Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Basketball: Separate Reasons from Excuses

"Don't whine, don't complain, don't make excuses." - John Wooden

 Reasons are not excuses. You're not prepared for a test because you went to the beach and didn't study. That's an excuse. You caught influenza A and had days of fever, headache, and body aches. That's a reason. 

 You're late to practice because you overslept. Excuse. You're late to practice because someone rear-ended you in a car accident. Reason. 

Don't traffic in excuses. Years ago we beat a superior team in a playoff game. The other coach said, "if we made shots, we would have won." Isn't that always true? Lose graciously and win humbly. 

We won 45-42 because we scored seven points in five possessions with "Down." That's a tribute to young kids. Fall in love with easy. 

Avoid attribution bias. We are vulnerable to attribution bias. Attribution bias is a cognitive bias which is a process where people evaluate their own and/or other people’s behaviors. When things go well, we credit our brains and skill. When we fail, we blame conditions beyond our control, bad luck, and sometimes others whom we feel conspire against us. 

 During the past two seasons, I don't believe that we won or lost a game because of the officiating. Our wins and losses tracked our execution. On some occasions, mediocre coaching contributed to our defeats.  

 Imagine the career of Bill Walton without injuries. Injuries are part of sports. 

Statistical variation and luck. Good shooters have bad days. I recommend Annie Duke's book Thinking in Bets. A WSOP champion, she says that poker is about 76 percent skill and 24 percent luck. Blaming luck corresponds to resulting. 

We win bets by striving to calibrate our beliefs and predictions about the future to more accurately represent the world.

 Find better reasons upon which to build decisions. Use various tools to improve our reasons. Make numerical estimates about what is likely to work. Do "premortem evaluations" to project what can and is likely to go wrong. 

I recently saw a person with severe "polyarthritis" (multiple joint pains) with a remote history of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). My "differential diagnosis" included recurrence of RA, post-infectious arthritis (e.g. parvovirus, Lyme two of the more likely candidates), crystal arthritis (e.g. gout...doubtful with the symmetry), and sarcoidosis. I empirically treated the patient and referred them to a joint specialist. There's always uncertainty initially as well as potential for adverse side effects (even if the patient had tolerated treatment before). Neither of us knows the diagnosis for sure on day one. 

 And "coaching" implies a willingness to change when it goes wrong, even if the strategy was justified (reason). Sticking to failing strategies begs excuses. 

We develop reasons for team selection, training and practice, lineup selection, strategy, substitutions, and so forth. Others won't always agree with our reasons. Sometimes we prove them right. 

 "Failure is not an option." "Houston, we've had a problem." Apollo 13 flight director Eugene Kranz oversaw a series of corrections during the disastrous lunar flight that somehow returned the crew home safely. 

 Lagniappe: I need to post more defensive video. Defensive points from Loyola assistant Matt Gordon.
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