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Friday, December 1, 2023

Basketball: The Consequences of Conventional Wisdom

We often worship conventional wisdom. In Red Team, Micah Zenko explains how and why conventional thinking emerges.

For example in the Intelligence Community (IC), patterns emerge. 

  • Place value on high consequence events (e.g. a country developing nuclear weapons)...to reduce blowback when right.
  • Homogenize thinking..."this is how we do it."
  • Know the "tyranny of expertise." The more one knows about a subject, the lower likelihood of broad understanding of alternatives. 
That means that the IC grinds out conventional wisdom and has less tolerance or imagination for alternative thinking. 

Think back to the early days (late 1970s) of the three-point shot. It was considered gimmicky and not especially viable as a mainstream attack. Fast forward and it's a staple, not rare to see a team take more threes than twos in a game. 

What alternative thinking became standard or evolving approaches over time? Here are just a few that took time to develop.  
  • Three and 'D' players 
  • De-emphasis of the post up game 
  • "One-and-done" collegians
  • Positionless basketball with switching-dominant defenses.
  • 'Hack-a-Shaq' fouling of poor free throw shooters, stopping clock and reducing 'points per possession' 
  • "Score-first" point guards
  • Late-game fouling with a three-point lead
  • Broadening skill sets of the big man (Wembanyama, Holmgren, Yokic, etc.)
  • The rise of the foreign player
These are just some of the advances that occurred over decades of game evolution. It's hard to imagine teams reverting to an older style amidst the advent of rule changes, officiating changes, and skill and training changes. 

Lagniappe. Good video of one approach to ball movement against zone...IIRC I've shown this in a Boeheim vs Boeheim clip. 

Lagniappe 2. Multiple actions...pocket pass into short roll passing...important to fill the corners. 

Lagniappe 3. Iverson actions.  

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