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Despite this lackluster performance, Inman told Murphy, “I’m never gonna cut you, you’re enthusiastic and you play hard and you’re a good guy.” Inman was “continually giving advice to any basketball junkie who sought it,” writes Wayne Thompson, a reporter who covered the Blazers throughout Inman’s tenure. He couldn’t help it: “Teaching at any level on any subject is the most rewarding thing you can do,” Inman told Thompson. “I just love to see the expression on the face of a student who gets it for the first time. Just watching the learning process come to full bloom gives me such a rush.”

Once Inman developed a positive impression of players, was he too committed to teaching and developing them, so much that he invested in motivated players even if they lacked the requisite talent? In the classroom, C. J. Skender can afford to dedicate his time to students who demonstrate interest and drive, as he can teach and mentor a large number of students each semester. Conversely, in professional basketball and most work organizations, we face more limits: making a bet on one person’s potential means passing on others.

Inman had made a commitment to developing LaRue Martin and Sam Bowie. If Inman had been more of a taker, doesn’t it seem obvious that he would have cut his losses much more quickly and moved on to other players? The moment he realized that Martin and Bowie weren’t contributing to his team’s success, a taker wouldn’t feel any sense of responsibility to them. And if Inman had been more of a matcher, wouldn’t he have been more willing to let them go? Surely a matcher would grow frustrated that his investments in Martin and Bowie were not being reciprocated or rewarded.

It might seem that givers have a harder time letting go. But in reality, the exact opposite is true. It turns out that givers are the
least
vulnerable to the mistake of overinvesting in people—and that being a giver is what prevented Stu Inman from making far worse mistakes.

Barry Staw is a world-renowned organizational behavior professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and he has spent his career trying to understand why people make bad decisions in organizations. In an ingenious study, Staw and Ha Hoang collected data on all 240-plus players who were picked in the first two rounds of the NBA draft between 1980 and 1986, in hopes of seeing what effect draft position had on a player’s career. They measured each player’s performance with a series of different metrics: scoring (points per minute, field goal percentage, and free throw percentage), toughness (rebounds and blocks per minute), and quickness (assists and steals per minute). Staw and Hoang controlled for each player’s performance on all of these metrics, as well as for the player’s injuries and illnesses, whether the player was a guard, forward, or center, and the quality of the player’s team based on win/loss records. Then they examined how much time on the court the players received and how long their teams kept them before trading them, to see if teams made the mistake of overinvesting in players just because they drafted them early.

The results produced a devastating conclusion:
teams couldn’t let go of their big bets
. They stuck with the players whom they drafted early, giving them more playing time and refusing to trade them even if they played poorly. After taking performance out of the equation, players who were drafted earlier still spent more minutes on the court and were less likely to be traded. For every slot higher in the draft, players were given an average of twenty-two more minutes in their second season, and their teams were still investing more in them by their fifth season, when each draft slot higher accounted for eleven more minutes on the court. And for every slot higher in the draft, players were 3 percent less likely to be traded.

This study is a classic case of what Staw calls
escalation of commitment
to a losing course of action. Over the past four decades, extensive research led by Staw shows that once people make an initial investment of time, energy, or resources, when it goes sour, they’re at risk for increasing their investment. Gamblers in the hole believe that if they just play one more hand of poker, they’ll be able to recover their losses or even win big. Struggling entrepreneurs think that if they just give their start-ups a little more sweat, they can turn it around. When an investment doesn’t pay off, even if the expected value is negative, we invest more.

Economists explain this behavior using a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy”: when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we’ve already invested in the past. Sunk costs are part of the story, but new research shows that other factors matter more. To figure out
why and when escalation of commitment happens
, researchers at Michigan State University analyzed 166 different studies. Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is
ego threat
: if I don’t keep investing, I’ll look and feel like a fool. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so they can prove to others—and themselves—that they were right all along.

In one study led by Staw, when
California bank customers defaulted on loans
, the managers who originally funded the loans struggled to let go and write off the losses. “Bankers who have been closely associated with decisions to fund problem loans are the ones to show the greatest difficulty in acknowledging the subsequent risks of these loans and the likelihood of default,” Staw and colleagues write. The study showed that when managers who originally funded the problem loans left the bank, the new managers were significantly more likely to write the loans off. The new managers had no personal responsibility for the problem loans, so their egos weren’t under threat; they didn’t feel compelled to justify the original decisions as wise.

Research suggests that due to their susceptibility to ego threat, takers are more vulnerable to escalation of commitment than givers. Imagine that you’re running an aircraft company, and you have to decide whether or not to
invest $1 million in a plane
that’s invisible to radar technology. You find out that the project is not doing well financially, and a competitor has already finished a better model. But you’ve made significant investments: the project is 50 percent complete, and you’ve already spent $5 million and eighteen months working on it. How likely are you to invest the extra $1 million?

In this study by Henry Moon at London Business School, before making their investment decisions, 360 people completed a questionnaire that included giver statements such as “I keep my promises” and taker statements such as “I try to get others to do my duties.” The takers were significantly more likely to invest the extra $1 million than the givers. They felt responsible for an investment that was going bad, so they committed more to protect their pride and save face. As University of South Carolina management professors Bruce Meglino and Audrey Korsgaard explain, “although the organization itself might be better off if the decision were abandoned, such action would cause the decision maker to incur significant personal costs (e.g., loss of career mobility, loss of reputation). Because escalating his or her commitment allows the decision maker to
keep the prospect of failure hidden
, such behavior is personally rational” from the perspective of a taker.

