Years ago, I heard Pat Riley speak to a business group about motivation and management. This was in the 1980s when Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers to multiple NBA championships, back when he had great teams with great players like Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Riley was always a master motivator, and although I don’t remember a lot about his talk, what burned into my brain that day was his answer to a very simple question from the audience: How do you get star players making millions of dollars to perform at their best? In other words, how do you motivate those who can’t be motivated by money?

His answer was equally simple: You motivate superstars by appealing to their pride, to a greater sense of purpose. In Riley’s view, you must appeal to that part of them because “a champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.”

I’ve been thinking about Pat Riley’s philosophy this month while watching the men’s and women’s U.S. Olympic basketball teams compete for gold in Beijing. From my perspective, the U.S. teams should never lose in Olympic basketball, and I don’t say that from an overblown sense of national pride, but rather, because the United States clearly has the best basketball talent in the world, bar none. Yes, the rest of the world has improved a great deal—largely by having so many of their athletes training and playing here in the States—but none can field teams with as much top-to-bottom talent as the United States.

But as most business executives know, having the best collection of talent doesn’t mean that you will produce the best collective team effort from that talent, as fans of the U.S. men’s basketball team know all too well.

The men’s team struggled to win a bronze medal in Athens in 2004, and it was embarrassing to watch so many great players perform so poorly together.

So, Team USA basketball took a different approach after the Athens debacle—work to put together a team with the same level of talent, but focus more on motivating the players to work together with a greater sense of purpose.

So far, it seems to be working. As a story in The New York Times pointed out: “For three summers now, [USA basketball executive director Jerry] Colangelo and [head coach Mike] Krzyzewski have demanded commitment, established rules. The sport’s most leveraged megamillionaires have enthusiastically acquiesced. Here, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and the rest have played spectacularly but professionally. … But by and large, the histrionics of recent tournaments have disappeared. The fine line between fun and fatuous has not been crossed. ‘It’s not about intimidation,’ said Jason Kidd, who, at 35, was brought here as an example of a longtime star disinclined to gyrate and pose. ‘We’re not showboating. We’re not showing anybody up. It’s about playing the right way.’ ”

Yes, it seems to be working, with highly-paid NBA superstars like Bryant and James putting aside their egos for the greater good of the American team. 

“I think they’re unbeatable,” said German coach Dirk Bauermann after his team was routed by the U.S., 106-57. “I don’t even think it’s going to be close. I would be surprised if anyone can even give them a game.” The U.S. women’s team is doing equally well and has been rolling over opponents as it marches closer to a gold medal, although their upcoming game with Russia should feature a little drama.

This just goes to show you: In international basketball, in business and in life, just getting the best talent or paying workers a lot of money doesn’t always guarantee success. There’s a lot more to it than that, including blending the talents of your workforce together to make the whole much, much greater than just the sum of all the parts.

If you didn’t know that before, you certainly should get the message from watching the U.S. Olympic basketball teams.

It’s like the late, great Peter Drucker said a long time ago: “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. … [In short,] management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”