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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Basketball: Clear Thinking

Two primary measures of education are: clear thinking and clear communication. Both inform playing well.

Offense involves seeing the game and making decisions about player and ball movement. Poor shot selection and decision-based turnovers flow directly from unclear thinking.

What are most common examples of decision-based turnovers?

  • Playing in traffic, driving or passing into a crowd. Yes, the former also allows a player to "draw two" and pass.
  • Passing to covered players or passing to a defender. These occur frequently when opponents pressure a team. 
  • Shot turnovers especially 'airballing' three-point shots. 
Multiple 'systems' control thinking. Kahnemann writes about System 1 (reflexive) and System 2 (reflective) in Thinking: Fast and Slow. We lack the luxury of time in 'real-time' decision making. 

Factors interfere with our decisions, as outlined by Shane Parrish's Clear Thinking.

  • The emotion default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts.
  • The ego default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy.
  • The social default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group.
  • The inertia default: we’re habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.

How do the above show up on the court?

Emotion - players lose control, discipline breaks down and shows up with disengagement, poor decisions, and often fouling. Retaliation and frustration fouls are examples. 

Ego - ego manifests as selfishness, being a less than ideal teammate. At the other extreme, ego destruction causes players to shut down. 

Social default - when players make poor choices especially in a group. "There's nothing else to do...let's go drinking." Dangerous "challenges" also fall into this area. 

Inertia - "I know better than our coaches." We do what we do.

Lagniappe. Lead by being part of community. 

Lagniappe 2. Strong teams have at least three capable scorers, two dominant rebounders, and two reliable ballhandlers. 

Lagniappe 3. Simple works.  

Lagniappe 4. Social proof (group dynamics). 

Post by @sarah_creates22
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