13 Nov 2025 Let Your Portfolio Cook, And Other Thoughts
The job of an NBA General Manager is to construct the best roster of basketball players available given the money constraints of the team owner. Once the roster is there, you let them cook, as the kids say. They have to play the game, and the fun of basketball is certainly in the playing rather than the roster construction, but still, the roster must be constructed.
It’s not an easy job, and until this week, it was a job that a man named Nico Harrison held with the Dallas Mavericks. The interesting thing is that his fireable offense was not that he failed to construct a good roster—the Mavericks went to the 2024 NBA Finals!—but that, once constructed, he couldn’t leave them well enough alone.
I am still not quite certain what must have entered his mind, and there is much conjecture that he simply just didn’t like Luka Doncic—the imperfect yet undeniably generational superstar he decided to trade out of the blue—but whatever the case may be, he let Luka walk and got very little in return, so now he doesn’t have a job anymore.
The reason I’m shoehorning my love of basketball into a finance blog is that, in many ways, your portfolio is like a basketball roster, and success is based on the two all-important actions of 1) Putting the roster together, and 2) Letting them cook.
I want to switch gears here and say something else that basketball reminds me of: When it comes to our money, strategy and behavior are one and the same. It is tempting to think of Beacon or any other financial advisor as a coach who is constantly drawing up plays: making complicated calls in the huddle about how to invest in this AI-heavy stock market, or how to optimize to the last penny (RIP), or how much exactly will you be able to spend in twenty years.
But if you watch a basketball game, you’ll notice that the coaches are only drawing up plays in key moments: winning time, or an inbounds play when you really need a bucket, or because they noticed something about the other team’s defense that’s exploitable. Mostly the coach’s job is to prepare the players and to remind them of the behaviors necessary to win games: moving the ball, taking good shots, hustling back on defense, having fun.
At Beacon there are important times when we are “drawing up plays.” Job changes, complicated equity compensation problems, the sale of a business, retirement transitions, a big purchase, etc. And it cannot be overstated how important it is in those high-stakes moments to have someone who knows what they’re doing in the coach’s seat.
The rest of the game though, is just behavior. Save well, and own the fact that saving is something you have full agency over. Spend on the things and experiences you really value, and not the stuff that other folks spend their money. Be flexible and resilient. Let your portfolio cook. Have fun and give your money away. These behaviors are the strategy. They are the whole point.
The content above is for informational and educational purposes only. The links and graphs are being provided as a convenience; they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by Beacon Wealthcare, nor does Beacon guarantee the accuracy of the information.
