"You're entitled to your own opinion; you're not entitled to your own facts."
Separate opinion and fact. "The Duke Blue Devils have the most passionate basketball fans in America." No doubt the Cameron Crazies believe. Most passionate or most annoying? That's opinion.
Anne Lamott begins Bird by Bird, "Good writing is about telling the truth." Bob Woodward's MasterClass makes the same point. He tells the story of Washington Post writer Janet Cooke, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1981, later rescinded because she fabricated the story. The newspaper apologized. Tell the truth.
Stephen King says there are four kinds of writing - bad, competent, good, and great. Shakespeare and Hemingway are great; we aspire to be good, which is possible. Hemingway shared, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Where do we start? Think back to our earliest basketball memories, Johnny Most on the radio with "tricky dribbles" and "fiddles and diddles," or grainy black and white of Russell and the Joneses and "Havlicek stole the ball." Remember the goal hung on a plywood backboard on a backyard tree or the only memory of sixth grade basketball (a fat lip). Frame the great debates of Russell and Chamberlain, the miraculous UCLA 88 game streak, or Dave Cowens delivering a 'real' foul to Mike Newlin.
Whether it's King or James Patterson, they say, "advance the story." King develops a situation, narration, and dialogue. LeBron James faces his next decision. He refuted the maxim, "you can't go home again" with a Cuyahoga championship. Will James change his address to LA, the foundation of a possible Superteam with LABron, Paul George, and thorny trade for Kawhi Leonard? We know how LeBron thinks; he tells us. “I always say, decisions I make, I live with them...Warren Buffett told me once and he said always follow your gut...All your life they will tell you no. And you will tell them yes.”
What's next? Decisions determine destiny. The NBA draft makes instant millionaires not instant success. NBA gurus seek windows into a prospect's soul. Patriots assistant Mike Lombardi used a less direct approach: "I had a girl in Cleveland that all her job was, was to call her sorority sisters from different campuses around the Southeast Conference and ask questions about the players. Her information was way more valuable than any coach. Guys will tell the girls... we’ll get to the story on that. She ended up being the number-
one resource for me in terms of character. Character assessment is the number-one challenge to the job."
Lagniappe:
-3 sets a backscreen for 5.
-A pass to 5 at the elbow opens give-and-go with the 4.
-4 has isolation from the wing.
-An overplay on 4 opens a lob with the clear out.
-4 and 5 have the "two-man game."
