

How David Beats Goliath - christonog
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
A great (but long) read for any start-up founder or those part of entrepreneurial organizations.
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jdrock
I know this is pedantic, but the article starts off with a poor example. The
reason full-court presses aren't used in basketball is because they are easily
beaten, especially when the team using them is smaller and slower than the
other team.

But aside from that point.. I find this article to be too light on hard
statistical evidence of the points being made. There's like one % thrown out
near the beginning, but the rest is anecdotes, historical one-shots, etc. Very
similar to the hand-wavy strategies used by Gladwell et al.

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donaldc
One of the points of the article was that, due to its incessant running
practice, the full-court press team was in better cardiovascular shape than
the other team, able to pull off the constant movement required for a full-
court press. Whereas the other team generally wasn't in that kind of running
shape. They might have been faster in some sense, but simply weren't up to the
constant movement required.

Clearly, the other team could easily have beaten the full-court press team,
had it put a similar amount of preparatory effort into running. But generally,
the other team did not. In this way effort trumped skill.

I realize the article was largely anecdotal, except for the study of wars
fought over the last 200 years. This makes its conclusions suspect, but not
necessarily invalid. Perhaps a full-court press only works when the weaker
team has put in a huge amount of endurance practice in preparation, and the
stronger team has not.

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dugmartin
While I think conditioning plays a role the real value is taking the other
team out of their rhythm. If you practice a game a certain way for years and
then someone changes the rules on you all your experience is moot.

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brandnewlow
Repost: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592043>

~~~
aston
At least this time it was posted after it was possible to have read it in the
actual magazine. I always cringe when I see news.yc threads around articles
for WIRED and The New Yorker a week before I have my hard copy.

~~~
mlinsey
A whole week? Interesting. I didn't know the lag time was that long - I
thought the newsstand date was just so the magazine wouldn't look out-of-date
until the day the next issue hit. For what it's worth, I posted the original
submission after reading the article on my Kindle.

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epe
Even though I sometimes enjoy his articles, I can never read Malcolm Gladwell
without thinking of this: <http://candid.livejournal.com/770034.html>

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Raphael
"'In the beginning, everyone laughed at our fleet,' Lenat said. 'It was really
embarrassing. People felt sorry for us. But somewhere around the third round
they stopped laughing, and some time around the fourth round they started
complaining to the judges. When we won again, some people got very angry, and
the tournament directors basically said that it was not really in the spirit
of the tournament to have these weird computer-designed fleets winning. They
said that if we entered again they would stop having the tournament. I decided
the best thing to do was to graciously bow out.'

It isn’t surprising that the tournament directors found Eurisko’s strategies
beyond the pale. It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they
were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember
why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms,
Goliath wins."

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johnnybgoode
My reaction was similar to jdrock's. Full-court presses aren't always used in
basketball because they are risky and easily beaten by a skilled team. The
opponents of the team profiled in the article were young and inexperienced.
That's why this worked.

There is a lesson to be learned here, but it's about outthinking your
opponent, not that NBA coaches are all idiots.

~~~
ecuzzillo
Michael Lewis showed that big-league baseball coaches and general managers are
nearly all idiots (or at least were until he wrote his book exposing them, at
which point a few non-idiots got hired, but most idiots kept their jobs), so
it's not necessarily totally implausible that NBA coaches are all idiots.

Out of curiosity, since I don't know anything about basketball, how do you
beat a full-court press, and why isn't it a good idea to at least try to stop
people from getting down the court?

~~~
jsomers
Like Gladwell points out, you have to be extremely well-conditioned to press
for a whole game. It takes a lot out of you. So it could be counter-productive
if your team isn't in excellent shape, because a _poorly executed_ press (say,
if your team is tired) makes it easy for the offense to just blow by you and
hit layups.

That said, a team of good ball-handlers can beat a strong press if they stay
calm and pass well. Patience and poise.

(Which is probably why the press is so effective in younger leagues: players
at that age get frantic under pressure and just don't have the dexterity/skill
to keep the ball under control)

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bdr
I didn't get that much out of this article. It's inspiring, but ultimately
comes down to something trite like "never give up, and break all the rules!"

Find some way to get the whole New Yorker issue, if you can. It's the annual
"Innovators" issue, so this is the right audience, and all the full-length
articles are at least as good as this one.

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racerboy
Gladwell is only using the basketball story as an example; whether or not "the
press" works is irrelevant. He is saying: look at the game differently.
Approach your competition from another angle. The Redwood City team was
successful because they looked at basketball differently and took another
approach. If they hadn't played 'untraditionally' they would have failed and
that's all we need to take away from this article.

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ibsulon
I keep looking at the girls basketball team pressing as a bad example. Girls
at that age, by and large, don't have the muscle to throw over a press.
Certainly, if I was a coach in that league, the moment I knew there was a
pressing team I'd have them doing pushups and long pass drills. I'd just hope
it would be enough.

At that age and league, however, a press _should_ be illegal.

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donaldc
There would also be nothing to prevent you, as a coach, from applying the same
full-court press strategy back to the pressing team. Even the coaches of the
team in the article conceded that this would have defeated them. So the
interesting question is why nobody did this...

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ibsulon
It's not about fairness, however. The game would turn into a game of "press"
rather than a game of "basketball." At that age, the strategy that wins is not
as important as developing basic skills that can be used later, such as in
high school where the players are physically developed enough to throw over a
press.

The problem is the physical limitation of how far the girl can throw a ball.
If you tell NBA players they can't pass more than seven feet, the press would
be a dominant strategy.

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nathanwdavis
Wonderful article!!

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vsingh
Agreed.. Anyone running a startup should have this article on their desk at
all times.

