Basketball and Philosophy - Thinking Outside The Paint (PDFDrive)
Basketball and Philosophy - Thinking Outside The Paint (PDFDrive)
Series Editor
Mark T. Conard, Marymount Manhattan College, NY
EDITED BY
JERRY L. WALLS AND GREGORY BASSHAM
WITH A FOREWORD BY
DICK VITALE
To Brian Marshall and Duke Ruktanonchai, two guys with whom I have had
many good hoops arguments, and who have been saved from countless
confusions by my insightful observations and analyses.
—JW
Power Foreword
Dick Vitale
Acknowledgments
Tip-off: Hoops, Pop Culture, and Philosophy
FIRST QUARTER: BASELINE VALUES, ENDURING LESSONS
Building Communities One Gym at a Time:
Communitarianism and the Decline of Small-Town Basketball
Stephen H. Webb
To Hack or Not to Hack? (The Big) Aristotle, Excellence, and Moral Decision-
Making
Thomas D. Kennedy
Basketball Purists: Blind Sentimentalists or Insightful Critics?
R. Scott Kretchmar
Hardwood Dojos: What Basketball Can Teach Us about Character and Success
Gregory Bassham and Mark Hamilton
What Would Machiavelli Do? Confronting the Strategic Cheater in Pickup
Basketball
Regan Lance Reitsma
Basketball, Violence, Forgiveness, and Healing
Luke Witte
The Breaks of the Game: Luck and Fairness in Basketball
Scott A. Davison
The Beauty of the Game
Peg Brand and Myles Brand
SECOND QUARTER: PRIME-TIME PLAYERS, COACHES, AND
SAGES
The Zen Master and the Big Aristotle: Cultivating a Philosopher in the Low Post
Fritz Allhoff and Anand J. Vaidya
Wilt versus Russell: Excellence on the Hardwood
David K. O'Connor
The Wizard versus the General: Why Bob Knight Is a Greater Coach than John
Wooden
Jerry L. Walls
THIRD QUARTER: SHOOTING FROM THE PERIMETER
The Dao of Hoops
Dirk Dunbar
Hoop Dreams, Blacktop Realities: Basketball's Role in the Social Construction
of Black Manhood
Bernard Jackson Jr.
She Got Game: Basketball and the Perfectly Developed Woman
Deborah A. Wallace and James M. Wallace
FOURTH QUARTER: METAPHYSICAL MADNESS
Shooting with Confidence
Kevin Kinghorn
The Hot Hand in Basketball: Illusion or Reality?
Steven D. Hales
Philosophers Can't Jump: Reflections on Living Time and Space in Basketball
Tim Elcombe
Playing for the Same Team Again
Matthew H. Slater and Achille C. Varzi
Plato and Aristotle on the Role of Soul in Taking the Rock to the Hole
Daniel B. Gallagher
The Basket That Never Was
Thomas P. Flint
Hoosiers and the Meaning of Life
Michael L. Peterson
The Lineup
Index
POWER FOREWORD
Dick Vitale
IF YOU ARE an avid basketball fan, you are certainly aware of my passion for
the game that has served me so well. I have been so lucky to have been involved
in this game, which was started over a century ago by Mr. Naismith.
Interestingly, I bet many of you did not know that Mr. Naismith was a
philosopher and a Presbyterian minister as well as a man who was active in
many ways in the great game he invented.
My journey has taken me through every level involving the roundball game.
I've had the golden opportunity to coach on the scholastic, collegiate, and
professional levels. Also, for several decades I have been blessed with the
opportunity to share the microphone on ESPN/ABC to discuss this magnificent
game. I pinch myself every day thinking how lucky I have been to be able to sit
at courtside watching many of our greats, such as Jordan, Magic, Bird, LeBron,
Dwyane, Shaq, and many others. I certainly have seen it all in the world of
basketball, baby!
But here's something I haven't seen: philosophers sharing their concepts and
feelings about the game I respect and revere. Wow—I may not agree with all
their theories and arguments, but Mr. Walls and Mr. Bassham have created an
exciting concept for hoops fanatics to analyze. They take you on a thrill ride as
they and their fellow philosophers express their views of this magical game.
Trust me, you will be challenged and amazed by the variety of ways they have
found to look at the game. For example, who would ever think to associate
basketball with the term “communitarianism”? That's a mouthful, baby! Or who
would ever expect to be talking about hoops and Aristotle in the same sentence?
Or Machiavelli and roundball? Believe me, you will find this approach to
basketball to be totally different from that in any other book you have ever
opened.
Well, my friends, enjoy this fascinating perspective on basketball. Take this
philosophical excursion, analyze it, dissect it, and argue with it. I am so proud to
know that the game I love has even touched philosophical prime-time players
like Walls and Bassham. Who knows? Maybe the next Michelangelo of
philosophy will read this book and come to share my passion for Mr. Naismith's
marvelous game.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS TO MY children, Angela Rose and Jonathan Levi, for the numerous
ways they inspire and amuse me, not always consciously. Jonathan deserves a
special word of acknowledgment for still loving basketball despite the workouts.
Thanks to various friends with whom I have discussed and debated hoops over
the years: Bill Arnold, Tony Casey, Brent Claiborne, Harriet Cook, Joe Dongell,
Chris Fowler, Les Fowler, Rusty George, Tony Headley, Derek Keefe, Nick
Maples, Brian Marshall, Gabe Pendleton, Duke Ruktanonchai, Reid Walker, and
Ben Witherington. Thanks also to Elizabeth Victoria Glass for countless happy
hours of watching ESPN together, during which she often shared her estrogen-
tinged angle on the game, though I am still not sure how she was lucky enough
to pick the national champion the very first time she filled out a tournament
bracket.
—JW
THANKS TO BILL Irwin, who read almost the whole book in draft and offered
helpful suggestions on every chapter. Thanks too to Jamie McAndrew, Alex
Schroeder, J. P. Andrejko, Eric Bronson, Aeon Skoble, and Kelly Clark for
providing valuable feedback. Copy editor Cheryl Hoffman and the good people
at the University Press of Kentucky were a pleasure to work with at every step.
To friends Roger Hurt, Scott Padek, and Mike Kelley: thanks for the great hoops
at the CMC. A very special thanks to Dick Vitale for contributing the foreword,
and to Tom Morris for putting us in touch with Dickie V. To Al Padek, coach of
the Wright Hawks and role model to dozens of kids in South Tulsa, this book is
gratefully dedicated. As always, my greatest debt is to my wife, Mia, and my
son, Dylan. You make all the difference.
—GB
TIP-OFF
Hoops, Pop Culture, and Philosophy
and White Men Can't Jump offer revealing perspectives on hoops and American
culture. And each spring millions of college hoops fans (and office-pool
participants) are seized by “March Madness” as colleges from around the
country battle their way through a grueling sixty-five-team, single-elimination
tournament for the glory of being crowned national champions.
The connections between basketball and philosophy may be less obvious but
are nonetheless fascinating and significant. How do you measure true greatness
in a basketball player or coach? What can basketball teach us about character
and success? Can studying Eastern mystical traditions such as Zen Buddhism
and Taoism improve your jump shot? Is intentional fouling unethical, and if so,
when? How should you deal with strategic cheaters in pickup basketball? Is
women's basketball, with its emphasis on fundamentals and team-centered play,
“better” basketball than the more individualistic, physical, and showboating style
often favored in the NBA? If a ref makes a bad call and mistakenly disallows a
team's winning basket, did that team in fact win the game—or can you win a
game only if the refs say that you won the game? With constantly changing
rosters, what does it mean for a player to play for the “same team”? Is the
phenomenon of having a “hot hand” in basketball an illusion, as several
prominent scientists and philosophers of sport have argued? What makes
basketball such a beautiful game to watch? What can the film Hoosiers teach us
about the meaning of life? All of these philosophical conundrums, and more, are
explored in this volume.
As Dickie V. notes in his foreword, the inventor of basketball, Dr. James
Naismith, was himself a philosophy major as an undergraduate and was also
actively involved in debate through a campus literary society. Although
basketball is sometimes regarded as less cerebral than sports such as baseball
and golf, this philosophical pedigree perhaps gives hoops the rightful claim to
being “the thinking person's game.” Be that as it may, there is no doubt that
exploring the philosophical dimensions of the game can make you a more
insightful and appreciative fan, a more effective coach, and a better player—not
to mention help you win arguments with fellow fans!
In fact, as both professional philosophers and avid hoops fans, we've found
that the quality of argumentation among serious basketball fans is often quite
high, and that these arguments frequently take on a distinctively philosophical
shape. Assumptions are spelled out, terms are clearly defined—both hallmarks
of philosophical debate—and theses are clearly defended. A good example is a
recent article by ESPN Magazine columnist Ric Bucher on the issue of who
should be MVP in the NBA in the 2005-2006 season. As Bucher notes, this
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question is hard to answer with any sort of definitive clarity because “MVP” can
be taken in several ways. He mentions several possibilities:
MEP—Most Excellent Player
MVPOAWT—Most Valuable Player on a Winning Team
MSIPOATTWBTE—Most Statistically Impressive Player on a Team That
Was Better Than Expected
MVPOTBT—Most Valuable Player on the Best Team
MDPDTSOATTFS—Most Dominant Player Down the Stretch on a Team
That Finishes Strong
MIP—Most Indispensable Player
While Bucher professes to be tiring of this debate, his terminological precision is
admirable. His distinctions remind us of the kinds of precise, clarifying
definitions we often see in contemporary analytic philosophy. And while they
have a slightly humorous edge, they show that the highly contested question of
how value is assigned may hinge significantly on implicit assumptions that need
to be spelled out.
Though published by an academic press, this is not really an “academic”
book. It is written for basketball fans by basketball fans, most of whom also
happen to be professional philosophers. Like the coeditors’ two previous books
on philosophy and popular culture, it is intended to be a serious but accessible
exploration of the often surprising ways that philosophy can illuminate and
enrich popular culture and pop culture can serve as a hook for serious
philosophizing. It's a symbiotic relationship of which Dr. Naismith, the
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Notes
FIRST QUARTER
Stephen H. Webb
What Is a Community?
Rick Mount's attitude toward the pros serves as a good example of a
philosophical movement called communitarianism. Communitarianism is hard to
define because it is known as much for what it rejects as for what it stands for.
Communitarians are political philosophers who believe, as you might guess from
their name, that the needs of the community outweigh the desires of the
individual.
Most modern philosophical theories about what makes for a good society
begin with the individual. These theories are often called “liberal,” though that
shouldn't be confused with the contemporary use of that label. Liberal political
theories have shaped the political beliefs of both Democrats and Republicans.
These theories argue that the foundation of social order is individual rights and
that these rights are universal in scope. Notice that there are two parts to this
claim. First, philosophical liberals begin their thinking with individuals.
Individuals are the most basic reality, while communities are considered little
more than an aggregation of individuals. Second, philosophical liberals insist
that human rights apply to everyone, regardless of who they are or where they
live. Philosophical liberals thus are more interested in those aspects of human
nature that are shared by everyone, not the local customs, rituals, and beliefs that
distinguish one group from another.
When philosophical liberals begin with individual rights, they quickly run into
the problem of connecting those rights with social obligations. Philosophical
liberals understand rights as inherent in human nature. Humans are unique,
rational, and of infinite worth. Therefore, all humans should be treated equally
and with respect. Rights thus function to protect individuals from each other and
from the intrusion of governmental authority. But what about the obligations we
have to each other? If rights are the most fundamental expression of our
humanity, then what becomes of the social and civic duties that keep individuals
connected to each other and to their local and national communities? What is the
glue that holds society together?
Philosophical liberals have all sorts of ingenious ways of connecting rights to
obligations, but communitarians think that you cannot build a solid community
on the shaky foundation of individualism. Philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre,
Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer have set out to dismantle
the liberal emphasis on individuals and their rights. Communitarians follow
Aristotle in arguing that humans are naturally social creatures. People find value
in life through their attachments to various groups, organizations, or teams. The
claim that society is composed of individuals with rights doesn't do justice to
how people actually lead their lives. In fact, philosophical liberalism is itself the
product of many centuries of collaborative thinking on the part of a
philosophical community. Philosophical liberalism is a tradition that denies or
downplays the importance of tradition, making it impossible for liberals to
account for the origin of their own ideas.
