Basketball as metaphor

OK-I read this last night. It was late. I may or may not remember the theme. But it's a good article. If you love basketball you will enjoy it. If you're interested in how little guys compete with big guys you'll find it interesting.

I don't know anything about basketball, though I have heard of a full court press. Now I take that to mean pressing your opponent from their baseline to yours. Rather than the weird way you usually see the game played where a basket is made and almost everyone ignores the ball and just runs to the other end of the court.

The author Malcolm Gladwell explains,

Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would inbound the ball and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A basketball court was ninety-four feet long. But most of the time a team defended only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet.

This is a story of a first time coach of a girl's basketball team who coached his underdog team to an amazing record. His strategy was simple. Push from the get go and never stop pushing.

I'm exhausted just reading about it.

I'm sure someone like Seth Godin could easily make a great comparison of Morgan, Julia, Nicky, Angela, Dani, Holly, Annika and Anjali and today's scrappy innernet companies. I'll leave it to him.

This is just a great story all by itelf. I hope you read it.