," Johnson says.
One explained how on assignment, he always kept a sense of what was happening in his peripheral vision and always knew exactly what his all fellow SEALs were doing.
"That's exactly what we do in a sport," Adams says. "So we have these similarities. It's all about team -- and that's what we try to be here."
"The other element is staying task-focused," Johnson says. "When something happens in the NBA, and let's say you air-ball a shot or something doesn't go right, one performer might turn inward and you start being very self-aware. People who do well under stress have the ability to shift from turning inward and they stay task-focused. We'll say: What's important now? I've got to focus on what's going on right now."
Curry is especially adept at staying task-focused, Johnson says.
"He's a guy who can be missing his shot, but he's not ruminating over it," Johnson says. "It's OK, 'What's important now? W-I-N.'"
He also says Curry's hand-eye coordination reminds him of those he works with in special ops.
"I remember seeing on the sideline of practice one day, they were doing a full-speed dribble drill and he said, 'Hey, I need a ball,'" Johnson says. "So I threw it to him, and the coach next to me threw it. We both threw at the same time. But without blinking, he caught both of them and went full-speed down the court."
Johnson explained other principles, such as knowing your role and self-sacrifice -- and for both he cited Warriors reserves David Lee and Andre Iguodala.
"This team would not be as successful as they are if those two All-Stars had not embraced their role," Johnson says. "If they had resisted it, it would've been disruptive.
"It is the quintessential team."
He jokes that he didn't know this team would be so good when he joined it.
"I had no idea," he says with a laugh.
But if the Warriors are considered to have excellent teamwork, Adams says at least some credit is owed to Johnson.
"He's had a really big impact," Adams says. "For one thing, he's taken all of us to a different world, his world, which is so different from ours in many ways, and similar in some ways in terms of preparation and being able to operate in chaos, make sense of it and go on, not give in. Lots of things. I think that perspective has been really helpful."
Johnson will be moving on from the Warriors, and from his role with special ops, as he has accepted a position to become the Pittsburgh Pirates' director of performance. He'll start July 1 and is in the process of moving to Pittsburgh.
For now, he's cheering on the Warriors, a group he says he'll stay in touch with and one that he says he's grateful to work for, in no small part because it's allowed him to be around another team that has proved to be the very best of the best.