Philosophical liberals think they are preserving human dignity when they
advocate the enforcement of universal rights. In reality, they are imposing
artificial and restrictive norms that don't correspond to how societies actually
operate. Communities determine meaning, not individuals. As the familiar
example of team bonding in basketball illustrates, people value each other and
the places they live because they have shared goals, common beliefs, and public
rituals that bring them together. It follows that the best way to preserve the
dignity of individuals is to strengthen and enhance the communities to which
they belong. The abstract idea of human rights will accomplish nothing if
societies don't have the wisdom and the will to enforce those rights.
Philosophical liberals respond to communitarians by arguing that societies can
do more harm in the world than individuals. When individuals join together in a
group, they have more power than when they act alone, but they also are less
inclined to raise questions about the group's beliefs and activities. Groups are so
powerful, liberals argue, that individuals tend to conform to the wishes of the
whole. Prejudices go unchecked and minorities are often made the victims of
collective action. Communitarians answer this criticism by arguing that the law
alone cannot protect minorities from majority rule. If a society is to succeed in
being both cohesive and diverse, then mutual respect and compassion for
outsiders must become part of the daily routine and habits of all its citizens.
Individuals learn to put the interests of others ahead of their own by belonging to
communities that require them to get along with each other. A just society,
communitarians conclude, will consist of many smaller communities where
people will learn the values of trusting and respecting each other. Indeed, these
are values that can't be learned by individuals in isolation from communal
participation.
Communitarians also reject the liberal insistence on the universality of human
rights. Communitarians argue that what makes one society good might differ
from what makes another society good—just as two equally good basketball
teams may have totally contrasting styles. Good societies make demands on their
citizens to be involved and to help others, and they can do this only if those
citizens have something in common with each other that they don't share with
other societies. That is, every community must have a tradition or set of
traditions that makes it unique, so that its members feel privileged to be a part of
that community. Traditions also help members identify with each other and put
the needs of the community above their personal desires.
Communitarians believe that communities need cultivation and protection.
Communities are more than a collection of individual persons, just as a
basketball team is more than the sum of its parts. Communities, like persons, can
grow, change, and die. Each community has its own personality, which it
expresses in its own way. Communitarians realize, of course, that communities
can become a threat to individual liberty and happiness. Nonetheless, they hold
that the needs of communities must often take precedence over the desires of
individuals because it is in everyone's interest to live in a society where
communities flourish. Without shared moral boundaries and rules, individuals
would be set adrift in a sea of moral confusion and social fragmentation. Strong
community, not anarchy, is the source of true individualism. It takes courage and
communal nurturance to be an individual. As philosopher Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) argues, in a state of moral anarchy, everyone acts alike.
Because strong communities are necessary for true individualism, America
used to be more genuinely diverse than it is today. Before the rise of suburbs and
strip malls, the various regions of America looked and sounded different from
each other. Each small town had its own character. Small towns were also full of
characters—people who were celebrated for their eccentricities. (Think of
Goober, Gomer Pyle, and Barney Fife on the old Andy Griffith Show.) Local
communities had more freedom to exercise authority over their members, which
meant that decisions about which groups to join carried more consequences.
People expressed themselves through their local affiliations, and their
participation in these groups made a difference to their neighborhoods and
towns.
The mass media have changed forever the significance of local loyalties and
attachments. The world of athletics has contributed to this transformation and
has also been a victim of it. Fans used to follow the teams closest to home
because they had no way of knowing what the other teams were doing. Now fans
root for teams that play hundreds or thousands of miles away. On many of these
teams, none of the players are from the city they represent, and several may hail
from different countries. Owners move teams to maximize their profits, and
players move from team to team for the same reason. Many people still follow
their team like true believers, but it's hard to know what they believe in. Perhaps
it's inevitable that sports have become part of the entertainment industry,
providing distraction rather than edification. It hasn't always been that way,
however, as the movie Hoosiers attests. Basketball can be a lot more than
entertainment by being a lot less than big-time competition.
eight of the largest thirty-six gyms in the nation. The largest of them all is the
New Castle Fieldhouse, in New Castle, Indiana, which has 9,314 seats.
Hoosiers have been crazy about basketball ever since the Reverend Nicholas
C. McKay brought the game to the Crawfordsville, Indiana, YMCA only two
years after the game was invented. The first Indiana basketball games were
played in attics, Masonic halls, barns, and churches. The first “gyms” were so
irregular in size, with protruding walls and low ceilings, that local rules took
effect, allowing players to make bounce shots and eliminating out of bounds.
When small towns built gyms expressly for basketball games, they designed
them to look like the barns that dominate the Hoosier landscape. This common
touch had an egalitarian impact on town life. People of all incomes and religious
affiliations sat together and rooted for the same cause. Schools were not
desegregated for years to come, but Indiana gyms helped begin the process of
creating unity amid diversity.
The state tournament, first held in 1911, gave Hoosiers a sense of identity and
allowed small towns to express their loyalty and pride. Towns competed to be
sectional and regional hosts, so they began building gyms that often held more
people than the number of residents who lived there. In many Indiana towns, the
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gym was the largest building and thus the one place where everyone could
gather. The gyms held dances, school plays, and graduation ceremonies, as well
as basketball games, but it was the games that gave the gyms their most lasting
significance. Even as late as the 1990s, when there were more entertainment
options for young people than ever before, nearly a million Hoosiers annually
attended the state tournament. To put those numbers in perspective, California,
with six times as many residents, was drawing only 250,000 fans to its state
tournament.
Few of the gyms built in the 1920s through the 1940s remain in use today.
Many were rendered obsolete by school consolidations that began in the late
1940s. In 1950, 766 high schools competed in the state tournament. By 1990,
that number was reduced to 386. For many communities, the closing of the gym
meant the end of their existence. In 1950 Life magazine covered the closing of
Onward High School, when state troopers were sent to evict the parents who
surrounded the school and the students who stayed inside. The struggle lasted
two years, ending only when the state nullified the high school's accreditation. In
many cases, old high school gyms became elementary schools or community
centers. Some became churches or businesses. Others were preserved only to
remain empty, abandoned to the elements, but too full of memories to be torn
down. 4
expected to uphold the local values. Athletes who are national stars are held to
more rigorous competitive standards but, unfortunately, less rigorous moral
standards. National stars can get away with outrageous behavior because they
are essentially entertainers who have no direct impact on the lives of their fans.
Local stars are asked to do their best and to behave in the process. Fifteen years
ago, Damon Bailey dominated Indiana high school basketball, and 41,101 fans
showed up at the Hoosier Dome to see him play for the state championship in
1990. Yet every discussion of Bailey began or ended with how polite and well
mannered he was. Larry Bird was one of the greatest players in state history, but
what people respected most was his work ethic and the way he handled
adversity. John Wooden, who grew up in Martinsville, Indiana (population
5,200), enshrined these small-town virtues in his famous “Pyramid of Success”
by putting industriousness and enthusiasm at the cornerstones.
One way of understanding the impact of television on sports is to draw on the
distinction, often made by communitarian philosophers, between virtual and real
communities. Virtual communities exist more in the imagination than in concrete
reality. They are created by magazines, newspapers, television, and, increasingly,
the Internet. They are sustained by advertising and merchandise. Towns used to
be united by the team they rooted for. Now you don't know who your fellow
citizens cheer for unless they wear the logo of their favorite team. Virtual
communities can be exciting and engaging, but something is lost when the local
is replaced by the national or international.
When people no longer feel like they belong to local communities, their basic
human need for belonging is replaced with nostalgia for the past. Evidence for
this claim can be found in the construction of Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown
Indianapolis. It was designed to maximize the number of seats, suites, and fan
amenities while evoking memories of the state's glorious basketball heritage.
With a vintage scoreboard, a roll-out bleacher section, a brick concourse, and
ushers dressed in uniforms that look like they were pulled from a Hollywood
costume rack marked “Fifties,” Conseco looks like an enormous high school
gym. The arched roof especially brings back memories of the old barnlike field
houses that dotted the cornfields of Indiana. In fact, Conseco Fieldhouse is the
first theme stadium, intended, like an amusement park, to conjure up a fantasy
world for older fans. A ticket gets you not just a ball game but also a set of
memories and a feeling of warmth about the past.
Conseco Fieldhouse has been praised as one of the most attractive stadiums in
the nation, but it cannot replace the social functions of the small-town gyms it is
meant to imitate. The tickets are expensive, so only the relatively well-to-do can
afford to attend games on a regular basis. The gym is in the middle of the state's
largest city, so people in small towns are made to feel on the margins of the
action, isolated and left behind. Finally, there is undoubtedly a diverse crowd at
the games, but the fans come for the glamour of the star athletes and thus have
little to talk to one another about except the game itself. Most social interaction
takes place in the expensive suites, which businesses rent to entertain their
clients. Rather than being active participants in the meaning of the game, fans
are passive consumers of a product. The particular and local have been replaced
by the general and universal.
Notes
1. Bob Williams, Hoosier Hysteria: Indiana High School Basketball (South
Bend, IN: Hardwood Press, 1997), 142.
2. Sal Ruibal, “Fieldhouse a Cathedral to High School Hoops,” USA Today
Online, February 27, 2004,
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps/basketball/2004-02-25-ten-great-hoops-
newcastle_x.htm.
3. When UCLA freshman Johnny Moore played his first home game in 1951,
a reporter asked him if he was nervous playing in front such a large crowd
(2,500). Moore, who hailed from Gary, Indiana, replied: “Well, sir, the UCLA
gym is nothing compared to my last high school game in Indiana. They had a
crowd of eighteen thousand that night.” Dwight Chapin and Jeff Prugh, The
Wizard of Westwood: Coach John Wooden and His UCLA Bruins (New York:
Warner, 1973), 103.
4. For a moving account of the fate of these gyms, see Donald E. Hamilton,
Hoosier Temples: A Pictorial History of Indiana's High School Gyms (St. Louis:
G. Bradley, 1993).
5. Benjamin G. Rader, In Its Own Image: How Television Has Transformed
Sports (New York: Free Press, 1984).
Thomas D. Kennedy
I'd like to be known as “the Big Aristotle.” It was Aristotle who said excellence is not a singular act,
but a habit.
—Shaquille O'Neal
Things have changed in basketball, and mostly for the better. If fouls were, at
first, definite no-no's, that's no longer the case. And if Dr. Naismith had in mind
a game in which there would be very little physical contact between players, that
isn't basketball as we know it at any level today—professional, collegiate, or
pickup. Basketball, for good or ill, has become a contact sport, and even great
players commit their share of fouls. Indeed, in some sense great players seem to
be great—or at least, good—foulers. Consider this: arguably the greatest player
in the history of the game, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is also the career leader for
personal fouls (4,657). Granted, he's also the all-time career leader in minutes
played (57,446), and it stands to reason that the more minutes played, the greater
the opportunity to foul, as well as the greater the likelihood of fouling, since
tired players seem likely to foul more frequently than rested players.
Still, Kareem fouled a lot. As do a lot of great players. If you look at the 1997
NBA selection of the top fifty NBA players of all time, half of those names
would also appear on the list of the top one hundred career foulers. It's true that
big players foul more frequently than small players in the modern game; only
two guards—John Stockton and the amazing Hal Greer of the 1960s
Philadelphia 76ers—appear in the top twenty of the NBA career leaders for
personal fouls. But big players have no corner on fouling. In addition to
Stockton and Greer, recall these other accomplished foulers: Clyde Drexler, John
Havlicek, Calvin Murphy, Rick Barry, Isiah Thomas, and Oscar Robertson.
We should find this perplexing. In basketball, as in other sports, a foul is a
type of defect, a violation of a fundamental rule of the game. One fundamental
of shoemaking would seem to be that the sole of the shoe goes on the bottom,
the laces on the top. Can we imagine an excellent shoemaker whose every sixth
or seventh pair of shoes had the sole on the top, or on the side, or on the back of
the shoe? Would we call someone an excellent driver if she had an accident
every ninth or tenth time she got in the car, regardless of her driving
accomplishments the other 80-plus percent of the time? Could there be an
excellent jazz saxophonist who in his improvisations played notes just because
he found them interesting or weird, disregarding what the rest of the combo was
playing? In each case, we are inclined to think of excellence in a regulative
(rule-governed) activity as requiring not only knowledge of the rules but also an
adherence to them. So how could an excellent basketball player foul a lot, and
thus be a major violator of the fundamentals of the game? Shouldn't that count
against basketball greatness? If Kareem wanted to be an excellent player,
shouldn't he have fouled less? And, although Phil (from my noontime basketball
games) can shoot the three-pointer, isn't his incessant hacking—excuse me for a
moment while I change the bandage over my eye from one of Phil's wild swings
today—evidence that he is far from a great pickup player? Maybe Kareem isn't
the greatest basketball player ever. Maybe, given his fouling record, he wasn't
even a great player at all. (Of course, even if that were the case, you and I might
still want to play on Kareem's team.)
