This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.Spencer Harrison is a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and an expert on culture. He is also an NBA fan who grew up in Salt Lake City during the John Stockton-Karl Malone era of the Utah Jazz.High-performing organizations often look inevitable in retrospect. This is equally true in sports and business.When the confetti falls, hindsight bias sneaks in. Trades, draft picks and salary-cap maneuvers suddenly seem rational, even obvious. But my research and work with organizational leaders show there are some decisions that consistently pay off.One asset that is key to organizational success is typically built long before anyone recognizes it: deep partnerships. Partnerships are relationships where each member of the relationship benefits from the other. Deep partnerships are relationships that continue to produce mutual benefits over time, even when the relationships come under stress. They create reservoirs of confidence, information and shared hope that can be drawn upon when opportunities appear or crises occur.The New York Knicks’ championship run offers a powerful example.Many of the key relationships that made the Knicks such a formidable team existed before many of the players arrived in New York.Leon Rose, the Knicks’ president of basketball operations, spent nearly two decades as one of the NBA’s most influential agents. Long before he assembled a championship roster, he was building relationships across the league. His network became a strategic asset that few organizations could replicate.Alongside Rose was William “World Wide Wes” Wesley, a legendary basketball connector whose influence was built through decades of relationships spanning players, coaches, executives, apparel companies, musicians and business leaders. Wesley’s value was never simply who he knew. It was the trust embedded within those relationships.