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Thursday, March 20, 2025

Basketball - The Asymptote of Excellence

Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln said, "If given six hours to cut down a tree, I would spend the first four sharpening the axe." With focused work and mentoring, dare to approach the "asymptote of excellence" with a boundary or limit. 


Mentoring and work help us raise the horizontal asymptote (limit). It also helps steepen the curve (allow it to happen faster).  

"George Leonard tells the story of Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo. According to legend, as Kano approached death, he called his students around him and asked to be buried in his white belt. The symbolism wasn’t lost. The highest-ranking martial artist of his discipline embraced the emblem of the beginner for his life and beyond, because to him the journey of the successful lifelong learner was never over." - Gary Keller in "The ONE Thing"

A similar approach is the concept of "Beginner's Mind." Practitioners embrace enthusiasm and openness. 

When sharing knowledge and experience, coaches help lifelong learners steepen the curve and potentially raise the excellence bar. How does that apply across sport domains? 

Charlie Munger would call that expanding the "circle of competence." Munger said, "I think about things where I have an advantage over other people. I don’t play in a game where the other people are wise and I’m stupid. I look for a place where I’m wise and they’re stupid. You have to know the edge of your own competency. I’m very good at knowing when I can’t handle something."

If we're the sixth best poker player in the world, that's a tremendous edge. But if we're playing the top five, then we lack an edge.

Kevin Eastman encourages us to become a "learn-it-all" not a "know-it-all."

Behavioral economist Amos Tversky was at a dinner party and heard Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann pontificating...on everything. Tversky told him, "Murray, there's nobody on the planet as smart as you think you are."

Paul "Bear" Bryant was a legendary Alabama football coach. It was said of Bryant, "He could take his'n and beat your'n or your'n and beat his'n."

Implementation

  • Inspire.
  • Positive coaching.
  • Model excellence. Model the behaviors we want to see.
  • Create a learning culture. Self-educate. Study great coaches.
  • "Speak greatness." "That was good AND" outperforms "That was good BUT."
  • Work to master player development.
  • Practice and teach gratitude.
  • Keep a notebook, commonplace book, or journal.
Lagniappe. "A strong culture, defined by our Core Values that all members of the team embody, and reinforced by standards that we consistently meet, allows us to consistently meet our goals, not just in the short term, but every term. Doing so then invariably increases the size of the talent pool of individuals who want to be part of our organization—everyone wants to be with a winner." - The Program: Lessons From Elite Military Units for Creating and Sustaining High Performance Leaders and Teams by Eric Kapitulik, Jake MacDonald

Lagniappe 2. Prioritize "hard-to-defend" actions. 

Lagniappe 3. As Pete Newell said, "Teach players to see the game."  

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