Chelsea Lane

Coach Profile

Chelsea Lane doesn’t back away from a challenge. The woman who once had to Google how many players were
on a basketball team is now the proud owner of two NBA championship rings and a reputation as one of the very best in developing high-performance systems.

“My whole reason for being on the planet is the facilitation of someone else’s dreams,” Lane says, a purpose that has taken her from Sydney to the South Island to San Francisco.

Lane’s sporting journey began in Australia, where, inspired by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she was determined to be an Olympian. A smorgasbord of sport filled her youth, picking up the odd injury niggle along the way. As these were treated, it opened her eyes to the possibilities within sport. “That was my first understanding that there were people who helped others have sport as a career,” she recalls. “Which I thought I was wonderful, as I was going to need them because I was going to be an athlete!”

While her athletic dream may not have realised, her academic success allowed for a competitive outlet and an ambition to still attend the Olympics as support staff. A lover of science, Lane found physio, and after training and practising in Australia, she jumped the ditch to the South Island. There, she worked with track and field athletes in Christchurch, which eventually linked her up with Sport New Zealand’s winter performance programme. “A bit like the story of my life, they found me,” she recalls. “I became embedded in that programme, living and travelling overseas with that group in an attempt to qualify for the Winter Olympics. It was such an immense privilege to be a resource for them and begin to define myself in sports.”

Moving into a role within the now-centralised High-Performance Sport New Zealand, Lane developed her expertise in performance therapy, which was enough for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors to come knocking in 2016, looking to strengthen their championship-winning system. Being an Australian-Kiwi woman with minimal basketball knowledge presented its share of challenges, but ultimately, there was alignment—Golden State was searching for continuous improvement, and Lane’s performance therapy framework provided something they were missing.

It’s no surprise that an American professional league felt like a different world compared to working with elite Kiwi athletes. “In the NBA, the performance is five times a week on a global stage, as opposed to building around pinnacle events every couple of years,” Lane says. “There’s so many stakeholders, including everyone with an ESPN subscription, and there’s much more public opinion around the performance. It’s sports entertainment; you can’t just rely on performing to satisfy the masses. They’ve come for a product.” Accountability was also a key difference between Lane’s experience in New Zealand and in the States. NBA franchises are not only sports teams, they are corporations which run basketball like a business, with KPIs and brutal expectations. “You’re swimming with the sharks,” Lane recalls, “and nothing in New Zealand could’ve prepared me for that. But crikey, if it wasn’t exhilarating – there’s nowhere to hide. That was part of the attraction.”

In the middle of the public pressure and commercial expectations lie the athletes, without whom, there is no professional sports machine. What Lane was pleased to find was universal was the experience of dealing with athletes, their goals, needs and best interests. “No matter which athlete you’re working with, they’ve got lofty dreams, and they need support to get there. That’s my sweet spot, facilitating excellence in other people. That part doesn’t change, and the science still sticks.” While on-court performance was an essential element of both her own and the athlete’s output, Lane set out to develop structures which empowered and benefited the human behind the sport, leading to longevity in performance and fulfilment of the player.

Coaches also want to bring excellence out of their athletes, and Lane found a believer in Steve Kerr. Kerr played 15 years in the NBA, securing five championship rings, and has added four more to the tally as Golden State Warriors coach. “He understood through personal experience how athletes can feel moving through a system where they’re largely powerless,” Lane says. “Steve is very big on humanising his athletes, using the resources available to him and trusting that those people around him will get the best out of them.

“Having an athlete-forward ethos is really easy to say and incredibly complex to get right. I was very fortunate that my first experience in the League was in such a collaborative relationship with a truly athlete-centric coach,” Lane continues. Kerr would chat with Lane daily about how players were feeling physically, the vibe in the treatment room, if cancelling practice would be better for their mental and physical load. “Information that someone like me gives a coach can decide wins and losses,” she continues. “That’s a pretty big trust to place in someone. It was about working together, and having the context that in that environment, one win doesn’t make a season, one loss doesn’t break a season. It allowed us to be much more athlete-focused, which had long-term benefits.”