The givers, on the other hand, were primarily concerned about protecting other people and the organization, so they were more willing to admit their initial mistakes and de-escalate their commitment. Other studies show that people actually make more accurate and creative decisions when they’re
choosing on behalf of others
than themselves. When people make decisions in a self-focused state, they’re more likely to be biased by ego threat and often agonize over trying to find a choice that’s ideal in all possible dimensions. When people focus on others, as givers do naturally, they’re less likely to worry about egos and miniscule details; they look at the big picture and prioritize what matters most to others.

Armed with this understanding, it’s worth revisiting the story of Stu Inman. As a giver, although he felt invested in the players he drafted first, he felt a stronger sense of responsibility to the team. “Stu was a kind person, considerate of other people’s feelings,” Wayne Thompson told me. “But he never let that influence selections. If he didn’t think a guy could play, he put his arm around him and wished him well.” Inman wasn’t the one responsible for keeping Sam Bowie on board; Inman left the Blazers in 1986, just two years after drafting Bowie. A taker might have continued to defend the bad decision, but Inman admitted his error in choosing Bowie over Jordan. “All our scouts thought Bowie was the answer to our problems, and I did, too,” Inman said, but “it was a mistake.”
*

Inman didn’t escalate his commitment to LaRue Martin either. Although the Blazers kept Martin for four seasons, Inman and his colleagues took early action in response to Martin’s poor performance. In his rookie season, when there were clear signs that Martin was floundering, a taker might have given him extra playing time in an effort to justify choosing him ahead of Bob McAdoo and Julius Erving. But this wasn’t what happened. The Blazers granted the starting center position to the hardworking Lloyd Neal, who was just 6'7'', putting Martin at backup. In his rookie season, Martin averaged less than thirteen minutes per game on the court, compared with thirty-two for McAdoo and forty-two for Erving. In his second season, Martin continued to underperform, and instead of escalating commitment by giving him more time on the court, the Blazers gave him less—under eleven minutes per game, whereas McAdoo played forty-three and Erving played over forty. Inman and his colleagues managed to overcome the temptation to keep betting on Martin.

A major reason why givers are less vulnerable than takers to escalation of commitment has to do with responses to feedback, as demonstrated in research by Audrey Korsgaard, Bruce Meglino, and Scott Lester on how givers and takers react to information about their performance. In one study, people filled out a survey indicating whether they were givers or takers and made ten decisions about how to solve problems. Then, all participants received a performance score and a suggestion to delegate their authority more when making decisions. The score was randomly assigned so that half of the participants learned that their performance was above average, whereas the other half were told that they were below average. Then, all participants made ten more decisions. Would they use the suggestion to delegate more?

When they believed they were above average, the takers followed the suggestion, delegating 30 percent more often. But when they believed they were below average, the takers only delegated 15 percent more often. Once they felt criticized, they were less willing to accept the recommendation for improvement. They protected their pride by refusing to believe that they made poor decisions, discounting the negative feedback. The givers, on the other hand, accepted the criticism and followed the suggestion. Even when they received negative feedback indicating that they were below average, the givers delegated 30 percent more often.

In escalation situations, takers often struggle to face the reality that an initial choice has gone bad. Takers tend to “discount social information and performance feedback that does not support their favorable view of themselves,” write Meglino and Korsgaard, whereas givers “may be more apt to accept and act on social information without carefully evaluating the personal consequences.” Givers focus more on the interpersonal and organizational consequences of their decisions, accepting a blow to their pride and reputations in the short term in order to make better choices in the long term.

This receptivity to negative feedback helped Stu Inman recognize when he had made a bad investment. Inman was admired around the league for his openness to criticism. Many coaches “took issue with my more incendiary critiques,” writes reporter Steve Duin, but “they never bothered Inman,” who was “patient and generous,” and “one of the most gracious men ever associated with the NBA.” When LaRue Martin underperformed, the Blazers coach at the time, Jack McCloskey, voiced his concerns to Inman. “He worked hard and was a very nice young man, but he wasn’t skilled. It was that simple. I tried to develop his skills around the basket, and he wasn’t an outside player. He didn’t have the skills to be the number-one pick.” A taker might have rejected the negative feedback, but Inman listened to it.

After Martin’s second season, in 1974, the Blazers landed the first pick in the draft again. Having de-escalated their commitment to Martin, they needed another center to replace him, so Inman drafted one, a young man from UCLA named Bill Walton. In his rookie season, Walton was the starting center, averaging thirty-three minutes a game, roughly twice as many as Martin in the backup position. This arrangement continued for another year, after which Inman unloaded Martin.

The next season was 1976–1977, and Walton led the Blazers to the NBA championship over the Philadelphia 76ers, who were led by Julius Erving. Walton was the Finals MVP, and the next year, he was the league MVP. After he retired, he made the Basketball Hall of Fame and was named one of the fifty greatest players in NBA history. Inman was the architect of the 1977 championship team, which had been last in the division the previous year, and remains the only team in the Blazers’ four-decade history to win the title. According to Jack Ramsay, who coached the winning team, Inman was “never in the spotlight, and never taking proper credit for the team he assembled.”

As a giver, Inman built this championship team with an approach that mirrored C. J. Skender’s: seeing potential in players where others didn’t. “Inman wanted a complete portfolio on everybody he was interested in,” writes Wayne Thompson. “No doubt that is what made him so successful in finding diamonds in the rough.” Half of the top six scorers on the championship team—and five of the top nine—were drafted late by Inman, in the second or third round. “He was way ahead of the curve in seeing potential,” noted Steve Duin. “Stu, in the subculture of basketball gurus, was near the apex. He was considered a genius,” said Mavericks president Norm Sonju. In
a chronicle of the 1984 draft, Filip Bondy writes that Inman was viewed by many as “the best personnel man in the league. He was so good, so respected, that other clubs would track his scouting missions and listen very carefully to rumors about which players might interest him.”