Or maybe part of what makes a great basketball player great isn't the number
of fouls he commits, but how savvy he is about fouling. Maybe great players
foul the right person at the right time in the right way with the right aim in view,
and feel the right way about the foul, which is a kind of roundball paraphrase of
what the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.c.) says about having morally
excellent qualities. Maybe great players know when fouling is the appropriate
thing to do and when it's not. And maybe an excellent player is like a morally
excellent person in knowing when to take risks that might lead to a violation of
the rules and when to intend not merely the risk but an intentional violation of
the rules themselves. That, at least, is what I shall argue.
fouls (although almost none of Phil the Hacker's fouls) are unintentional actions
that we couldn't help because our bodies were out of control or we followed the
fake. We don't know how many of Kareem's fouls were acts, or intentional fouls;
how many of his fouls were actions in which he intended to block a shot, or steal
a ball, or blockout for a rebound, but was called for a foul; and how many of his
fouls were cases in which his intention was to perform a risky act that might or
might not be called a foul.
The interesting questions for us have to do with acts and how intentional
violations of rules fit with excellence in the activity governed by the rules. If we
think of morality, would the morally excellent person intentionally violate those
rules we normally recognize as binding? If we think of the practices of investing
money or creating a musical work, would the excellent person violate the rules
that govern those practices? In basketball, how frequently, if at all, might an
excellent player intend either to foul or to make a risky play that might well be
called a foul? We can't cover everything here, so let's start by trying to think
more carefully just about intentional fouls. Would an excellent player ever
intentionally foul another player? Or is the intentional violation of the rules
always a defect?
The first premise is, of course, disputable. Basketball isn't rollerball, and if
“playing one's hardest” means “doing whatever it takes to win,” few people
would be inclined to accept the premise. Still, it seems that a consequentialist
might reasonably support strategic fouling unless the consequences of such fouls
would make the game of basketball significantly less enjoyable to play or watch
than otherwise.
What about a deontologist? It isn't clear how deliberately fouling a player is a
violation of what one owes another—whether, that is, there is a right never to be
fouled in a game. So one is hard-pressed to agree with Shaq that there is
something deeply problematic about strategic fouls, at least on consequentialist
or deontological grounds. Thus, tactical fouling, even the Hack-a-Shaq strategy,
seems not to violate any easily recognizable principles of either deontological or
utilitarian ethics.
Despite this, isn't there something to Shaq's objection? Even if we can't find
any compelling consequentialist or deontological objections to the Hack-a-Shaq
strategy, doesn't it nevertheless seem in some sense to be “clownish”? Tactical
fouling, even when one is willing to accept the consequences of one's actions,
ought to be a source of embarrassment, shouldn't it? It may not be goon
basketball, but it is clown basketball. It isn't basketball the way an excellent
player would play it.
Notes
1. Naismith's notion of fouls was actually a bit more expansive than this.
Essentially, a foul was any violation of the rules of basketball; for example,
striking the ball with a fist (rule 6), running with the ball (rule 3), and holding
the ball with some body parts other than one's hands (rule 4) were also fouls.
2. Not surprisingly, things are a little more complicated than this. Consider
what we should say about a drunken fan who throws ice on the court. In some
sense, he may not have been in control of what he did. “That wasn't me who did
that,” he may genuinely say in a sober moment. Most of us at the very least
would say that he was culpable for knowing that were he to get drunk, he might
very well throw ice on the court. He was culpable for getting drunk, and one
consequence of that act that he should have foreseen was that his drunkenness
might lead him to act like a buffoon.
3. You (and Phil!) should think about the difference between not intending to
slash my chest when you are guarding me and intending not to do me harm when
I shoot. Phil never intends to hurt people, I am convinced—he's a nice guy. The
problem is that, apparently, Phil too rarely intends not to hurt people.
4. Former North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano offers a similar rationale
for ordering his team to foul in the last ten minutes of the 1983 national
championship game against Houston, which NC State won 54-52. See Jim
Valvano and Curry Kirkpatrick, Valvano (New York: Pocket Books, 1991), 165.
5. This imaginary case, and the description of this type of basketball as “goon
basketball,” owes more than a little to coach John Chaney of Temple University.
6. What is it to be a hacker, in contrast with just occasionally hacking? Think
of a hacking foul as a foul aimed at stopping the play by physically impairing the
opponent. A hacker is someone who makes a habit of hacking rather than
genuinely challenging the opponent by trying to block a shot or box out.
R. Scott Kretchmar
BASKETBALL PURISTS
Blind Sentimentalists or Insightful Critics?
Purist Modernist
Centered on team capability Centered on individual capability
Based on honing of skills, fundamentals Based on exceptional athleticism
Emphasizes team-related skills and group Emphasizes individual skills and
achievement one-on-one matchups
Requires good team spacing/passing Requires clearing out, beating a
single opponent
Based on patience; more half-court play Based on pressure; more full-
court play
Grounded in help-defense Grounded in man-to-man
defense
Emphasizes quickness, deception, sound Emphasizes raw speed, strength,
footwork, good positioning brute force
Based on excellent shooting skills, often Less emphasis on shooting skills;
outside shots that come from half-court shots often come from transition
plays play and feature inside
opportunities, dunks, and put-
backs
Emphasizes defense Features offense over defense
This is certainly not a complete list of differences, and the comparisons provided
may look like caricatures of basketball play. Most teams blend elements of the
two styles, and most good coaches shift one way or the other depending on the
talent they have on their current squads. Nevertheless, these contrasts show us
what is at stake in this debate and lay out unmistakable differences in how we
play and value the game. Furthermore, when I read or hear about this debate in
the media, these are the factors that are typically mentioned. Thus, while the list
is surely incomplete and debatable, it should still serve us reasonably well by
clarifying the general tendencies of purist and modernist basketball.
Searle was more interested in languages than he was in games, but his argument
can be used for either. He notes that languages are conventions—that is, artificial
constructs that are the product of what he calls constitutive rules. Conventions
are built to serve a purpose. With languages the purpose is to facilitate good
communication. In other words, the rules that determine how language works—
rules of vocabulary, syntax, and grammar, for example—should build a language
system that performs various communication functions well. For instance, these
rules allow us to record information accurately and efficiently. They help us to
understand one another clearly. They give us the means to ask questions, make
statements, raise doubts, and perform other communicative tasks well.
A similar line of reasoning can be used for games, including basketball.
Games, too, are conventions composed of constitutive rules and created to
perform a function. This function, according to Bernard Suits and other leading
commentators on games, is to provide an artificial test. Good games, in short,
provide good tests. These tests can be used for any number of purposes—among
them, to while away the time when we are bored, to make money if we are
professional athletes, or to teach children useful lessons and values. But
regardless of the uses to which games are put, the fundamental principle of
gamewrighting remains the same. It is to create a good test.
This Searlean line of reasoning puts us within reach of some objective criteria
that could be used to evaluate the rules of language—or the rules of games. If
some rules of syntax, for example, make it more difficult to understand what
someone is saying, we would have a reason to change the rules. And we would
have good reason for concluding that any language system using such rules
would be inferior to another one that avoided them. Likewise, if some rules of
basketball make it a lesser test, we would have reason to change those rules or
simply avoid that brand of basketball.
Purists rightly claim that a game that involves ten individuals in tightly
interactive relationships both offensively and defensively is more complex than a
game that emphasizes only two individuals in these relationships. More
complexity exists in a ten-person test because more variables are involved in
making things go right (or wrong). Players, I would argue, appreciate this
complexity because there are more possibilities to be exploited. Informed fans
who watch basketball enjoy ten-person complexity because there is more to see
and understand.
Complexity is valuable in games for another reason, namely, durability.
Complex games like basketball and chess continue to attract us, even after years
of play, training, or observation as a fan. Excessively simple games like tic-tac-
toe, on the other hand, lose their charm quickly. Some of us, for instance, have
tried our hand at solving interlocking-ring puzzles. Even though some of them
are tremendously difficult, they lack complexity. Once we solve them, or in my
case, once someone shows me how to solve them, we put them aside. Once
solved, always solved. They lack complexity and no longer attract.
Basketball, in this respect, is more like chess than it is like tic-tac-toe. Any
“solution” in basketball always stands in relationship to additional problems and
future improvement. And importantly for the argument here, the complex, ten-
person basketball game favored by purists offers the richer and more durable
test. Searle would undoubtedly agree that games function better when their
constitutive rules promote appropriate levels of complexity.
A second argument for the purist style of basketball focuses on the importance of
multiple opportunities and their role in promoting social equity. I will call this
the “variety argument.” Once again, I am indebted to others for this defense of
the purist tradition.
Ethicist Robert Simon has argued that social justice requires the
acknowledgment of differences between people for the distribution of some
goods. This fair distribution can be promoted in at least two different ways.
1
Society can guarantee access to goods by setting aside opportunities for special
groups. This is roughly the separate-but-equal strategy promoted by Plessy vs.
Ferguson (1896) and is present in the current Title IX legislation that supports
women's college athletics. Alternately, society can provide and value such a
variety of opportunities that individuals with different skills and interests would
all flourish. Fewer set-asides or safety nets would be required under this scenario
because most people could find their own niche and would be honored for their
unique strengths.
This second route to social justice is based on an idealistic vision of diversity
and equality. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that any contemporary societies
exemplify anything close to what Simon has in mind. Nevertheless, in our
current collection of far-less-than-perfect societies, such thinking places a value
on variety as we work toward ever more complete forms of social justice.
Variety in sporting opportunities better serves communities that have diverse sets
of skills and interests for playing and watching sports. From this it follows that
we have a moral responsibility to promote diversity, not uniformity, in our
collection of sports—assuming, of course, that we have an interest in promoting
social justice via this method.
Of course, a huge variety of sports and other kinds of games can be found
across the globe and within the boundaries of any one country. It would seem
that almost everyone, regardless of body shape, muscular strength, gender, age,
wealth, or ethnicity, could find something suitable either to play or watch.
Variety, in other words, would seem to be a foregone conclusion. But as the
philosopher John Stuart Mill argues in his classic On Liberty (1859), variety is
always under fire from vested interests like business, ruling powers, custom,
tradition, and other homogenizing influences.
Philosopher William Morgan has shown, for example, that capitalism and
gamewrighting can run at cross-purposes. In capitalist societies if a game will
2
“sell” better, even though its improved marketability requires that it be pushed in
the direction of other sports that already sell well, so be it. If basketball becomes
a bit more like football, for instance, no entrepreneurial hackles are raised so
long as football-like skills and activities are profitable. When the external logic
of business takes precedence over the “gratuitous logic” of gamewrighting,
variety may be sacrificed as a result.
One conclusion that might be drawn from these considerations is that both
purist and modernist versions of the game should be preserved because this adds
variety to basketball. Those who culturally or physically prefer the team-oriented
purist game can play or watch it. And those who are drawn to the modernist
game can follow their druthers as well.
This is not a bad conclusion in principle. We want a reasonable degree of
flexibility in our games so that they better fit diverse cultures, genders, age
groups, and other subpopulations. Furthermore, virtually all of our current games
—from golf to poker—take on slightly different shapes for diverse groups of
people who play them and for the diverse purposes to which they might be put.
Basketball games promoted by religious organizations to attract converts, for
instance, are organized and conducted differently than basketball activities in a
gym class that are designed to promote health and physical fitness.
That level of diversity, however, is not what is at issue here. Cultural pressures
work across all these diverse populations and purposes to reduce the differences
between basketball and other popular games. Women, men, children, religious
devotees, physical education teachers, and others who play and watch basketball
are all influenced by celebrity players, SportsCenter coverage of the game, the
style of play they typically see on television, and the like. If cultural pressures
exerted by these phenomena push in the direction of less difference between
basketball and other popular games, the results will infiltrate virtually all
domains and forms of basketball.
This is where the rub lies. Basketball, arguably, has become more like football
under influences of the modernist game. Play in the post area has grown
tremendously physical. One very large person leans against another very large
person in an attempt to dislodge that individual from a desired spot on the court.