Lane is a firm believer that an athlete-centric model leads to sustained success. “Athletes need to be fit for purpose in every way,” she says. “Even if we look at them as high-performance machines, the better that machine operates, and for longer, the better the results will be. I brought in a performance therapy model with movement proficiencies based on being a strong and mobile athlete. But it isn’t just rubbing down the legs. It extends to the weight room, what you’re having for breakfast.”

With Kerr setting a bar around collaboration, continuous learning, and development, Golden State staff bought in, too. “Systemising what it means for these guys to be fit-for-purpose athletes for their sport required the same expectations from everyone inside the team,” Lane shares. “We needed everyone to be fully respectful and understanding of what each other was doing because we were all working on the same athlete, towards the same goal.”

After three seasons and two championship titles with the Golden State Warriors, the challenge of rebuilding a franchise appeared on her radar, and she headed south to the Atlanta Hawks. “It was terrifying,” she recalls, “but I had had two championship wins with the Warriors and knew I was very proficient when it came to high-performance systems for a basketball team. I’d been a great polisher of diamonds in an already pretty successful environment, but could I do it from the ground up? The thought that I might not be able to was actually the real drawcard – let’s find out if I can.”

As Vice President of Athletic Performance and Sports Medicine, Lane was issued the challenge of building high-performance systems organisation-wide that would take the struggling Hawks into the playoffs within three years. “It’s by far my greatest professional achievement to date,” Lane says, while quick to mention that she wouldn’t want to give up the NBA rings. “We went from last in the league to third place in three seasons. We were hiring and training staff, educating teenagers on what it means to be an athlete and developing them as young men. To see the growth in the programme and the athletes in order to achieve those goals ranks so highly for me in terms of overall human experience.”

Returning to New Zealand after a whirlwind six years in America, Lane spent time refuelling the engine and desires and now operates as a high-performance consultant. She was involved in some Paris Olympic campaigns and has also dabbled in the corporate world. “It’s made me realise there are special people everywhere,” she says. “It’s been a real education for me, coming from the bubble of sport. There are lots of high-performing people. They may not all wear quick-dry fabric, but the same rules apply: looking at systems and making them fit for purpose. It’s all about the facilitation of somebody else’s excellence.”

Her time in the US highlighted areas where New Zealand’s elite sport could continue to develop. “Besides the fact that there is nothing that couldn’t and shouldn’t be analysed to see if it could be done better, I feel we could look at sport more professionally. We haven’t fully lost the mentality of near enough is good enough.” Recognising that it might not be comfortable for some to hear, Lane remains adamant that a culture of collective accountability would serve New Zealand sport well. “As an athlete, near enough is not something you should hang your hat on, and everyone in an athlete’s sphere should be held to that same level of expectation and accountability. If they’re in any way responsible for other people’s dreams, they should be held to the same standards we hold our athletes and coaches to.”

Lane has unique insight into what makes some of the greatest basketball coaches in the world the best at what they do. “There’s no getting around that being a technical genius in your sport is essential, but it’s not enough to just know the Xs and Os,” she says. “You have to truly be a motivator, to have the nuanced skill to meet each human where they are at. Tailoring your message and coaching requires understanding who they are and what they’re facing at that moment.”

And therein lies the challenge, appeal and, to some extent, burden of high-performance coaching. “It is a massive responsibility coaches hold in their hands,” she says. “If you don’t get it right, you have the ability to steal that exceptional human’s dreams. Coaches’ skills can be why athletes, teams, and organisations succeed over time. It’s incredibly complex, especially when coaches are at the beginning of their own journey of mastering the job when their athlete has maybe four years to succeed.” This tough question has led Lane to develop considerable empathy for coaches. “Being a high-performance coach is hard,” she says. “We expect a huge amount from them, and oftentimes without appropriate support and remuneration for taking on such a big responsibility. We need to acknowledge how hard it is, and also to address what might happen when we mess it up, so we can mitigate and ensure we’re looking after both our athletes and coaches.”

“Those who do it are pretty special people.”