Friday, October 11, 2019

Promoting Antifragility in Basketball

No simple definition of antifragility exists. We know it when we see it, a system that thrives under exposure to stress. 

 Nassim Taleb writes, "Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet."

 Taleb notes that "antifragility is relative." Within basketball games, rebounding and defense tend toward more antifragility than shooting. 

 Successful coaches promote antifragility with the familiar chiasmus, "when the going gets tough, the tough get going."  

Exceptional players are antifragile, such as Bill Russell in playoff game 7s during his NBA career. "His average for the ten Game 7’s was 18.8 points and 29.3 rebounds.  His victims were all the greatest players of his era, Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Pettit, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. He won when it mattered and he changed the game."

 Professional leagues encourage parity by discouraging antifragility. Free agency, salary caps, scheduling, and reverse draft orders foster fragility. Tanking capitalizes on fragility. College sports like basketball are different, where the rich get richer and stay rich. 

How can we encourage anti-fragility within our programs? 

 Improve our teaching. In the stock market they say, "plan your trade, then trade your plan." High basketball IQ teams are more antifragile. Remember Taleb's caution that "antifragility is relative." And remember that Mindfulness is antifragile. 

 Recruit and retain well. That applies to every aspect of an organization. When a custodian at the NASA Houston Space Center was asked about his job, he replied, "I helped send a man to the moon." We must add value and make people feel valued. Robert Townsend wrote in Up the Organization, "Thanks is the cheapest form of compensation." Conversely, David Cottrell wrote in Monday Morning Leadership, "people don't quit jobs, they quit people." Fight for your people, not with them. 

 Elevate our Standards of Performance. It's worth reading the summary and the book. Bill Walsh's commitment to high individual and organizational standards was antifragile. 
Condition within drills. Efficiency promotes both robustness and antifragility. Brian McCormick's 3 L's of laps, lines, and lectures make us fragile. But remember we can overwork players...making them more fragile. 

 Never leave the basics. We don't go back to basics. Watch football and the teams that block and tackle well, win field position, and take care of the ball win more than their share. "Fall in love with easy" shots and deny opponents that luxury. 

 Get to Carnegie Hall. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Tom Hellen says, "Teams that can't shoot free throws last as long in the playoffs as dogs that chase cars." 

Lagniappe: Double Pindown from Sean Billerman. We've run this out of horns. 



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