Turns out basketball is jazz
Branford knows ball
Once upon a time we’d learn secrets from sports from badass journalists uncovering hard truths. Now the press pool is smaller, less plugged in, more compliant, and at arms length because of COVID-induced changes to access that have outlasted the pandemic.
It has long been tough to know what’s happening behind the scenes–that’s why TrueHoop was invented. Now it’s nearly impossible.
Except: the truth has a way of seeping through. The more perfectly the powers that be stop it up, the more force it gathers behind the dam. Stalin buttoned up the media, so George Orwell wrote Animal Farm. The message of freedom reached behind the Berlin Wall through rock songs. When Bill Clinton was too popular to criticize, Primary Colors spilled the beans with fake names.
With that in mind, I’ll tell you that the most authentic and real things I’ve learned about the NBA this summer come from jazz music.
Recently Pablo Torre Finds Out made some hay out of a jazz/rap album called “Milk Money” that mega-private Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti recorded as an undergrad. That episode really takes off, though, when legendary saxophonist Branford Marsalis shows up.
When Pablo introduces Branford by rattling off his Grammies and movies and hits, the musician cuts him off: “None of that, none of that.” He explains that a lot of people in his business love music; others love the things music gets you. “My passion,” Branford clarifies, “is for the thing, not for the notoriety.”
In that, he says, he’s “like Sam.” Presti has this glamorous job, but Branford insists that he’d never tell you that. If you met him, and didn’t know, you’d never know. And Branford likes that. He tells the story of Presti joining a dinner, just to talk about jazz, and how forming a band is like forming a team.
Similarly, Branford had to learn about “Milk Money” from Pablo. When Pablo promises to play it for him, Branford warns that he’s not the kind of guy who’ll just say he likes it. “Sam,” Branford warns before hearing the first note, “I’ma rip you, bro. I'm ripping you, man. Gotta do it.”
Credibility: up.
Listen to the whole episode to learn how that turns out. The coolest part, to me, is how impressed Branford is at a moment when Sam didn’t crash a cymbal at the end of a phrase. Most drummers would, Sam showed impressive restraint, that’s perfectly on brand.
Branford’s been teaching music at North Carolina Central University since 2005. And he told Questlove that his goal is not to create jazz musicians, but to use jazz as a way to learn how to think about other things.
In that, he has two eager students in Presti and this guy:
“I'm fortunate to have gotten to know some of the world's greatest jazz musicians over the last 30 years.” That’s Rick Carlisle. He coaches the Pacers as they keep defying Vegas odds to venture super deep in the playoffs playing an unpredictable style that Rick says comes from jazz music.
When Caitlin Cooper asked Rick where that style–she calls it “random basketball”–came from, Rick told a story about igniting the Mavericks by letting point guard Jason Kidd call the plays. Then he talked about how the Celtics of yesteryear won titles with a playbook that was a mere seven plays long and mostly bet on improvisation from Hall of Famers.
Then Rick brought up jazz. “Bruce Hornsby is a close friend. He's a jazz piano player, along with being a guy that's merged jazz voicings to popular music, and he's still doing a lot of really cool stuff and new and different stuff. Christian McBride is considered one of the great bass players of all time. And right now, in the traditional jazz trio world, quartet world, he's considered the best bass player in the world. Branford Marsalis is probably the greatest sax player of our times. And I've gotten to know these guys personally. I've seen them perform, and jazz music, to me, I'm really drawn to it, and always have been. You know, I'm a novice piano player. I'm a novice jazz/blues player. I'm good enough to know great playing, and wish I could play the way they played. But they play the same song a hundred times, it's different every time they play it.”
Which is exactly what he says he wants the Pacers to do. Caitlin is a coach’s daughter and has a view of the game that’s anchored in the concrete of Xs and Os. When she engages Rick in a debate about bigs coming out of the paint, or not, it feels like a weighty choice.
Rick’s primary response is light: he hopes it’s different every time.
Which could be a total clusterfuck, if it really were random. But of course, basketball on this team isn’t random, it’s jazz. There are ways for expert players, of music or hoops, to step up and solo and step back and let others captivate.
“There's the visible part, like the solo, people see the solo or the singer, but then there's the invisible part.” This is Branford again, talking to Pablo. “And that's when the musicians have to use their skills to support a person who is in the front. Now that is called comping. C-O-M-P-I-N-G. Piano players do it. Guitar players do it. Sometimes the horns do it.”
Branford continues:
Thanks to Bruce Hornsby, I have a sometimes-physical chat, but a lot of texting, between Rick Carlisle and myself.
So after Game 1 against the Knicks, I wrote Rick and said: “I've never seen anything like that … Your kids are amazing.”
And he writes back and says: “You’d really like these guys. They love comping as much as they love soloing.”
And I was like: this is the hippest dude on the damn planet. Damn. That's just not something you're gonna see in a conversation with somebody outside of the music business. But: smart cat, man.
There are not a lot of Rick Carlisles offering Jason Kidds the brass ring. Mostly professional sports are a battle for control. Basketball is coming out of the hangover of a military model where the coach is the boss-not-to-be-questioned. (Have you read My Losing Season or The Great Santini?) The problem is that style only gets you so far. Freeplaying hoopers play harder and often more effectively. The best are creative, empowered, and reading the floor in real time, ready to pounce on every little opportunity. You didn’t see Michael Jordan spending too much time looking at the bench for permission.
Look at the game that inspired Branford to text Rick: the stars of the Pacers are Haliburton and Siakam. A lot of the big buckets of that game’s crunch time came when those players stepped back, or comped, for Aaron Nesmith and Obi Toppin.
How can you get a group to improvise brilliantly? With tons of preparation, hard work, and deep understanding of the game; the goals, the theory, the mission. Carlisle says he’s surer than ever that it’s right to empower players.
But it’s not as simple as rolling out the balls and letting them play. The Pacers might be the fittest team in NBA history. It’s a wildly difficult full-court style; most NBA players can’t hang. In another interview, Rick’s almost alarmingly specific about the ongoing improvement that will be necessary for Benn Mathurin—who’s going into his fourth NBA season—to thrive in a Pacers’ uniform. He’ll have to play harder and with more team-focus. “Look,” Carlisle tells Caitlin, “sometimes you have to help them reconcile the individual and the team stuff.”
Some of it’s about being tight and focused. If you listen to the TNT commentary of the Pacers’ big comeback against the Knicks in Game 1, Stan Van Gundy can’t believe that Ben Sheppard is in the game in place of Myles Turner. Carlisle notes in a local Indiana interview that Sheppard is an absolute “soldier,” in doing everything the coaching staff asks. If he needs to work on anything, Carlisle adds, it’s being more creative in attacking and scoring.
Because some of jazz is soloing, which is about moving with the joy of a dolphin in the surf, exploring delightful freedom. I’ve been studying big-wave surfers. There’s an immense amount of training and strategy and gear and flights and teamwork and coffee just to get to a big wave. But once you’re out there, the winner is whoever’s most free and stunning and improvisational.
That keep it loose/keep it tight dichotomy seems to unlock a lot of what matters about basketball—and maybe life, too. David Thorpe wrote a book called Basketball is Jazz. One way we know he’s right: the two great minds of the 2025 Finals teams both revere Branford Marsalis.
Thank you for reading TrueHoop!