How a Dutch Word Explains the Philosophy of the Golden State Warriors
The NBA started back up this week, and despite being from Atlanta, Georgia, I’ve been a fan of the Golden State Warriors for a while now.
As a southerner, I’ve been aware of Steph Curry for a long time. Davidson College is the rival of my alma mater Furman University, and Steph’s father, Dell, played for the Charlotte Hornets who are a rival to my Atlanta Hawks. I have enjoyed watching the Currys play basketball without them being on the team that I rooted for, so when Steph went pro I kept on tracking his career.
I started as a Steph Curry fan, and then became a Warriors fan when Steve Kerr became the head coach. During Kerr’s first season, the Warriors won the NBA championship, but that is not why I became a fan. I became a Warriors fan because they played basketball like a Dutch soccer team, and I loved watching the same philosophy being used in more than one sport. This philosophy made the Warriors the best team in basketball and also completely changed how the rest of the NBA played basketball.
Their philosophy derives from one Dutch word, polderen. This word has literally shaped and sustained Dutch life for a thousand years. It is so ubiquitous to Dutch life that it guides how they play sports.
Today’s newsletter is not just about sports, but most importantly, it is about how one word and its philosophy can radically change your life.
Polderen, Total Football, and Tika Taka
Earlier this week, my good friend Scott Badenoch shared this tweet with me:
It says, “[Steve Kerr] gave us a perfect example in F.C. Barcelona. They call it Tiki Taka.”
This might just be a two sentence quote by Klay Thompson, but this statement speaks to a cultural and philosophical tradition that has evolved and expanded to multiple continents for more than a thousand years. The root to all of this derives from polderen.
Since the 11th century the Dutch have engaged in an ambitious agenda of reclaiming land from beneath the North Sea. They have built canals, dykes, and windmills to funnel away the sea water and unearth the land from below. The land that they reclaim from the sea is called a polder, and the culture of sustaining that land is called polderen.
Since a polder is land that used to be beneath the sea, this land is obviously below sea level, and it faces the constant threat of being resubmerged if the dam breaks, the windmill malfunctions, or a heavy storm comes. Therefore, whenever anything occurs that threatens the existence of the polder the entire community comes together to save their land. Everyone’s differences are put aside as they collectively work together to survive and save the polder. This act of togetherness is called polderen, but the communal philosophy of polderen also exists without the threat of an existential crisis. If everyone is committed to coming together to save their society in times of crisis, then they will also explore ways to come together during times of peace.
The Dutch people have come together to create the polder, so it would not make any sense for them to not use the land as effectively, sustainably and efficiently as possible for the benefit of all of the people. Everyone has worked to make and sustain the land, so now the land must be used to benefit everyone. The culture and philosophy of polderen influences every aspect of Dutch life including politics, economics, social norms, art, and especially sports. You can learn more about polderen here and in my book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America.
In the 1960s, Dutch coach Rinus Michels applied the philosophy of polderen to soccer and revolutionized the entire sport. European soccer is a fascinating examination of cultural philosophy because each nation’s culture shapes the philosophy for how they play the sport, and since teams from different nations often play each other, we get the chance to see which philosophy is the most effective.
Since the British were the pioneers of soccer, the philosophical status quo was one that prioritized individualism, specialization, and the domination of space. Attackers could only attack, defenders could only defend, midfielders could do a bit of both, and strength and size allowed players to dominate space. This British approach to sports is still prominent today but it is less successful than the philosophy cultivated by the Dutch.
Michels applied polderen and encouraged that all players have roughly the same skills, so that they could change positions during matches, and he believed in dominating matches by using every inch of the field instead of relying on brute strength. His philosophy required that every player must work together to dominate a match. Precise passing, intricate movement, efficiently using space, and great ball control would win matches instead of primarily individual brilliance and brute force. In addition to his philosophy being more effective at winning soccer matches, it was also far more entertaining. The movement, passing, and skill made Dutch soccer into an entertaining art form that also won matches. It is not uncommon for a soccer team that uses this philosophy to be praised even when they lose matches because it is understood that they are still playing the game in the right way, and people believe that they can come together to rectify the flaws that caused them to lose.
Michels style was so unique that it needed its own name, so despite being inspired by polderen, Michels’ philosophy was called totaalvoetbal or “Total Football.” Michels implemented Total Football at the club team Ajax Amsterdam and then for the Dutch National team. By the 1970s, the success of Total Football had made Michels one of the best coaches in the world, and in 1971 he left Ajax and went to F.C. Barcelona in Spain. When he left for Spain he also brought his best player with him, Johan Cruyff.
At Barcelona, Michels and Cruyff implemented Total Football and completely changed the culture of F.C. Barcelona and eventually Spanish soccer. In 1978, Michels and Cruyff left Barcelona, but in 1988, Cruyff would return to coach the team.