One center uses vigorous “swimming motions” to hook the opponent and again
forcibly move him or her out of the way. A power forward or a very strong
shooting guard will post up and then literally butt their way backward toward the
hoop and an easy basket or foul-shot opportunity. Some of these power moves
near the basket result in a slam dunk, a kind of basketball shot that is predicated
on power, not on touch or accuracy. In addition, pure foot speed becomes a
premium in fast-break or transition forms of play. Modernist basketball has
moved in the direction of a contest to see who can beat the other team down the
court.
Many of these basketball actions are similar to those we see in college or NFL
football. The skillful use of brute strength and force wins the day. Dislodging
individuals from positions by using tremendous body mass, momentum, and
muscular strength plays a major role in football. Speed, in contrast to quickness,
is important when running the ball, going deep for a pass, or defending against
the ground game or an aerial attack. Such vigorous play and blinding speed lie
very much at the heart of what both players and fans love about the game of
football. The core of its game test, in other words, has a great deal to do with
hitting and outrunning.
Basketball should be different. Purists better than modernists, I would argue,
resist the evolution of basketball toward the excessively muscular, outrun-the-
opponent, football-like game. Basketball, while still a very physical activity that
includes a good amount of body contact, retains its distinctive charms if it
emphasizes such qualities as quickness, touch, positioning, footwork, accuracy,
and deception over brute force and blinding speed. 3
These distinctive qualities of basketball were present from the start. The
inventor of the game, James Naismith, was given the assignment of developing
an activity that could be played indoors during the winter months. Because of
constrained space and safety considerations, he felt that he needed to develop
rules that would honor accuracy over speed, and deception and quickness over
brute force. He mulled over two kinds of goals or targets that might be used in
this new game: a vertical one, like those used in soccer or football, and a
horizontal one, like those used in golf and horseshoes. The problem with vertical
goals, he reasoned, is that they put a premium on fast, forceful shots and
excessively physical play. Thus, he selected a horizontal goal or basket and
placed it well above the player's reach so that scoring would require accuracy
combined with a “soft touch.” In short, many of the distinctive charms of
basketball were enabled, quite intentionally, by basketball's horizontal, elevated
goal.
Of course, neither history nor Naismith's intentions provide strong philosophic
arguments for one brand of basketball over another. But a knowledge of history
helps us understand the distinctiveness of this game—how and why it is
different, for example, from games that use vertical goals. An understanding of
the game's roots also allows us more clearly to make choices about preserving a
rich diversity of gaming opportunities. The promotion of social justice through
variety requires nothing less.
On this account, both the purist and modernist forms of basketball are practices.
As MacIntyre argues, practices are evolving phenomena with ever-new standards
of excellence as they are found, acknowledged, and endorsed by their respective
practice communities. This would seem to leave room for modernists’ version of
the game and their complaint that purists refuse to accept new (and possibly
superior) versions of basketball excellence.
Be that as it may, a flexible purist position that acknowledges change within
important community-grounded constraints best honors MacIntyre's commitment
to practices. The modernist game tends to emphasize technical skills displayed in
serial fashion and places less weight on “a coherent and complex form of
socially established cooperative human activity.” Many one-on-one moves in the
modern game, and many of the actions that require tremendous athleticism, are
analogous to MacIntyre's “throwing of the football with skill.” That is, the
modernist game relies more on isolated technical skills than on complex,
interactive, multifaceted capabilities. The modernist values of “doing your own
thing” and “expressing your individuality” once again detract from the
consensus goods of a practice community. This is seen in modernist players on
ESPN's Streetball who earn their individual monikers through signature styles of
plays—Half Man Half Amazing, Syc Wit It, Spinmaster, and the Pharmacist (so
named because his moves are “morphine-based”).
Indeed, many of the modernist moves that are the steady fare of Streetball and
occasionally find their way into the NBA are remarkable athletic feats. They are
also tremendously entertaining. But they emphasize the individual over the
community, the isolated feat over the game. Basketball as a practice wanes under
such individualism and its attendant entertainment pressures.
This is important for MacIntyre, and also for us, because practices provide
richer challenges than do isolated skills. The good life is grounded in meeting
complex challenges with integrity and excellence, in building coherent stories
around our repeated encounters with practices—as parents, basketball players, or
professors. Isolated feats, or skills, or displays, as remarkable and breathtaking
as they sometimes are, function far less effectively in doing this job.
Has This Chapter Produced “Slam Dunk” Conclusions?
It has not, but I have already argued that slam dunks are overrated. This chapter
has attempted to persuade more than prove, to work a little team offense rather
than go one-on-one “in your face.”
Accordingly, we have noted that all games change, and we need to honor that
progress. Nevertheless, purists have a sense of the limits of change, limits that
preserve what is good about our games while allowing new forms of play to
emerge. I offer three arguments for this view: the functionalist argument, which
focuses on the importance of complexity and durability in building good games;
the variety argument, which emphasizes the importance of variety in promoting
social justice, and the related significance of keeping basketball distinct from
such games as football; and the communitarian argument, which shows
puristtending basketball to be a better practice, and thus a better foundation for
the delightful excellences we experience in the game of basketball.
A number of changes in the world of contemporary basketball would suggest
that the pendulum is swinging back in the direction of the puristtending game.
First, basketball rule books and officiating seminars have consistently included
“points of emphasis” that discourage rough, football-like activity, particularly in
the post. Double fouls and charging calls for overly muscular offensive moves
are now the norm. Second, NBA rules against zone defenses were recently
changed, in part to discourage tediously repetitive one-on-one play. Offenses
now need to be more team oriented, and defensive schemes are now far more
cooperative and collaborative in nature. Both, arguably, have made the game
more complex and interesting. Third, the point guard has again emerged as
perhaps the key player on a team. The point guard is the player who stimulates
team play and creates scoring opportunities for his or her four teammates. The
election of Steve Nash as the 2004-2005 NBA MVP in a very close vote over
dominant big man Shaquille O'Neal exemplifies this subtle shift in priorities.
A new style of superstar may be emerging, one who, while flashy and
entertaining, brings a diverse set of team-oriented skills. I am thinking of
someone like the Argentinian Manu Ginobili, from the San Antonio Spurs. He
dribbles well, goes to the hoop, shoots nicely from the outside, plays good team
defense, and plays as if the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
Rigid purists might not like him because his remarkable passing and dribbling
may seem a little excessive, a bit like showboating. Furthermore, his game
doesn't look anything like the one played in the 1960s and before. But moderate
purists like me see in his style of play solid fundamentals and a good measure of
what is wonderfully unique about the game of basketball. Besides, he led his
Argentine team to the gold medal in Greece. I like the fact that purist basketball
works pretty well too.
Notes
1. Robert L. Simon, Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport (Boulder, CO: Westview,
2004), 132-36.
2. William J. Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport: A Critique and
Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 128-75.
3. Former UCLA coach John Wooden makes a similar point about the
importance of preserving the distinctiveness of the game of basketball. When
asked if he enjoys watching the NBA, Wooden replied: “I watch the pros, but if I
want to see wrestling, I'll go to a wrestling match. If I want to watch traveling,
I'll go to a track meet. And if I want to see showmanship, I'll go see the
Globetrotters.” Quoted in Steve Bisheff, John Wooden: An American Treasure
(Nashville: Cumberland House, 2004), 201.
4. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1984), 190.
5. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 187.
HARDWOOD DOJOS
LIKE MOST OTHER sports, basketball as such doesn't teach anything about
values or character. If your daughter learns to play soccer from the win-at-all-
costs coach played by Will Ferrell in the 2005 film Kicking and Screaming, she'll
learn that the rule is “play dirty, but don't get caught.” Likewise, if your son
learns basketball from watching ESPN's Streetball, he's not going to learn a great
deal about discipline, respect, fair play, or teamwork.
Clearly, basketball can teach rotten values if a player has bad coaches and role
models. But is the reverse also true? Can basketball teach good values if a player
has good coaches and good role models? In the language of Eastern philosophy,
can a basketball court be a dojo, a “place of enlightenment” in which disciplined
athletes train their hearts and minds through the pursuit of physical excellence?
To help us think about this question we looked at the coaching philosophies of
four highly successful college basketball coaches: Dean Smith, Rick Pitino, Pat
Summitt, and Mike Krzyzewski. All of these coaches are widely respected for
their high ethical and professional standards, and all have written books
explaining their values-based coaching philosophy. Studying these coaches’
philosophies, we came to see that basketball can teach fundamental lessons
about character and success, both on the court and in the greater game of life.
What's more, these are precisely the same lessons that great philosophers have
been teaching for thousands of years.
Let's examine these six principles to see why these famous coaches—as well as
some of history's greatest thinkers—view them as critical to success in sports,
business, leadership, or virtually any other worthwhile endeavor.
success in basketball, or any challenging task, Morris says, “we need a clear
conception of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal or set of goals powerfully
imagined.” 2
Aristotle (384-322 B.c.) would strongly agree. In his Nicomachean Ethics, his
classic work on excellence and achievement, he argues that all conscious human
activity is done with some goal or end in mind. Some goals are obviously more
important than others. What should be our ultimate goal, our highest good, the
thing we should work hardest and most persistently to achieve? For Aristotle, it
is making the most of our potential, striving for excellence in all that we do, but
particularly in those capacities of heart, mind, and spirit that make us
distinctively human. Being all that we can be, living at the top of our powers—
this, for Aristotle, is what each of us should strive for, however humble or
exalted our station in life may be.
To achieve one's potential in something as difficult as basketball requires
years of hard work, dedication, and practice. We need goals in this process both
to motivate us and to guide us.
In basketball, as in life, the road to mediocrity is paved with good intentions.
It's easy to lose focus, to become lazy or distracted. Goals can motivate us to
stay the course. As Coach Pitino reminds us, goals “give us a vision of a better
future. They nourish our spirit; they represent possibility even when we are
dragged down by reality. They keep us going.” 3
Pitino tells the story of Billy Donovan, a little-heralded 5’11”, 170-pound
point guard who played for Providence College in the mid-1980s. Donovan was
a classic underachiever his first two seasons at Providence, playing only part-
time and averaging fewer than three points a game. When Pitino took over as the
Providence coach prior to Donovan's junior year, he met with Donovan and
asked him about his goals. It quickly became apparent that Donovan had no real
goals except maybe getting a little more playing time and scoring a few more
points per game. Pitino challenged him not to settle for such modest goals but to
work hard and aspire to excellence. That summer Donovan worked his tail off
and dramatically improved his conditioning and his skills. By his senior year he
averaged 20.6 points per game, led his team to the Final Four, and was drafted in
the third round of the NBA draft by the Utah Jazz. Today he is the highly
successful head coach of the 2005-2006 NCAA champion Florida Gators.
Goals not only motivate us to aim high, but they also keep us on track and
guide our progress along the way. As Pitino remarks, “goals provide our daily
routine. They show us where to start and they establish our priorities. They make
us organized and create the discipline in our lives.” 4
The key to sustained excellence, Pat Summitt says, is to “think big, focus
small.” Dream big, shoot for lofty general goals, but also have clear, specific,
5
short-term goals for daily and weekly improvement. Like UCLA's legendary
John Wooden, Dean Smith was famous for his detailed, minute-by-minute
practice schedules, which stressed daily improvement achieved through intense
conditioning and repetitive drills. Smith also made it his practice at the end of
6
each season to give each returning player two or three specific areas of
improvement to work on over the summer. By setting ambitious yet realistic
7
long-and short-term goals and working hard to achieve them, we can often do
more than we imagined we could.
Pat Summitt also puts hard work at the core of her coaching philosophy. She
writes:
How am I going to beat you?
I'm going to outwork you.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
You've just learned my most valuable secret.… [T]here is no great intangible quality to success.
It's not a gift people are born with … or a knack. It's a simple matter of putting your back into it.10
Throughout history, great philosophers have stressed the importance of effort
and hard work. Aristotle taught that happiness is an activity, an exemplification
of excellence, rather than any kind of feeling or state of mind. Marcus Aurelius
11
British philosopher, maintained that one of the first duties of a teacher is to teach
his or her pupils “vigor, activity, and industry.” And American philosopher
13
William James (1842-1910) argued that effort is the true measure of a person,
because “effort is the one strictly underived and original contribution we make to
this world.” 14
In emphasizing the importance of hard work, our four coaches often sound
much like the ancient Stoic philosophers. Stoics like Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65) and
Epictetus (around A.D. 50-130) believed that we can control our thoughts and
attitudes but we cannot control “externals” like wealth, reputation, or health.
