Seek understanding of big ideas across disciplines. Big ideas are defined as ideas that are used to explain and make predictions about a range of related phenomena. Apply them to your domain. Big ideas transcend disciplines. Paraphrasing soccer commentator Ian Darke, it's an "ambitious try." Necessarily, ideas overlap domains.
Peter Bevelin wrote in Seeking Wisdom: from Darwin to Munger, "Charles Munger was asked what would be the best question he should ask himself: "If you ask not about investment matters, but about your personal lives, I think the best question is "Is there anything I can do to make my whole life and my whole mental process work better?""
Architecture: Combine best elements to create beauty and function. Our experience and knowledge can trap us beneath excellence. Note the "out of the box" design for the bench below. Solve problems with practice and innovation.
Biology: Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, “One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” We need a variety of tools to survive, because humans lack exceptional speed, strength, thick hide, or warm fur. What helps us survive in basketball? We need to apply and withstand (evolutionary) pressure.
Business: In Good to Great, Jim Collins noted the value of Level 5 leadership combining both humility and ambition (professional will). Stay humble.
Chemistry: 10 million carbon containing compounds and new ones are produced everyday like plastics and synthetic fibers. Carbon compounds are the basis of life in all living organisms. What is the carbon of basketball? Footwork could be one answer.
Communications: Data doesn't inform how to best engage your customers. Our knowledge or system doesn't magically spread. How do we teach and our players learn? Give and get feedback.
Critical Thinking: what are the purposes and the biases that underlie ideas? Are the statements accurate? Is "one-and-done" the way or just another phase in the evolution of professional basketball? Are you an academic institution when you 'hire' athletes for seven months without bona fide educational intent? Obviously, the sign is meant as humor, however unfair.
Economics: Prosperity, with eyes wandering from risk, sets the condition for future disaster, the "Minsky Moment." Some coaches depend excessively on talent. They won't or can't develop it and therefore are 'at risk' when the supply dries up (economics is the competition for limited resources).
Education: Carol Dweck's "growth mindset" emphasizes the capacity for growth, not achievement based on intrinsic ability. Steve Kerr preaches mentors, culture, and mindset.
Finance: "This time it's different." More resources are lost because people forget that temporary conditions are just that. The Houston Rockets have leveraged analytics into the third best record in the NBA over more than a decade, as expounded in Michael Lewis' The Undoing Project.
Geology: Resources are limited...but in basketball, you can go to your "big gun" more often...unless she fouls out.
Government: First Amendment (e.g. freedom of speech). The loudest voice isn't the most meaningful, but good ideas won't emerge unless we encourage them. Videographer Nick U'Ren's suggestion to Steve Kerr helped install Andre Iguodala into the eventual GSW championship lineup.
History: "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes." Combining political expediency and unpopular social policy, Nicolae Ceausescu created tyranny and led to his overthrow and execution. He was followed by "a court of admirers and flatterers." Autocracy has inherent dangers in government and coaching.
Marketing: "you will never convince someone to understand something whose livelihood depends on them not understanding it." If a player sees herself as exclusively a scorer, she won't become versed in passing and defending. We are salespeople.
Mathematics: Via Cambridge Mathematics, "PROOF – mathematical statements can be proved or disproved using previously established statements, self-evident truths or assumed statements. This may be through the use of physical objects, diagrams, manipulatives, or algebra." Previously held truths, like defense wins championships can be examined in context and by using larger data sets and experience.
Medicine: Evidence-based medicine established a deeper foothold in the past decade. Process, outcomes, and compensation are steadily getting more traction and linkage. Do we practice "evidence-based basketball?"
Music: There is an optimal activation level corresponding to peak performance. This follows the 'inverted U' graph. Some athletes benefit from calming music and others excel with more stimulus.
Philosophy: Plato sought perfection, but understood its unattainability. "Plato believed that the ideal version of love is a meeting of the minds and doesn’t entail a physical aspect―hence the term “platonic relationship.”" Larisa Preobrazhenskaya coached 'love and beauty', caring for players and their fundamental skills.
Physics: Gravity. The basketball has gravity, attracting to both offensive and defensive players. But discovery (like space travel) demands overcoming gravity...SPACING. You can use gravity to your advantage, like cutting to clear out a defender. But the general principle applies.
Psychology: We share the pain of loss, loss of loved ones, status, opportunity, possessions. We struggle with intelligent risk-taking.
Religion: Redemption is a common theme in religion, which is why the movie Groundhog Day has meaning for many religions. Sports allows us the chance to individually and collectively redeem ourselves after we struggle.
Rhetoric: People like symmetry, AB and BA. In his inaugural speech, John Kennedy used chiasmus (rhetorical symmetry), "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Mae West said, "it's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men." I tell players, "if we don't put an end to the turnovers, turnovers will put an end to us."
Social proof: we often do what we see other people do, regardless of whether it's useful. The saying goes, "no individual lemming ever got bad publicity."
Social Studies: "People generally do what is in their self interest." Within team sports we must leverage individual skills with molding social interactions and team play.
Sociology: Auguste Comte advocated during the 19th that "science can build a better world." He preached basing "theory upon observation." The scientific method has expanded extensively through sports.
Statistics: "Do more of what is working and less of what isn't." What we might intuit as working, may not actually work when rigorously examined. NBA teams assiduously examine myriads of data concerning scoring efficiency: shots off the dribble or catch, pick-and-roll, transition points per possession, et cetera.
Transportation: Drones can now deliver critical supplies to remote areas. Norman Foster said, “Drones could go from killing machines to living machines.” "Reverse the ball."
Lagniappe:
Celtics' dribble stagger reversal recalls the Spurs' hammer, but I digress. The object of their affection was Jayson Tatum, the NBA's percentage three leader.
