How rigorous is our selection process? The 'offseason' allows us to study the theoretical while developing players.
As a player, what are you selling?
- Impact winning at both ends.
- Make teammates better.
- Sell personal energy and energizing teammates.
- Make elite decisions.
- Show, "I am a team player and a winner. You want me on the floor."
Ed Smith's Making Decisions shares his insights into player selection as England's cricket "Selector" from 2018-2021. Selection has added complexity for cricket with multiple formats - five day Tests, One Day Internationals, and T20 matches (short format).
Modern basketball evolved from "Total Football" concepts of the seventies - "they were prepared to live with less specialization across positions."
Initial Screen. In some ways similar to the NFL Draft, the selection team created a nationwide search, narrowing selection to about 70 candidates. What's our applicant pool?
Priorities. Get the players who complement our system. Smith writes, "the way things fit together is at least as important as the pieces themselves." That may not apply at the high school level where some coaches can create massive talent imbalances through recruiting.
Physical makeup. It's not only about skill, size, and athleticism, but health history and durability.
Psychological makeup. Can we look under the hood and examine the player's character, commitment, 'heart', and resilience?
Performance. Smith reminds us of the difference between academics - those who often design by 'concepts' and the man in the street - who frames choices by experience.
The Decision. Is our goal consensus, compromise, or getting the absolute best outcome?
Scouting blends expert opinion, a both old and new eyes. Remember Billy Beane's observation in Moneyball, "if he's such a good hitter, why doesn't he hit better?" Our eyes can lie in the face of bias - recency bias, anchoring on one performance, or seeing the player as the reincarnation of another star.
"What decision would you make if you were the only decision maker?" If it's all up to us, our legacy, how would we choose?
Smith encourages us to ask sophisticated questions:
- Can you make connections other people cannot?
- Can you identify a helpful analogy?
- Will you bring an outsider's perspective?
- Can you reconfigure existing information in a new and innovative way?
- Can you take one position while still inhabiting the counterfactual position of worlds not taken?
- Can you play with a problem as well as persist with it?
It's a colossal mistake to believe we have the right answers when seldom have we even considered the right questions.
Lagniappe. Hands too close together?