Happiness, they believed, lies in learning to accept hard knocks with equanimity
and to concentrate our energies instead on developing healthy, positive thoughts
and a good character. In a similar spirit, Summitt writes: “There is not much you
can control in this life. Freak accidents, good or bad luck, these things are out of
our hands. But how hard you work is within your control. Rather than complain
about bad breaks … make a few breaks of your own.” Likewise, Dean Smith
15
used to tell his players: “Never let anyone play harder than you. That is part of
the game you can control.” 16
Few basketball players ever worked harder to improve their skills than New
York Knicks forward Bill Bradley. In high school, Bradley practiced three to
four hours a day on Monday through Friday, and five hours a day on Saturday
and Sunday. He put weights in his shoes to improve his vertical leap, wore a
blindfold to prevent him from looking at the ball when he dribbled, and stacked
chairs to practice shooting hook shots over an imaginary seven-footer. To
improve his shooting, he shot set shots and jump shots from five different places
on the floor. Only when he hit twenty-five set shots and twenty-five jump shots
in a row did he move to the next spot. If he missed number twenty-three, he
started over.17
Teams built on a strong work ethic tend to draw closer because of all the
shared suffering, hard work, and sacrifice. There's also a motivational factor
18
Teams with a passion for hard work tend to play harder in clutch games. Why?
Because they feel like they've worked too hard and suffered too much to accept
anything short of victory.
A habit is a stable and not easily altered disposition to act in a certain way,
usually acquired by repetition of such acts. Good habits, like punctuality,
politeness, and diligence, help us do good things easily, readily, and without
much thinking. Bad habits, like eating a bag of chips every night while watching
ESPN, can be a curse.
Since so much of what we do is based on habit, and habits are so hard to
break, it is important to form good habits. As Rick Pitino writes: “Good habits
prevent laziness. They prevent floundering.… Good habits create organization
and discipline in our lives. It's virtually impossible to achieve success without
having good habits.… And in times of stress, times when you are being severely
tested, good habits become even more important. They become the rock, the
standard of behavior that we must stick with so that we don't get off track.” 22
Good habits are especially important in basketball, because so much of the game
is repetition. By forming good habits when we shoot, dribble, or defend, we
make muscle memory our ally and avoid the dangers of overthinking.
Great coaches and players understand the power of habit. John Wooden, who
coached the UCLA Bruins to ten national championships in twelve years, said, “I
believe in learning by repetition to the point that everything becomes
automatic.” And Dean Smith writes that in his years at Carolina, “we worked
23
Few NBA players worked harder on developing good habits than Boston
Celtics star Larry Bird. Each summer Bird would go home to French Lick,
Indiana, and work tirelessly to improve some aspect of his offensive game. One
year it was shooting with his left hand. Another year it was the up-and-under
shot coming off a fake. During the first week of the Celtics’ preseason camp, the
other players liked seeing what new dimension Bird had added to his game. 25
When Phil Jackson became coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1999, he gave
his superstar center, Shaquille O'Neal, a copy of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle, as we have seen, taught that the key to a happy, successful life is
sustained excellence through the formation of good habits. After reading the
book, Shaq said that he'd like to be known as “the Big Aristotle,” because “it
was Aristotle who said excellence is not a singular act but a habit.” 26
Be Persistent
Great thinkers have long emphasized the value of persistence. To achieve long-
term success and fulfillment, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, we must
“work hard with all the courage we can muster, ignoring any distractions, and
struggle with a single purpose.” Samuel Johnson noted that “great works are
27
sometimes work in one's favor. “Instead of feeling sorry for yourself and using it
as an excuse,” he recommends, “accept the situation and try to make the most of
it. That's how a team develops resilience and character.” 34
Sport teaches us the inevitability of failure. No one makes every shot or wins
every game. As Pitino reminds us: “The best hitters in baseball fail to hit seven
out of every ten times they come to the plate. Many of the best home run hitters
strike out a lot. The best salespeople have days when they don't sell anything.
Artists have days when nothing creative happens. We all fail sometimes. The
question is what do you do with that failure?” Again the Stoic approach to life
35
Krzyzewski recalls: “One year I received a note from a former player I had
coached back in the early 1970s. It seemed that he had recently received a
double-lung transplant and was told by his doctors that the main reason he
survived was due to his will and determination. Then he credited me for
instilling that quality in him at a young age.” The player had learned as a young
37
man to persevere through adversity without falling into despair. As St. Paul—a
man well acquainted with adversity— stated, “Suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character” (Romans 5:3).
Lakers coach Phil Jackson points out, creating a successful team “requires the
individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for the greater good so that
the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts.” But this is a tough
39
Dean Smith has been criticized for overemphasizing team play, thereby delaying
the development of individual skills. But as Jordan aptly remarks in Smith's
defense: “The one thing I was taught at North Carolina, and one thing I believe
to the fullest, is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades
will take care of themselves.” 41
To help her players appreciate the value of teamwork, Summitt often uses a
simple analogy. “Let's say I hand out pencils to our twelve players. I tell them,
‘Now I want each of you to break your pencils in half.’ They will do it, no
problem. You'll hear the snapping of pencils all over the gym. But what if I take
twelve pencils, and I bind them together with a rubber band? Now try to break
them. You can't. That is the basic principle of teamwork.” 43
When [my players] get into the workplace, they're armed with more than just a jump shot or a
dribble, but I want you armed for life. I want you to develop as a player. I want you to develop as a
student. And I want you to develop as a human being.
Some fans objected to the commercial, claiming that it gave Duke an unfair
recruiting advantage over other schools. Maybe so, but the commercial was
nevertheless an effective and much-needed reminder that basketball is ultimately
a game, and that “success” is about something much larger than simply
“winning.” Basketball, when well coached and well played, can prepare us to
succeed in the greater game of life. At the end of the commercial, as Krzyzewski
walks across the court in Duke's venerable Cameron Indoor Stadium, we are
reminded that a basketball court can be a “place of enlightenment”—a place
where vital life lessons are taught, and spiritual warriors aim not simply at
baskets but ultimately at themselves.
Notes
1. Tom Morris, True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence (New York:
Berkeley Books, 1994), 35.
2. Morris, True Success, 35.
3. Rick Pitino, Success Is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business
and Life (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 45.
4. Pitino, Success Is a Choice, 47.
5. Pat Summitt, Reach for the Summit: The Definite Dozen System for
Succeeding in Whatever You Do (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 125.
6. For an example, see Dean Smith, A Coach's Life: My Forty Years in
College Basketball, rev. ed. (New York: Random House, 2002), 128.
7. Dean Smith and Gerald D. Bell, with John Kilgo, The Carolina Way:
Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (New York: Penguin Press, 2004),
230.
8. Bill Bradley, The Values of the Game (New York: Artisan, 1998), 14.
9. Pitino, Success Is a Choice, 2.
10. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 117.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099a.
12. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 5.
13. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, in John Locke on
Politics and Education (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1947), 281.
14. William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950),
2:579.
15. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 132.
16. Smith, The Carolina Way, 30.
17. Bradley, Values of the Game, 29-30.
18. Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel, J. Douglas Toma, and Christopher C. Morphew,
“There's No ‘I’ in ‘Team’: Lessons from Athletics on Community Building,”
Review of Higher Education 24, no. 4 (2001): 378-79.
19. David Halberstam, Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He
Made (New York: Random House, 1999), 150.
20. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b.
21. William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some
of Life's Ideals (1899), reprinted in William James: Writings 1878-1899, ed.
Gerald E. Myers (New York: Library of America, 1992), 750.
22. Pitino, Success Is a Choice, 98.
23. John Wooden with Jack Tobin, They Call Me Coach, 3rd rev. ed., (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 106.
24. Smith, The Carolina Way, 77.
25. Halberstam, Playing for Keeps, 166.
26. Quoted in Dennis McCafferty, “Now They Can't Call Me a Bum,” USA
Weekend Magazine, October 29, 2000.
27. Quoted in Tom Morris, The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and
Outer Results (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 44.
28. Morris, True Success, 175.
29. Plato, Symposium, 220c-d.
30. Pitino, Success Is a Choice, 192.
31. Smith, The Carolina Way, 19.
32. Quoted in Morris, The Stoic Art of Living, 29.
33. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 237.
34. Mike Krzyzewski, Leading with the Heart: Coach K's Successful
Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life (New York: Warner Business
Books, rev. ed., 2004), 111.
35. Pitino, Success Is a Choice, 220-21.
36. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 266.
37. Krzyzewski, Leading with the Heart, 271.
38. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 159-60.
39. Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a
Hardwood Warrior (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 5.
40. Once when Chicago assistant coach Tex Winter reminded Jordan that
“there's no I in the word team,” Jordan responded, “There is in the word win.”
Halberstam, Playing for Keeps, 259.
41. Michael Jordan, I Can't Accept Not Trying (New York: Penguin Books,
2004), 24.
42. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 165.
43. Summitt, Reach for the Summit, 163.
I'M A LITTLE embarrassed to admit that I vividly recall several “strategic ticky-
tackers” my college friends and I encountered in pickup basketball games—
eleven years ago. A strategic ticky-tacker is a species of cheat. A “ticky-tacker”
is a person who routinely calls nonexistent fouls; a “strategic” ticky-tacker is
someone who does this intentionally, to gain a competitive advantage. It's not my
habit to keep a moral ledger of past transgressions against me. But the thing is,
cheats are infuriating. With little effort I can resurrect the personal contempt,
righteous indignation, and helpless frustration I felt when confronted with such
unscrupulous scheming.
I'm going to bring up a few old stories about cheats, but it's not that I plan to
hunt down old perpetrators to exact vengeance. (Surely the statute of limitations
for punishing moral violations in pickup basketball expires within a decade.) My
intentions are more forward looking and philosophical. For future
confrontations, is there a good strategy to beat the cheat? No strategy will be
foolproof, of course. However clever we are, the cheat's shots might be falling,
and ours not. But perhaps a little hard thinking will point the way to methods
that neutralize, or at least minimize, the benefits the cheater gains from his
machinations.
Since pickup basketball, like international relations, is an arena that lacks
neutral and authoritative rule-enforcers—no third-party referees or (moralistic)
league commissioners—why not seek out practical advice from that master of
realpolitik, Niccolo Machiavelli? Machiavelli (1469-1527) is well known for his
frank and unvarnished advice to would-be princes seeking political power.
Maybe Machiavelli also has something to say to would-be kings of the
basketball court. If a cheater stands in your way, how best to defeat him? What
would Machiavelli say, and is he right?
the offense, and the bloodying of teeth might lead to a protracted, bloody fight.
The cheat makes me mad, but I'm not looking to beat him up or start a brawl.
The second strategy I won't take seriously is walking off the court. My wife
asks, “If the cheater makes you so mad, why don't you just quit?” But quitting
won't do. From my experience, walking off doesn't usually frustrate the cheater
so much as it gains for the person who refuses to play the reputation of being a
quitter. More importantly, quitting is terribly unsatisfying. Perhaps leaving the
court makes sense for the more casual player, but (as I've already admitted) I'm a
bit more intense. When I'm confronted with a cheat, I want to stay and compete.
The cheat wants the personal glory that comes with victory, but without earning
it. Defeating him puts him in his rightful place. That's satisfying.
So I choose to stay on the court and play. If you join me, how could we
maximize our chances of succeeding at this public service? I suggest a threefold
strategy.2
The strategic ticky-tacker also has a strong incentive not to be detected for fear
of retaliation. The cheater is likely to believe that if he is detected, there will be
consequences: his reputation will suffer, for instance. And he might fear physical
retaliation. (Presumably, you haven't told him that you don't intend to elbow him
in the mouth.) If you accuse him of cheating, you give him a strong reason to
attempt to “disprove” your accusation, and how is he to do that except by
subsequently making a few “fair” calls? If you have the cheater making true
calls—even if from a calculated instead of a moral motive—then he is not
benefiting (as much) from his scheming. He isn't snatching up (as many) extra
possessions for his team. The benefits of his strategy are at least minimized. 3
Suppose you've intensified your game and made your accusations, but the
cheaters are still benefiting, maybe even winning. And, however skillful, your
sheer ability and effort might not be enough to defeat the cheat. Now, finally,
you've reached the moment when, according to Machiavelli—and probably
Locke, too—tit-for-tat is morally justified. For every possession the cheat steals
by an unfair call, make an unfair call to balance the scales.
I suspect that the most common objection to retaliatory tit-for-tat-ism would
be this: In meeting dirty pool with dirty pool, haven't we committed the dreaded
fallacy of “two wrongs make a right”? Haven't we sunk to the level of
Machiavelli's cynical power politicians? Aren't we, if we're making intentional
ticky-tack calls, also wrong and contemptible?
