Total Pageviews

Friday, September 5, 2025

Basketball - The Not-So-Secret Formula

Austin Klein writes in Steal Like an Artist, "If there was a secret formula for becoming known, I would give it to you. But there’s only one not-so-secret formula that I know: Do good work and share it with people." Commit to quality. 

The column that matters most is the next one. Wonder is the secret sauce of "how did they figure that out?" It's the Sesame Street song, "I wonder, what if, let's try."

Stay curious. Great books and stories replenish the "curiosity well." Books like George Will's baseball anthology "Bunts" are wellsprings of ideas. The NBA Finals raise questions like what foreign players have been Finals MVP (below) or why did three NBA stars wearing number "0" go down with Achilles injuries? 


SGA's brilliance asks what does Canada do so well in development? Or why do NBA officials get snookered by floppers?

Intensity keeps on giving. Combine it with immediacy and intelligence. 

Develop questions to ask ourselves regularly.

  • What/who can I learn more about? 
  • Have I asked players what they need?
  • What can I teach better? 
  • How can I teach better? 
  • Who can I ask for help on this? 
  • How can I help? 
  • What other resources will be difference makers? ChatGPT Plus helps me. 

Lagniappe. Via ChatGPT Plus, three ideas from "Bunts"

1. The Value of Small Victories

Will uses the metaphor of the “bunt” in baseball—a play that rarely makes highlight reels but can change the course of a game—to argue that not every success comes from dramatic swings. In both sports and life, small, strategic actions often carry great significance. He elevates subtlety and precision over flash and spectacle, showing respect for the incremental and the underappreciated.

2. Sports as a Mirror of Society

Much of Bunts explores how American sports reveal the nation’s character and contradictions. Baseball, football, and basketball become stages where issues of race, class, politics, and culture play out. For example, he highlights how sports reflect meritocracy (talent matters more than birthright), but also how they reveal inequities and excesses that echo broader society.

3. The Intersection of Sports and Politics

Will emphasizes that sports are never fully separate from politics or governance. From stadium subsidies to drug policies, from Olympic boycotts to Title IX, he shows how decisions in government and culture shape the playing field. His conservative skepticism comes through as he questions both the commercialization of sports and the overreach of political influence, suggesting that while sports inspire, they are also deeply entangled with policy and power.

Sport is meritocracy...except when it isn't. Privilege, nepotism, and local politics are often in play. 

Lagniappe 2. More SLOBs. 

Posted by at