Unconventional Wisdom

"If you make every game a life-and-death thing, you're going to have problems. You'll be dead a lot." — Dean Smith

I enjoy watching, writing about, and studying basketball, but I have a bigger picture in mind. Coaching basketball affords one a multidimensional laboratory, where you teach values about discipline, persistence, sacrifice, and teamwork. I won't know how the lessons turn out until (and unless) I meet former players in twenty years. If they have great integrity and intent, capabilities and competence, then the time and effort were more than well spent. And I hope they recognize that their parents deserved most of the credit. 

Most successful coaches (and players) succeed with a lot of help from others. Invariably, they will credit others who helped advanced their knowledge and their career opportunities. Certainly, Sonny Lane helped shape my basketball curriculum. Occasionally, unusual situations arise, like the Paul Brown-Bill Walsh relationship, where Brown did everything and then some to undermine Walsh, to try to keep him in Cincinnati as a coach and prevent him from getting an NFL top job. 

Legendary economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1936, "Worldly wisdom teaches that is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally." But all too often in sports, we tend to discard the conventional wisdom and seek unconventional alternatives. 

Unconventional approaches can work. Dick Fosbury was never a world class high jumper until he abandoned the usual 'scissors' style and founded the head first "Fosbury Flop" en route to an Olympic gold medal in 1968. Muhammad Ali outlasted George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" by adopting the "rope-a-dope" and covering up, allowing Foreman to wear himself out. How omitting Landon Donovan from the US World Cup team works out, we don't know. Generally, playing anything but the best players isn't great coaching, and Donovan's situation seems personal. 

"Moneyball" helped the Red Sox win three championships, but only because they had more money to spend than other practitioners (e.g. Oakland). But mean reversion can still limit its effectiveness. 

All of which returns us to basketball, where for fundamentals, like Porsche in "Risky Business", there is no substitute. The players who have cultivated their athleticism, skill, and situational game knowledge, will generally enjoy success. Until players have achieved mastery of the basics, there is little chance that unconventional alternatives will prevail. 

To succeed in basketball, the late coach Don Meyer would remind players and coaches to play hard, play smart, play together, have a plan for the 'delay game' both offensively and defensively, have a comeback game, and simplify the game. Meyer emphasized "mature simplicity" in coaching. Make the game as easy as possible for the players so they know what to do, how to do it, and when. 

When conventional and unconventional wisdom become confused, finding solutions becomes much harder than finding problems.