There is a compelling reason to think the answer is no. A strong moral case
can be made for retaliatory dishonesty against the strategic ticky-tacker. If there
is no neutral third party—no properly appointed agent of justice—to punish the
cheater's wrongdoing, then any justice that is going to be achieved must be
brought about by the victims of the cheater. There is simply no one else to bring
it about. As Locke argues, in a state of nature, such as a pickup basketball game,
“everyone has a right to punish the … transgressor … to such a degree as may
hinder its violation.” Since there are no courts, police officers, or referees in a
5
state of nature, there is no other way in which justice can be served and
“criminal” conduct deterred. Are we to stand by and let the oppressors benefit
from their oppression? Does morality demand passivity in the face of
wrongdoing? I don't think it does. I don't think, in any case, that morality
demands that we be categorically unwilling to ticky-tack back. The retaliatory
ticky-tacker can be seen as an agent of justice, a balancer of scales. 6
judge fairly in their own cases. (As evidence, think how quickly fans jump to the
conclusion that a referee is biased against their favorite team.) In returning a lie
for a lie, therefore, we must be careful that our response is unbiased and
proportionate. Nevertheless, as both Locke and “murderous Machiavel” would
probably agree, there are times when retaliatory ticky-tacking is morally
justified.
It bears mentioning, too, that the strongest reason not to meet carpet bombing
with carpet bombing is that huge numbers of innocent people are inevitably
killed. But when it comes to retaliatory ticky-tacking, no one gets injured.
Retaliatory ticky-tacking is not a violent strategy.
My own moral outlook is not, generally speaking, Machiavellian. Both my
anthropological and my moral views are closer to Locke's than to “Murderous
Machiavel's.” But as I see it, Machiavelli gets it right, at least this time.
Notes
1. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690), sec. 8, in Two Treatises
of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
2. Another option is to change the rules. What if pickup basketball were to
adopt the strategy of “defense calls” instead of the more common “offense
calls”? Doing so would prevent the strategic ticky-tacker from making phantom
calls. Unfortunately, this strategy is not immune from cheating either; it might
encourage “hacky-slapping”: aggressive play by defenders with too few calls
made.
3. Perhaps, of course, this chain of reasoning will lead a clever strategic ticky-
tacker to “endgame” ticky-tacking: waiting until crucial possessions near the end
of the game to cheat.
4. A shaming strategy will work more effectively, presumably, if there is a
good chance that you will play this cheater again in the future. I suspect the rate
of cheating increases when players believe that they will not meet their victims
again.
5. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, sec. 7.
6. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, sec. 13.
7. Is it better yet to take the moral high road? Someone might wonder, “Why
give up our moral integrity to do something as trivial as beat the cheat?” If my
argument is sound, retaliatory ticky-tacking is not morally wrong, and so it
doesn't cost you any moral integrity. In my view, a categorical unwillingness to
lie about foul calls is morally admirable but not morally required.
Luke Witte
ANYONE WHO IS even a casual basketball fan will readily recall the ugly
brawl that disrupted the game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers
in November 2004 and resulted in suspensions for several players. The incident
was a major story in the media and was replayed over and over. Like almost
everyone else who saw it, I was sickened by the continuous stream of video
showing the violence erupting on the court and even into the stands. For me,
however, the incident touched a deeply personal nerve because it brought back
memories of a similar event I was involved in more than three decades ago.
Sports Illustrated called it “the most vicious attack in college basketball lore.”
ESPN ranks it as one of the ten worst fights or brawls in twentieth-century
sports. Today, most basketball fans wouldn't recognize my name. Many,
however, have seen clips of the infamous brawl in which I participated on
January 25, 1972, in a game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the
Minnesota Golden Gophers. In this chapter I tell my story, and as you'll see, it's a
tale in which both faith and philosophy play an important role.
The encounter was a media heyday. Ohio State and Minnesota were two
nationally ranked teams with the winner likely to be the Big Ten representative
to the NCAA tournament. Ideologically and philosophically, the two programs
seemed to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Ohio State was a predominantly
white team with a rich basketball history that emphasized hard work, discipline,
fair play, and integrity. Minnesota was an emerging Big Ten power with nothing
traditional about it. Under young new coach Bill Musselman, the predominantly
African American Gophers featured slick Globetrotter-type warm-ups, glitzy
marketing, junior college recruits, a fast break / no-set offense, and a win-at-all-
cost attitude that culminated a few years later in a major recruiting scandal and
Musselman's resignation.
The game was tense and emotion packed from the beginning. Our Buckeye
team was booed when we came out on the floor, and the loud music and slick
Gopher warm-ups seemed to whip the large crowd into a frenzy. The first half
was relatively cleanly played, but at halftime, as the two teams were going to
their dressing rooms, Gopher Bob Nix passed in front of me with his left arm
raised in a clenched-fist salute. I tried to shove his arm out of my face and
accidentally clipped him lightly on the jaw. Later, Musselman claimed that it was
this incident that incited the brawl.
Things turned ugly in the second half. After Ohio State went ahead 40-32 with
less than ten minutes to play, the crowd began to boo and throw debris on the
floor. With less than a minute to play and the Buckeyes up 50-44, the Gophers
had to press, which left me open near midcourt. I received the pass and headed
down court for an easy layup. As I went up for the shot, I saw Clyde Turner
coming in from my right side. I expected the block attempt, shifted the ball to
my left hand, and used my right arm and the basket to ward off any attempt to
block the shot. Turner had other thoughts. Instead of going for the block, he
came across with a right hook that hit me in the face. I crashed to the floor dazed
and disoriented. The crowd cheered when I went down, then booed when Turner
was called for a flagrant foul and ejected from the game.
My head spinning, I managed to get to my knees. As I sat on my haunches,
Minnesota player Corky Taylor extended a hand of assistance, and I took it.
Instead of helping me, however, Taylor jerked me forward and kneed me in the
groin. I fell back to the floor and lay on my side holding both hands to my groin.
Chaos ensued as both benches unloaded, followed by fans from the stands and
even student-athletes from other sports. Dave Merchant, a starting guard for
Ohio State, pushed Taylor away from me and also from Minnesota's Jim Brewer,
who had come to see what was going on. As Merchant tried to fend off the much
bigger and stronger Golden Gophers, he realized that this wasn't going to work
and ran, pursued by their players. That left me alone on the floor still reeling
from the two blows.
Ron Behagen, a starter for Minnesota, was on the bench, having fouled out of
the game earlier, and had a clear line of sight on me. He ran onto the court and
kicked me three times in the head, landing the last blow with Ohio State coach
Fred Taylor holding him from the rear in a bear hug, trying to pull him off me.
Taylor said that Behagen was screaming, “Let me go, man, let me go.”
Skirmishes were everywhere on the court. Among the Minnesota players who
participated in the brawl was future baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield.
According to sportswriter William F. Reed, Winfield, who had recently joined
the Gopher varsity, “joined the fray too, dodging to midcourt where some
Minnesota reserves and civilians were trying to wrestle Ohio State substitute
Mark Wagar to the floor. Winfield leaped on top of Wagar when he was down
and hit him five times with his right fist on the face and head. When the stunned
Wagar managed to slip away, a fan pushed him to the floor and another caught
him on the chin with a hard punch from the side.” After reviewing the
1
videotapes, I think “bedlam” is the only word that properly describes the scene.
The police had left the arena early to assist in emptying the parking lots and now
ran back in to help restore order. The Ohio State team had huddled around me as
I lay on the floor, some looking in to see how I was doing and others with their
backs to us in a circle, an island in the middle of infested waters, not knowing
what was going to happen next.
The officials called the game and announced Ohio State as the winner. I was
lifted up by my teammates and carried off as we left the court en masse. Then
the most startling event of the night happened. The fans and players uproariously
booed us as we walked toward the locker room. Interestingly enough, I didn't
know this had happened until years later when I watched a videotape of the
incident.
As our team sat in the dark, dingy locker room, plans to get us out of there
were made. Mark Wagar and I would be taken by ambulance to the University of
Minnesota Medical Center, and the rest of the team would follow in a team bus.
At this point I emerged from a near-comatose state and jumped up, wanting to
finish the game. I have no memory of anything that occurred from halftime to
the next morning (from what I understand this is called retro-amnesia), with the
exception of a few lucid moments, just memory bites of being restrained in the
locker room, an extremely cold ride in the ambulance, and my teammates
standing around my bed in the hospital.
My first conscious memory came the following morning when the phone rang
next to my bed. One contact lens was still in, and the phone was way too loud
for the splitting headache I had. I saw Wagar in the bed next to mine, and I knew
we were in a hospital. I wasn't quite sure why, but I ached everywhere. I fumbled
around for the phone; it was my brother Verlynn calling. I don't remember the
conversation, but I must have said I was fine.
Later that day, the team boarded a commercial plane to return to Ohio. I had a
patch over one eye, a large bandage on my chin, a huge scrape down the right
side of my face, and an oversized, discolored ear. My cornea had been damaged
from an impact that forced the hard contact lens that I was wearing to slice
across my eye. I sustained a concussion and had numerous cuts on my face that
required twenty-seven stitches. The knee to the groin didn't help matters. A flight
attendant asked me if I had had an accident. I could only reply, “You could say
that.”
Physical scars heal, but the heart takes a little longer. Many people pressed me
to sue the players involved, Minnesota coach Bill Musselman, the university, the
state and campus police, and anybody who had even a remote connection to the
incident. My father, a professor of systematic theology and a Presbyterian pastor,
even pushed me to retaliate with a lawsuit. But I just couldn't.
Something was going on within me that was much deeper than a scar, a game,
or even money. Even though Ohio State's basketball program stressed fair play
and doing your best, I was still very competitive and wanted very much to win at
everything I did. But I felt my desire to compete fading away; I kept thinking
that a game is never really worth physical aggression or fan violence. The game
of basketball should be a thing of beauty, not a blood sport of anger and hostility.
What happens to the human psyche when a person suffers traumatic harm?
What does a person do with the deluge of emotions that infiltrates his mind and
changes from minute to minute? One minute I felt that everything would be fine,
that healing was happening, that I was surrounded by loving and supportive
family, teammates, and friends. The next minute all I could think about was
hatred and retribution. The kaleidoscope of changing emotions made normal
daily functioning almost impossible.
In the weeks that followed, I had a class in a large lecture hall that began at
9:00 A.M. I arrived and sat through the lecture. Sometime later one of my
teammates came up to me and asked what was going on. I had been sitting at
that desk for two lecture periods and was about to start a third. I couldn't
remember a thing about the lecture or the following class, which wasn't on my
schedule. I don't want to suggest that I was a stellar student who excelled in
every subject, but I did well when I put my mind to it. This memory lapse could
be blamed on the concussion I sustained, but the truth is, I couldn't escape from
the constant mental gymnastics going on in my mind.
Emotionally and philosophically, I was in a crisis. Ron Behagan, Clyde
Turner, Corky Taylor, and Coach Bill Musselman had become objects of what
philosophers Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton call “moral hatred.” Hampton
defines moral hatred as “an aversion to someone who has identified himself with
an immoral cause or practice, prompted by moral indignation and accompanied
by the wish to triumph over him and his cause or practice in the name of some
fundamental moral principle or objective, most notably justice.” In my case,
2
There was never any question of my condoning the actions of my attackers, and
it was never my place to impose or remit any punishment. Nor was it ever a
question of reversing my judgment of the serious wrongness of what my
attackers did. For me the key issue was Minas's fourth sense of forgive. How
could I bring myself to give up my intense “resentment, rancor, or wrath” and
heal the breach not only between myself and my attackers but also the breach I
felt within myself?
There is something just shy of a miracle when two people reconcile and
friendship is restored, especially when forgiveness is unconditional and has
nothing to do with the other person. If the offender chooses to say that he or she
is sorry and expresses remorse for the offense, then true reconciliation becomes
possible. In a marriage, in a family, in business, in churches, and in other settings
where harmony is essential, reconciliation is mandatory. In my case, I had no
significant prior relationship with the University of Minnesota, the players, or
their coach, so harmony wasn't an issue, and I didn't see a need for them to say
they were sorry. My objective was simply the cleansing of my heart, and for that
I needed to forgive, or rather to “set my heart right.”
