Friday, February 23, 2024

Basketball: Rumor Board

"I can't remember more than three things, so give me your top three." 

Apply lessons from medicine and society to improve accuracy, decisions, and results. Basketball is collaboration.

Tumor Board. A patient presents with cancer. Specialists from multiple disciplines - pathology, radiology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgery - discuss the patient, the literature, and formulate a plan. The patient's general health, other illnesses, extent of disease (stage), pace of disease, preferences, age, and other factors help define the plan. 

Analogy. Coaches develop a game plan based on their strengths and weaknesses, film study, scouting reports. "Utilize strengths, attack weaknesses." Decide what and how to 'take away' from an opponent. 

Crowdsourcing. "Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers." Wikipedia itself, developed from crowdsourcing. 

Analogy. In some sports, notably baseball, Hall of Fame voting brings together hundreds of voters, ostensibly with breadth and depth of knowledge, to decide who is 'worthy' for enshrinement. The sense of self-importance might be considered overwhelming? 

During the scouting and drafting process, an organization uses many inputs to evaluate and rank prospects. Even then, others decide whether to choose based on positional needs, to take the best player available, or to trade picks for other assets. 

Checklists. Checklists perform across industries - aviation, construction, investments, restaurants, medicine to ensure accuracy, assure quality, and reduce errors. Atul Gawande raised the profile of checklists in his seminal work Checklist Manifesto. 

Analogy. Checklists may fly 'under the radar' in sports. 

Play sheets in football and basketball could be considered checklists. 

Checklists help illustrate the role of symmetry in basketball. 



Use all the resources available to improve process and outcome. 

Lagniappe. "The ball has energy." 

Lagniappe 2. Are we using DHO actions optimally? 

Lagniappe 3. Intensity defines destiny. 

 

 

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