"History may not repeat but it rhymes." We are here to learn and to teach.
Basketball makes us think; think better. The game teaches life. It teaches commitment, discipline, effort, humility, resilience, sacrifice, teamwork. Love and learn from our losses. Does a lesson inspire our destiny?
History teaches perspective. Will and Ariel Durant wrote The Lessons of History to share that wisdom. "Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed."
Chapter 3 informs the path linking biology and history. Competition, selection, and reproduction define the winners. "We cooperate in our group - our family, community, club, church, party, "race," or nation - in order to strengthen our group in competition with other groups. Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals - acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride."
How do we select members for our tribes? Find competitors, those who "bring the fight" to the floor. Lions gather in a pride not a humility. We urge our team to show pride, to stand together. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, speaks for competition. She argues that effort pays twice, building skill and turning skill into results.
Nature has no feelings, tolerating little error. Nature selects winners from the survivors.
Many consider Dan Osman the greatest speed climber ever. Extreme risk produces exceptional results. Dan Osman is dead.
Nature chooses winners from large litters. Training a small group of players reduces the chances of finding outliers in terms of both talent and effort. Who will find the pick of the litter among underclassmen and foreign NBA draft entries? Teams will find fewer 'stars' and more 'litter'.
Attack the middle of the zone to get multiple options. The entry pass moves x3 and the middle attack creates an inside 3 on 2. This BOB 'steals' from Tom Izzo and his Spartan "Down" zone offense.