As a pastor, I often encounter individuals and families demanding an apology
from an offender, but frequently such demands are meaningless. Saying you're
sorry outside a committed relationship often means very little. For the offender,
the path to healing lies through admitting guilt, feeling remorse, repenting of sin,
and making restitution if possible. The offender, however, may not be interested
in repenting and making restitution. If he's not, the injured party mustn't become
preoccupied with the offender's responsibility in the matter. For ultimately, as
Robert Jeffress says, “repentance is the offender's responsibility; forgiveness is
our responsibility.” So the one who is offended against must stay focused on his
4
Reaching Out
In the winter of 1982, my wife and I celebrated the birth of our second child, and
the ten-year anniversary of the Minnesota incident went by with little fanfare,
except for a few calls from reporters and a surprising letter I received from
Corky Taylor. I agonized over my reply for days and started many times to pen a
response. My wife finally said, “Just call him.” And I did. The conversation was
stilted, but we talked about our wives, children, and jobs. He talked about his
two young basketball players and wanting them to understand integrity and good
sportsmanship and to respect the truth. Most of it would have seemed like small
talk to an uninformed listener, but to us huge chasms were being backfilled with
understanding and trust. Even the silence was filled with receptivity toward one
another.
For many years, Corky and I wrote infrequently to one another, until the age
of e-mail, when we began writing more often. With each Send button pushed we
divulged more of our emotions and hurt, connected by a moment in history that
put our names always in the same breath. We even talked about coauthoring a
book. We exchanged ideas, and we started to become extremely aware that a
spiritual bond had formed between us. Our thoughts about forgiveness and grace
were very similar, and we became intentional about our openness to the
psychological effects of violence and race and about the blessings we had
encountered because of our openness. In a letter, Corky wrote:
I know that the events of that January 25th game many years ago has taken a mental toll over the
years. I don't think anyone else can totally understand those feelings. I do think you are as close to
those feelings as anyone. First of all your spiritual (as opposed to worldly) reaction to the event lets
me know that God has helped you heal. It has helped me a great deal in seeing things clearly. In some
ways it was necessary for God to get my attention. He makes all things right in time.
He then added:
If it had not been for the incident, would I have continued to use the blessings from God to attract
sins of the world, or might you not be in the ministry right now? Would I feel this spiritual
connection and understand you? I know it took courage to stand up publicly and talk about the
incident. Courage to tell people that you have chosen to react to it in a spiritual and not a worldly
manner. The courage you have shown helps prepare me to tell the truth. As distasteful as the situation
was, it can be used by God to help people.
Scott A. Davison
THE BREAKS OF THE GAME
Luck and Fairness in Basketball
as the ultimate referee in such matters and to make sure that luck does not play a
significant role in the outcome. 5
To return to basketball, it is important to note that the game does have some
built-in mechanisms for eliminating certain kinds of lucky inequality. To see this,
consider the scope of luck in basketball as compared to other sports. In football,
for example, there is an added dimension of luck that comes from the shape of
the ball. When a football falls to the ground, it is very hard to predict where it
will bounce. (Have you ever tried to dribble a football like it was a basketball? I
have. It's not pretty.) One of the luckiest plays in football history, Franco Harris's
so-called Immaculate Reception in the 1972 Steelers-Raiders AFC semifinal
game, depended upon the luck introduced by the shape of the football. Physicists
today still debate whether or not this deflected pass was legal according to 1972
NFL rules, which depends upon whether or not the ball hit the Oakland Raiders’
Jack Tatum before being caught by Harris, who then scored the winning
touchdown for the Steelers with only five seconds remaining in the game.
Of course, in the early days of basketball, there was a tiny bit of luck
introduced by the fact that the ball had laces in one seam (between the last two
panels of leather to be sewn together). Thanks to improvements in technology,
though, this bit of luck has been eliminated. Today all basketballs are spherical
and hence symmetrical, so it is highly predictable where the ball will bounce
when it hits the floor (unless it's spinning wildly). In this respect, basketball
depends less on luck than football does.
In addition, football relies upon a coin flip to determine the first offensive
possession of the game and the first possession of each overtime period. Not
even this method is completely foolproof, as we saw on Thanksgiving Day 1998,
when the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Jerome Bettis appeared to call “heads” and the
referee heard him call “tails,” leading to a Detroit Lions victory after the first
possession in overtime. (Maybe the Steelers had it coming, since they benefited
from the good luck involved in the Immaculate Reception.) Since then, the NFL
has introduced new rules about how to call a flipped coin in order to avoid this
kind of confusion.
By contrast, basketball relies upon the jump ball. Like the coin toss, in a well-
executed jump ball, each side has an equal opportunity to reach the tossed ball.
But unlike the coin toss, which is a matter of pure luck, in a jump ball the player
with the best timing and highest vertical leap will have the best chance to tip the
ball to a teammate. So here again, basketball leaves less room for luck than
football does.
Of course, the first possession of the game or overtime period is not nearly as
important in basketball as it is in football, so this isn't a big difference. This is
because basketball includes the opportunity for many possessions by each team
and many opportunities to score points, even in overtime periods. (This is one
reason why the shot clock is so important, by the way: it tends to create changes
of possession on a regular basis.) If a basketball game (or an overtime period)
lasted only two minutes, we might well regard the outcome as unfair or too
dependent on luck. (Basketball games are never decided by “sudden death” for
the same reasons.) As it is, though, we think that the game is long enough to
cancel out differences in time of possession due to luck.
It's also interesting to note that the referees in basketball are responsible for
eliminating certain kinds of lucky inequality from the game. For instance, they
are charged with preventing fans of the home team from inappropriately
disrupting the play of the opposing team. They call fouls, which are defined in
terms of gaining an unfair advantage over an opponent by means of bodily
contact. They are expected to stop play if the court is visibly wet or strewn with
debris. They must also ensure that the ball is round and symmetrical, that the
hoops are tight and stand at regulation height, that a shot clock is equally visible
from both ends of the court, and so forth. (In one sense, then, the referees are
supposed to play the role of God in terms of ensuring that a contest is as fair as
possible and practical.) And just to make sure that any differences between
courts and hoops do not favor one team over the other for the whole game, at
halftime the teams exchange goals and sides of the court.
When these sources of luck are eliminated, we tend to think that a game
situation is fair (in one sense of that word), even if the teams aren't evenly
matched. We don't generally think that what philosopher Bernard Williams calls
“constitutive luck”—the lucky breaks that allow one team or individual to be
more talented than another—necessarily makes a contest unfair. Dennett puts
6
the matter this way: “In sports we accept luck, and are content to plan and strive
while making due allowance for luck— which is, after all, the same for
everyone; no one actually has more luck than anyone else, even though some
have been lucky enough to start off with more talent. But that is fair too, we
think. We don't suppose that the only fair contest is between perfectly matched
opponents; the strength of one may defeat the finesse of the other, or vice
versa.” So fairness doesn't require literal equality, which is impossible to
7
achieve anyway, but requires instead that certain sources of luck are eliminated
from the game. In this way, we think that the outcome of the game will depend
upon skill, strategy, and hard work, and this will be fair.
But things don't always work out that way. Even though basketball is designed
to eliminate luck in certain ways, as noted above, there are still lucky shots,
lucky bounces, bad calls, lucky tournament draws, fortunate draft choices, and
lots of other sources of luck in the game. These things are often called “the
breaks of the game.” To turn now to the second conception of fairness, in terms
of desert, we might wonder whether the breaks of the game can result in an
unfair outcome, in the sense that the winning team doesn't deserve to win (or the
losing team doesn't deserve to lose, or both). If the breaks of the game can result
in unfairness, then do they always do so? If not, what's the difference? Let's
consider some famous cases of luck in basketball in order to answer this
question.
Three years before winning game 5 of the 2005 NBA finals on a last second
three-point shot as a San Antonio Spur, Robert Horry did something very similar
as a Los Angeles Laker in game 4 of the 2002 Western Conference finals,
beating the Sacramento Kings at the buzzer. (Had Sacramento won this pivotal
game, they would have led the series three games to one, and probably would
have won the series; as it happened, though, they lost the series in seven games.)
There was some luck involved in Horry's game-winning shot against the Kings.
On this final play of the game, leading by two points, the Kings had already
successfully defended a shot in the lane from Kobe Bryant and a follow-up
attempt by Shaquille O'Neal. Hoping to put the game away for good,
Sacramento's Vlade Divac batted the ball away from the basket as time began to
expire. Much to Divac's dismay, the ball went right to Horry, who was standing
behind the three-point line. “Big Shot Bob” (as his current San Antonio
teammates call him) promptly drained the three-pointer to win the game for Los
Angeles at the buzzer.
In postgame commentary, the players involved tried to isolate the lucky
element in this play. Sacramento's Hedo Turkoglu said, “It's the luckiest thing
I've ever seen in my life.” Divac agreed. “It was just a lucky shot, that's all,” he
said. “You don't need to have skill in that kind of situation. You just throw it. If it
goes in, it goes in.” By contrast, Sacramento's Chris Webber was more cautious:
“I'm not saying the Lakers lucked up and won the game. I said it was a lucky
play and that was a lucky play. Coach didn't draw that up. That wasn't a second
or third option. That was a lucky play, a fumble out of the inside to the outside.
Now Horry shooting it wasn't lucky. That's a big shot. I have to give him credit.
That's a big-time player but that was a lucky player.” 8
So Webber distinguishes between a lucky play, which this was, and a lucky
shot, which this wasn't. In response to Divac's suggestion that Horry's shot was
lucky, Horry himself said: “If you go back and look at the shot, a luck shot is one
of those guys who has no form. If you look at the shot, it was straight form. He
shouldn't have tipped it out there. It wasn't a luck shot. I have been doing that for
all my career. He should know.” In other words, Horry claims that his shot
manifests skill, not luck. And this seems clearly right. But Webber also seems
clearly right in saying that it was a lucky play, because the way that the ball
ended up in Horry's hands was completely unforeseen and unintended.
That the Lakers won the game on a lucky play does not by itself imply that the
game was unfair, or that Los Angeles didn't deserve to win. Sacramento had its
chances, as people say, leading the game 50 to 26 at one point in the first half
(and still leading by five points with only 1:17 left in the game). So even though
luck was involved in the outcome of this game, we shouldn't say that the result
was unfair.
Something similar happened in college hoops several years earlier. On April
4, 1983, sixth-seeded North Carolina State beat a heavily favored, top-ranked
University of Houston Cougar team to become the first team in history to win
the NCAA tournament after suffering ten or more losses during the regular
season. NC State benefited from a bit of good luck in beating Houston
(otherwise known as “Phi Slamma Jamma” because of its fast-paced, high-flying
style, which featured future NBA Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem
Olajuwan). With the score tied, NC State spent the final forty-four seconds of the
game trying to set up a high-percentage shot (there was no shot clock then) but
couldn't do so. As time finally expired, Dereck Whittenburg launched an off-
balance, desperation shot from thirty feet away, missing the hoop entirely. But
his teammate Lorenzo Charles caught the ball in the air and dunked it home as
time expired, giving the Wolfpack the improbable victory.
Where exactly does luck enter into the NC State win? Whittenburg's shot
missed badly, but it could have missed in lots of other ways. For example, his
shot might have missed on the far side of the hoop rather than on the near side,
or it might have bounced off the back of the rim and into the air, or it might have
glanced off the rim and bounced on the floor. Had any one of these things
happened, Charles would have had no play on the ball before time expired. Of
course, it wasn't luck that Charles was in a position to make a play on the ball: he
was playing the game properly, waiting for a rebound. But it was lucky that the
air ball came right to him as time expired.
Since there was luck involved in the NC State victory, should we say that it
was unfair, that NC State didn't deserve to win? I don't think so. First of all, the
game was tied at this point, so we can't say that Houston would have won if the
lucky play hadn't occurred. (We can't say that NC State would have won, either;
I think we just don't know what would have happened in overtime.) Also, NC
State had played a masterful game under coach Jim Valvano in order to be in a
position to win. In fact, they fought their way back from a 42-35 deficit late in
the second half. So even though there was luck involved in the outcome of this
game, once again we are not inclined to say that NC State didn't deserve to win.
Consider a third case that is slightly more problematic. Roughly a year after
Michael Jordan's (first) retirement, the Chicago Bulls faced the New York
Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals. In game 5, with only a few seconds on
the clock and the Bulls leading the Knicks by two points in Madison Square
Garden, New York's Hubert Davis attempted a three-point shot to win the game.
Scottie Pippen challenged Davis's shot and was called for a foul, although
replays showed that Pippen's defense produced no unfair advantage over Davis.