As the coach he brought back Total Football, and in addition to instilling this philosophy in the professional team, he completely redesigned F.C. Barcelona’s entire youth team system to ensure that all young players at F.C. Barcelona learned Total Football. The success of Cruyff’s system resulted in the creation of a very successful team called the “Dream Team” that was captained by Pep Guardiola who came through the youth system at F.C. Barcelona. (You can learn more about the philosophical importance of youth systems here.)
Guardiola played for F.C. Barcelona from 1990 to 2001 and when he retired as a player he came back to F.C. Barcelona as a coach in 2007. First he coached the B-team for a season, or the equivalent of the Santa Cruz Warriors in the NBA’s G-League, and then he coached the top team starting in 2008. Guardiola’s Barcelona surpassed the success of Michels’ and Cruyff’s teams, and his team featured Lionel Messi, who was the best player in the world at the time and also a product of F.C. Barcelona’s youth system.
Additionally, by 2008, F.C. Barcelona had been practicing totaalvoetbal since the 1970s, so now an organic desire emerged to give this philosophy a Spanish or Catalan name. Due to the metronomic passing used with Guardiola’s teams, the Spanish press coined it tiki taka to mimic the sound of the constant passing.
In the 11th century the Dutch created the polder and polderen, and in the 1960s, Michels applied this philosophy to create totaalvoetbal, and in the 2008s the Spanish renamed it tiki taka. Now in 2022, the Golden State Warriors are talking about how this philosophy has shaped how they play basketball.
Total Basketball and Strength in Numbers
In a previous newsletter, I wrote about how one of the main things that I dislike about American sports is how they are ethnocidal and exploitative. There is very little interest in developing players and instead a greater desire to trade players and hope that the draft will simply give a team a great player.
The emphasis is not on teaching players how to be good at their sport, but instead to hope that your team is simply given a good player and that through trading players a team can acquire good players and purge themselves of bad players. This inefficient and exploitative system exists because there is not a philosophy about cultivating something good. Instead there is a belief that good players exist outside of the organization, and the goal is to merely obtain the talent that the sports team does not know how to create on its own.
I believe that this system is very inefficient and results in talented players falling through the cracks because they never received proper coaching. A philosophy steeped in polderen would never function this way because by deciding to create land by unearthing it from the sea, one now also has the obligation to cultivate that land to the best of the community’s ability. If one believes that making the land is a good thing, then you also have to make sure that the land remains nurtured and is not wasted.
When Cruyff returned to F.C. Barcelona as the coach, he remade the youth system because he wanted to teach the youth the right way to play soccer. This practice resulted in Guardiola becoming both a legendary player and coach for the team, and as the coach he once fielded a team where every player in the starting lineup came from F.C. Barcelona’s youth system.
American sports and the NBA have no comparable system, but the Golden State Warriors are trying to do so. Not only do they play a style of basketball that requires a lot of skill, but they also use Curry’s and Thompson’s ability to make three-point shots to stretch the court. The Warriors style of play also relies on intricate movement and passing to dominate and win matches. Their style is tiki taka, but I prefer to call it “Total Basketball” because the success relies on everybody on the team knowing how to execute the philosophy.
The team definitely has superstars, but the philosophy is built around the collective and not the individual. When the Warriors won their first title under Steve Kerr in the 2014-15 season, their motto was “Strength in Numbers” and Curry also won the MVP. During Guardiola’s tenure at F.C. Barcelona soccer fans celebrated the success of their homegrown players, and Messi also won the Ballon d’Or (the award for the greatest player in the world) nearly every season. Under Michels’ team, Cruyff also won the Ballon d’Or three times (1971, 1973, 1974).
This philosophy of Strength in Numbers shows that not only will it make a great team, but can also elevate the team’s best player to becoming the best player in the world. The collective does not crush the individual. Instead it actually elevates the most talented player, while instilling humility because they also know that the collective unit helps lift them up. By lifting up the team, each person also lifts up themselves.
The Golden State Warriors are a team that rarely engages in trades, and instead focuses on developing the players that they draft and have on their G-League team. They are implementing a European system to the extent that America’s ethnocidal system will allow, and it has resulted in four championships in eight years.
It is obvious that the philosophy of polderen is more effective than American individualism and exceptionalism, and the success of the Golden State Warriors is just one example. We all should apply a little bit of polderen in our lives so that we can experience the transformational growth and collective empowerment that it cultivates.
My book THE CRIME WITHOUT A NAME was released on October 12, 2021 and NPR has picked it as one of the top books of the year!
You can order the book—including the audiobook—and watch recordings of my book tour discussions at Eaton and the New York Public Library at thecrimewithoutaname.com
