Basketball - Ambiguity and Uncertainty

Ambiguity refers to a lack of clarity where a situation can be interpreted in multiple ways (unknown unknowns), causing confusion, while uncertainty describes a lack of knowledge about future outcomes or probabilities when the situation is already understood (known unknowns), triggering doubt. Ambiguity focuses on what to do; uncertainty focuses on what will happen." - AI 

Make better sense of ambiguity. How do we improve decision-making? That requires training, practice, and applying tools to guide decisions. Let's consider a few:

Experience (pattern recognition/recognition primed decisions)

• Chess (chunking arrangements of pieces)
• Firefighting (accumulated vs variety of fires/expected results) - excellent local firefighters will not manage the same types of fires as the "Red Adair" teams would. All expertise is not equal. 

Basketball - Basketball IQ takes time and training. The elite point guards have or acquire superior vision, decisions, and execution than the mediocre ones. 

Reference/reading: Sources of Power (Gary Klein)

Algorithms - combinations of "if this, then that"

• Historical voting patterns impact campaign strategies
• Selecting Army officers (Israeli military)

Basketball - The "leading by three, under ten seconds left" fouling decision is shown to have about 85 percent success. Choose to rediscover the wheel at our peril. 

Reference: Knowledge at Wharton (Michael Lewis guest Podcast)

"The Undoing Project" (Michael Lewis) - "People don't decide between things. They decide between descriptions of things." 

Checklists 

• Preoperative checklists 
• Building construction

Basketball - Research on draftees' performance shows the three biggest factors for NBA success are: age at drafting (younger is better), college attended (strength of program), and performance in college. There are exceptions. Payton Pritchard was at Oregon for four years. Hugo Gonzalez didn't attend US college but grew up in the Real Madrid system. 

Reference: The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)

More source input/crowdsourcing

• Personal board of directors (John Calipari)
• Mentoring 

Basketball - The "Nick U'Ren/Steve Kerr" decision to replace Bogut with Iguodala that led to the Warriors rallying from a series deficit to beat the Cavs in the NBA Finals. Another is the Brad Stevens collaborative decision-making culture.

Reference: The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki) examines how large groups often inform better decisions than individuals or experts.

Simulations/situational practice 

• Flight simulators
• Stock market simulators

Basketball - Situational practice (close and late game situations) multiplies experience beyond what players experience in games. The game is chaos, so random practice creates learning advantage. 

Reference: Fake Fundamentals (Brian McCormick)

Probability

• Lottery ticket purchases
• Casino gambling

Basketball - "Hack-a-Shaq" or "Fouling when ahead by 3 late"

Reference: Thinking in Bets (Annie Betts)

Develop more tools to enhance our decision-making. Long-term decision-making needs different tools than immediate thinking. Specialists treat cancer different than they adjust to CPR/resuscitation choices.

Lagniappe. (from ChatGPT Plus, Basketball applications from The Undoing Project)

1. We See Patterns That Aren’t There (The “Hot Hand” Trap)

Kahneman and Tversky showed that humans over-detect patterns in randomness.

Basketball translation:

• “He’s hot—keep feeding him” is often narrative, not data
• A contested jumper is still a bad shot—even after two makes

Coaching application:

• Teach players: Judge the shot, not the result
• Your “ROB” concept (range, open, balance) fits perfectly here

2. Outcome Bias: We Judge Decisions by Results

People assume a good outcome = good decision.

Basketball translation:

• A bad possession that ends in a lucky make gets praised
• A great possession that misses gets criticized

Coaching application:

• Grade possessions, not outcomes
• “Winning the possession” matters more than whether the ball goes in

👉 This aligns directly with your possession enders / Four Factors thinking

3. The Inside View vs. Outside View

From Daniel Kahneman:

• Inside view = “our team, our story”
• Outside view = “what usually happens in situations like this?”

Basketball translation:

• Inside view: “We can press because we’re tough”
• Outside view: pressing increases fouls and fatigue for most teams

Coaching application:

• Use film + data as the “outside view”
• Avoid falling in love with your own system

👉 This connects cleanly to your interest in Making Decisions

4. Loss Aversion Changes Behavior Late in Games

People fear losses more (about twice as much) than they value gains.

Basketball translation:

• Teams play not to lose late (stalling, passive offense)
• Players pass up good shots to avoid blame

Coaching application:

• Script “Got to Have It” situations
• Normalize aggression late (“we attack to win, not avoid losing”)

5. Noise > Bias (The Hidden Opponent)

Lewis highlights that random variability (“noise”) often matters more than bias.

Basketball translation:

• Same defensive effort → different outcomes (opponent hits tough shots)
• Ref variance, shooting variance, matchup randomness

Coaching application:

• Don’t overreact to one game
• Build systems that win over time (“repetition makes reputations” idea)