Where I stand depends on where I sit. Kurosawa's classic, Rashomon, examines a murder from multiple vantage points. Who is the killer and what events led to the murder? Wikipedia explains, "The film is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, self-serving, and contradictory versions of the same incident."
Our team misfires. Why? Everyone sees the same games.
- Management questions strategy.
- The head coach thinks she needs more talent.
- The assistant thinks they should play a different style.
- Both starters and reserves know they need more minutes.
- Parents are sure their child needs more time and role.
- Some fans clamor for a coaching change. They question the personnel, strategy, and operations.
What Alexander can loose this Gordian knot?
Confronted by tough problems, we struggle to overcome cognitive biases of self-interest, defense mechanisms, prior commitment and consistency, anchoring, recency bias, and more.
Self-interest. What's best for me? There's a saying that nobody changes their mind whose job depends on them not changing their mind. Bill Parcells remarked that coaches are selfish, playing those whom we believe give us the best chance to win.
Defense mechanisms. Denial is one of the most common defense mechanisms. Playing the guy who "lost a step" is one example. High draft choices and scholarship athletes get more chances to prove a bad investment good.
Commitment and consistency. We declared loyalty to A over B or irrationally choose an inferior product (e.g PC versus Mac). "I'll never get vaccinated" even when mRNA COVAX has a 94 percent reduction in hospitalization for COVID-19. I stubbornly had us play man-to-man defense for 2 1/2 plus middle school seasons, knowing that we had defensive limitations. I thought it better for our development.
When commitment impacts our judgment, we see ripple effects. "Smarter students (players) received better opportunities, which, we can reason, offers them better experiences. This is turn makes them better." These illustrate the 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.
Anchoring. What factors influence our judgment, especially when betting? I'm not a gambler, but have participated in hospital competitions to pick NFL games. One pervasive belief is the overachievement of the home underdog. A 2016 article addresses that myth. "But last year NFL home underdogs went just 45-42 against the spread, just a 51.7 percent success rate. That 2015 record is also relatively close to the shallow 50.8 percent ATS success rate in this decade and the 48.9 ATS win rate for home underdogs over the last 12 years." It's even worse in the NBA. As President Reagan said, "trust but verify."
Recency bias. Decades ago the Washington Football Team was an NFL powerhouse and began a season (10-0) under another logo. When they lost the eleventh game, their fandom called for coach Joe Gibbs' head. Even when flipping coins, a run of heads or tails can make us think the odds have shifted. They haven't.
Argument abounds over the "hot hand" effect. A group of former Harvard graduates found a small but real effect. "After analyzing shots in better detail—they surveyed more than 70,000 from the last NBA season and cross-referenced them against play-by-play summaries—the authors say a player can be more likely, not less likely, to make his next shot if he has made several in row. Their hot-hand estimate ranges from a 1.2 to a 2.4 percentage-point increase in likelihood."
Making dispassionate choices challenges us. When possible, seek to understand the odds and choose accordingly. Annie Duke, in Thinking in Bets, shares sound advice, "What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of “I'm not sure.”
We see reality and truth through the prism of our experience. Kafka would say, "everyone is necessarily the hero of his own story."
Summary:
- Where I stand depends upon where I sit.
- Self-interest
- Denial
- Commitment and consistency
- Anchoring
- Recency bias
- "I'm not sure."
Lagniappe. As a player, I was a mediocre rebounder. As a coach, I've had good rebounding, not from teaching but finding rebounders. "Go get the ball."
Lagniappe 2. Offensive concepts (Finland) from Slappin' Glass
A lot of passing and cutting, high ball screens, filled corners, and DHO.
Lagniappe 3. Teaching technique from Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion.
- Technique 33: On Your Mark. Coaches expect athletes to be ready to engage in their sport. In the same way, a teacher shows students what they need to be "on their mark."
