I love sports from a fan perspective, but also take great inspiration from professional sports as a blueprint for team, strategy, play-calling, execution and winning in the context of business.
(Along those lines, 'Think Like a Champion' by Mike Shanahan and 'Finding a Way to Win' by Bill Parcells are great, easy reads that provide detailed specifics which can readily be applied to business).
More recently, Michael Lewis' 'Moneyball' has shined a light on the way "new metrics" are changing the way the game is played and talent is evaluated.
Lastly, there is thing called the Internet that is changing the way we consume sports.
This Pattern Recognition spotlights on the Sporting Analog from three different trend angles (winning blueprints, metrics for success & new media), with a relevant story that captures each of the following trends at play:
Basketball and Blueprints
As a Laker fan, I can safely say that there is no sports blog better than Forum Blue & Gold in analyzing the game, the game within the game and the specific roles that individual players and management play in bringing victory to the fold…or not.
'Basketball and Blueprints' (by the writers of Forum Blue & Gold) looks at how new ownership and a new GM first whittled down the core of what made the Phoenix Suns vaunted “seven seconds or less” offense a joy to watch, then Franken-steined its pure essence, then removed its heart and soul in total.
Now, after half a season, somewhat identity-less and rudderless, they have canned their new coach and junked the new plan in hopes of returning to the old plan. Good luck with that. Here’s an excerpt:
“Winning organizations have a blueprint and stick with it. They know what kind of team they want to be, they hire a coach that will execute that type of play on the court, and then they go get players that fit that system.”
Amen, and I am reminded how the grass is always greener until what's left is just a bunch of dead weeds, and how the new guys always seem to need to break what works so that they can imprint their DNA and egos on their new trophy.
When such a transplant works (e.g., when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers canned Tony Dungy, replaced him with Jon Gruden and promptly won a Super Bowl), the decision is pure gold. Most of the time, however, the decision garners lead.
The No-Stats All-Star
Great article by Michael Lewis on Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets, a team that has drunk the Moneyball kool-aid. How does a guy with such anemic offensive stats play such a big role in his team’s formula for winning? Read on:
"Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding.
He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers.
On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”
On the Paradox between Individual and Team Success (and the role of data in parsing the difference)
"It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them."
“The numbers either refute my thinking or support my thinking,” he says, “and when there’s any question, I trust the numbers. The numbers don’t lie.” Even when the numbers agree with his intuitions, they have an effect. “It’s a subtle difference,” Morey says, “but it has big implications. If you have an intuition of something but no hard evidence to back it up, you might kind of sort of go about putting that intuition into practice, because there’s still some uncertainty if it’s right or wrong.”
Knowing the odds, Battier can pursue an inherently uncertain strategy with total certainty. He can devote himself to a process and disregard the outcome of any given encounter. This is critical because in basketball, as in everything else, luck plays a role, and Battier cannot afford to let it distract him."
Read the full article: HERE.
Justin.tv is Slingbox for De-centralized Media
A few weeks back, I was reading an article analyzing that night’s upcoming Laker game, which unfortunately wasn’t on TV where I live. To my surprise, I saw multiple commenters asking for URLs where to watch the game.
Responders pointed to links off of Justin.tv, a site where people broadcast and share LIVE VIDEO online. At game time, I clicked on one of these links and found the live game streaming to my desktop.
Welcome to Justin.tv, where in addition to people life streaming all of their inane thoughts, being exhibitionists and playing to voyeurs, there is another type of broadcaster.
This broadcaster (I am simplifying), plugs the Video Out portion of their cable or satellite feed into their broadband enabled computer and suddenly is broadcasting live sports, first run movies playing on their TV, pay movie channels, international programming and the like.
Unlike BitTorrent, the content is streamed, not downloaded, it is live, not archived, and it is inherently interactive, with chat, linking and the like running in parallel to the content.
It sits in a murky legal gray area, but runs in the same conversational thread as "What is a Social Media Center," and where does broadcast mastered content end and user-generated content begin.
Related Posts:
- Lakers-Celts and the Sporting Metaphor
- What it Means to be a "Social" Media Center: Boxee, Apple TV and Square Connect
- Metrics of Success: You can't improve what you don't measure
