Learning from basketball

I've been playing basketball for almost 15 years since I was a fourth grader. I am good defense player, average shooter and power forward, below-par rebounder, and bad defense guard. In sum, I am about 50-60% among all who play basketball more frequent than 3 times a month. I joined a 3V3 tournament yesterday among all Chinese students, had 3 games and lost two of them, one which was lost to the champion team composed of undergrads.

I wasn't really grumpy about losing to the undergrad though I couldn't help pondering on the games and basketball long after the game ended. As I was reading the handouts for Strategic Finance, it suddenly dawned on me that the way I've been playing basketball and the game itself can reveal a fair amount truth about myself, the business world, and life, in more general sense.

So here are the take-aways from 15-year basketball playing together with 500 ankle injuries:

1. Strategy: this is really similar to the ancient Chinese story "Tianji's Horse Race Story." The moral of the story is, it is not the speed of the horses you have that determinate the outcome of the game (assuming you rival have similar quality horses and jockeys) but the arrangement of the horses (i.e. the sequence of participation of your race horse). Yesterday when our team was playing against the champion team, we posted our best defender against their best offender and so on, which ended up in our defeat. This is because when their best offender broke our first line of defense, there was no way to stop him due to heights, strength, or speed. The "perfect match" in fact created a disadvantage for our team and an advantage for their team (as our best defender wasn't as good as their best offender). The right strategy was to create a "mismatch" - posting second best defender to their best offender. Such strategy is superior in two ways: having a second, also better line of defense, and creating another mismatch as our best defender happens to be our best offender - meaning now is it their second best defender is guarding our best offender. This might seem like giving an equal advantage to the rival but in reality there is no perfect "match" in the first place. Therefore the mismatch will be the better strategy.

2. Visualization: as my experience accumulate, I find extremely helpful to visualize the games, the person defends you, and the person you defend. It's all part of the expectation management process - practicing the procedures and anticipating the unexpected.

3. Me being a good defense player: I am simply better at REACTING than ACTING. In defense, all I need to do is react to the offense player, move left is he charges left, jump to block him if he is shooting. This is why I am such a mediocre offense player - I don't really have a clear idea about what to do, what works and what doesn't. I was afraid to make ACTIVE mistakes.

4. Process perfection: how accurate you shoot is not based on how many ball you have shot, but on how closely you can replicate a "perfect shot". That includes cooperation of your hands, arms, core body, and legs. It's easy to make a jump shot, but extremely difficult to make the "same" shot every time you have the chance to shoot. Another example is defense: your left hand disturbing the ball, your right hand over your rival's face, legs open at a restricted angle, always to tip toe for fast response, remembering to hit the ball when the rival has gain speed and starts to drive...The perfection of process is the only way to repeated successes.