Davis made all three free throw attempts, and the Knicks went on to win the
series in seven games.
In this case, the Bulls seemed to suffer from a case of bad luck in the form of a
bad call. Had the foul not been called on Pippen, it seems clear that the Bulls
would have won the game. Should we say that the outcome of the game was
unfair because it was determined by an unlucky break? Did the Bulls deserve to
win this game? Were they robbed?
Things are not as clear here as they were in the previous examples. Even if the
Bulls would have won had no foul been called on Pippen, can we really say that
this one unlucky call determined the outcome of the game? We have to
remember that there are always lots of other lucky breaks that occur throughout
a game, each of which contributes to the outcome. This final piece of luck was
only one of many events that shaped the final outcome.
We also need to remember that although referees introduce an element of luck
(in the form of bad calls), they are an essential part of the game. First of all, they
are necessary to see that the rules are followed, to ensure fairness in the sense of
equal opportunity, as discussed above. For example, as we've seen, the concept
of a foul is defined in terms of bodily contact that results in gaining an unfair
advantage over one's opponent. But not every instance of bodily contact results
in gaining an unfair advantage, so calling fouls correctly requires having a clear
sense of how the game works and what is fair contact. It also requires a lot of
judgment, because as former Knicks great Bill Bradley notes, basketball is “a
game of subtle felonies,” and calling literally every foul that is committed would
make the game take forever. For these reasons, it would be impossible for a
9
overtimes, advancing to the Final Four, but it took the officials six minutes and
twenty-five seconds to decide whether the replay showed that Sparks's foot was
on or behind the three-point line. If instant replays were always consulted
whenever an important call was made, basketball games would lose their flow
and take too long to complete.
Since human referees are necessary, and they can only be judged on the basis
of what information they have available to them at the moment a call is made,
it's usually unfair to criticize referees. Observers of the game never see exactly
what the referees see, since they are in different places (and so are the television
cameras that provide instant replays). So it's generally unreasonable to criticize
referees for making bad calls when we can't see exactly what they saw, even
though fans routinely do this on the basis of instant replays. (The NFL's
television feature “You Make the Call,” in which fans are encouraged to second-
guess officials on the basis of instant replays alone, surely encourages this
unfortunate practice.) Luckily, professional referees are very good and rarely
make mistakes given the information they possess.
Of course, there are cases where referees are biased or deliberately alter the
course of a game in a direction that is unfair. The dispute over the extra time
added onto the clock in the 1972 Olympic gold medal game between the United
States and the USSR may be a case of this sort. When cheating occurs and
determines the outcome of a game, then of course the result is unfair, whether
the cheating is perpetrated by players, coaches, fans, or referees. But the lucky
breaks of the game do not by themselves make the outcome of a game unfair,
even if they involve bad calls made by officials, since officials are a necessary
part of the game.
To return to the case of Scottie Pippen and Hubert Davis, it's hard to blame the
referee who called the foul on Pippen in that situation, because it looked like a
foul from his perspective, and allowing Pippen to unfairly hinder Davis in his
three-point shot attempt would have given the Bulls an unfair advantage at this
crucial moment in the game. So I think we should conclude that even if Pippen
did not foul Davis, the result of the game was not unfair, because playing the
game at all requires that a certain system of referees and officiating be in place.
That system is never foolproof, so everyone must accept the lucky and unlucky
breaks of the game that it generates.
The same analysis should be applied to the Bulls’ victory over the Utah Jazz
in the final game of the 1998 NBA finals, when Michael Jordan made a game-
and championship-winning jump shot with 5.2 seconds left (and then retired
from basketball for the second time, again temporarily, as it turned out). To free
up space to shoot, Jordan drove the ball to his right, then pushed his defender
(Byron Russell) in that direction, sending him sliding on the floor. This left
Jordan with an open shot, which he made easily, freezing at the end of his
follow-through for a few moments (as if to provide the perfect photo
opportunity, of which many people took advantage).
Should Jordan have been called for an offensive foul in this situation?
Applying the analysis developed above, it's hard to criticize the officials in light
of the instant replays. From their point of view, and from the point of view of the
instant replay, it is very hard to tell what difference Jordan's push made to
Russell's defense. Did Jordan gain an unfair advantage through this contact?
(Probably.) Would Jordan have had enough space to make the shot even if he had
not pushed Russell? (We will never know.) The important thing is that there was
in place a system of referees trying to enforce the rules, doing their best to make
an instant judgment call on the basis of the information available to them. This is
the best that we can do in basketball, the fairest situation that we fallible human
beings can create. Even if the instant replays showed that Jordan did commit an
offensive foul, we have to remember that similar judgment calls occur
throughout the whole game. (Another interesting “no call,” just a minute before
Jordan's game-winning shot, involved Jordan's stripping the ball from Karl
Malone under the Jazz basket, at the other end of the court, using a slapping
technique for which Malone would become well known before the end of his
NBA career.) Knowing that this is the best we can do and that the lucky breaks
of the game even out over the long run, players, coaches, and fans alike should
accept this kind of thing as an essential part of the game instead of complaining
that the outcome is unfair.
At least that's how it looks to me, from my angle. You may come to a different
view, based upon the information available to you. That's the way it goes, in life
and in basketball. 11
Notes
1. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 94. As
Thomas Jefferson once said, “I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I
work, the more I have of it.” Quoted in Pat Riley, The Winner Within (New York:
Berkley, 1994), 159.
2. Dennett, Elbow Room, 95.
3. For example, see Linda Zagzebski, “Religious Luck,” Faith and Philosophy
11, no. 3 (July 1994): 397-413.
4. The classical discussions of this idea, in recent philosophy, are Thomas
Nagel, “Moral Luck,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 50 (supp. vol.,
1976): 137-51; reprinted in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979), 24-38; and Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981). A helpful collection of excerpts from these
works, together with responses to them, is Moral Luck, ed. Daniel Staman (New
York: State University of New York Press, 1993).
5. For more on this question, see my discussion in Scott A. Davison, “Salvific
Luck,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 45, no. 2 (April 1999):
129-37.
6. Williams, Moral Luck, 20.
7. Dennett, Elbow Room, 96.
8. For a summary of postgame comments, see
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/02playoffs/games/2002-05-26-lakers-
kings.htm.
9. Bill Bradley, Values of the Game (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 148.
10. For more on this episode, see Daniel Gallagher's chapter in this volume.
11. I wish to thank Gregory Bassham, Thomas Flint, William Cole, Layne
Neeper, Timothy Simpson, Phil Krummrich, Kyle Macy, Bill Irwin, Wayne
Breeden, and Randy Ross for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
speaking about our own Dickie V when he said, ‘But though there be naturally a
wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing
tends further to increase and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art,
and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty.’ Few 3
emphasis and no matter who says it is beautiful, carries no weight. Beauty isn't in
the eye of the beholder! Beauty depends on copying, imitating, the ideal Beauty.
Period!”
The producer feared that the viewing audience had long since switched
channels or had left the room and were staring vacantly into an open refrigerator.
Jim, looking more like Rodin's famous sculpture, The Thinker, than a postgame
analyst, thoughtfully stroked his chin. He spoke up: “Billy is invoking a clear
ideal of a particular kind of shot, Plato's famous theory of imitation, in which a
good player strives to imitate, or copy, the ideal Form Beauty in his own play.
Not satisfied with a merely adequate shot that lacks beauty, the skilled athlete
tries—through inspiration and craftsmanship—to ‘keep looking back and forth,
to Justice, Beauty, … and all such things as by nature exist,’ as Plato explains in
the Republic —just as the best artists did in creating marble sculptures of
powerful, dignified men.” 5
“Suppose, on the other hand, that the Form Athlete is not itself an athlete, but
an abstract ideal that doesn't exist in time and space. Then the problem is that the
relationship between these abstract ideals and things in the world is mysterious.
What sense could it make to say that an actual athlete, a person, ‘copies,’
‘resembles,’ or ‘imitates’ the ideal? One is flesh and blood, and the other is an
abstract, immaterial essence. The Form Athlete, then, has no apparent
relationship to actual athletes and gives us no knowledge about them.
“So, Billy, even if the ideal Form Athlete exists, it can't help us at all in
knowing what true athleticism is or in picking out excellent athletes. The same
goes for beauty. The Form Beauty provides no standard of what beauty is or
what things are beautiful—dunks included.”
Another awkward silence ensued. Billy, having been skewered on the horns of
a dilemma, leaned back in his chair and looked pensively at the scoreboard. The
only on-air sound was that of the producer exhaling.
Moments later, things finally looked like they were returning to normal. The
winning team slowly mounted the hastily set-up platform at midcourt for the
trophy presentation. Jim stood up and was gathering his notes when an urgent
voice sounded in his earpiece: “Jim, hold the presentation! New York just called.
The top brass! They say we can't leave it like this. Stop the confetti! Resolve the
beauty argument! Now!”
strategies. Those who lack this expertise, or don't have an expert to explain it to
them, miss much of the beauty of the game.
“Those who play know when they are in a beautiful game. The strategy
unfolds, almost in slow motion. Teammates are where they are supposed to be,
cuts are sharp, picks are set just at the right moment, and the ball arrives
perfectly on time. For the knowledgeable basketball fan, there is a joy that is
almost inexplicable in knowing the patterns in advance.”
“Do you mean by ‘inner beauty’ the intelligence and excellence of execution
that it takes for a player to be successful on the court?” Billy asked. “It's all
coming back to me now. I recall Plato writing about the purpose of arts like
music, poetry, and theater and their role in teaching people, especially the young,
how to learn to recognize, love, imitate, and partake in beauty. Speaking of those
artisans and craftsmen whose societal role was to create and promote the arts in
his ideal republic, Plato wrote, ‘We must seek out such craftsmen as have the
talent to pursue the beautiful and the graceful in their work, in order that our
young men shall be benefited from all sides like those who live in a healthy
place, whence something from these beautiful works will strike their eyes and
ears like a breeze that brings health from salubrious places, and lead them
unawares from childhood to love of, resemblance to, and harmony with, the
beauty of reason.’” 8
“Excellent memory, Billy!” Jim exclaimed. “Yes, I like to think of the beauty
of reason as an internal or inner beauty.
“Outer beauty and inner beauty,” Jim continued. “There must be both.
Physical movement by exceptional athletes for all to see, plus players acting
with purpose, reason, and in concert with each other. These are the objective and
subjective sides to beauty. Together, that's what made this a beautiful game!”
Beauty Rewarded
A voice spoke in Jim's earpiece: “New York says great job, Jim! Start the
presentation!”
A dozen modern-day exemplars of Greek gods now began to file onto the
platform: tall, well-proportioned young men donning championship caps and T-
shirts, in the prime of their lives, physically and mentally. They had played the
game of their lives. Unparalleled. Unprecedented. And unwilling to let the
moment pass without looking into the camera and saying, “Hi, Mom!”
As the opening chords of “One Shining Moment” filled the arena, highlights
of the winning team's season were shown. Magical moments from the Sweet
Sixteen, the Elite Eight, the Final Four, and the title game flashed on the screen.
Players were popping their game shirts and falling to the floor with joy. All the
excitement, color, drama, and emotion of “March Madness” were relived, and
the dark wooden trophy was handed to the winning coach, who hoisted it high in
the air.
The announcers dabbed their eyes as the credits started to roll. Dickie and
Billy thanked Jim, congratulated the winning team, each other, their viewers,
their colleagues from the network, and, of course, their affiliates. They ended by
thanking the student athletes, praising their skills and admiring their stamina,
particularly their strength and grace under pressure. And finally, they agreed, “It
was a beautiful game.” And now they knew why. “There was both outer and
inner beauty,” Billy and Dickie said almost in unison.
As the music swelled and the singing began, Jim offered the last word. “I
consider ‘One Shining Moment’ to be the anthem to our coverage of this NCAA
tournament.” 9
Notes
Any similarity between the characters in this essay and real people is, of course,
purely coincidental. Thanks to songwriter David Barrett for permission to reprint
the lyrics to “One Shining Moment.”
1. David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Aesthetics: A Critical
Anthology, ed. George Dickie and Richard J. Sclafani (New York: Bedford / St.
Martin's, 1989), 244.
2. Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” 246.
3. Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” 247.
4. Plato, Symposium, 210e2-211b5, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed.
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, trans. Michael Joyce (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1961).
5. Plato, Republic, 501b1-4, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1974).
6. Jim seems to have read Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, 178b. Plato
himself recognized the problem. See his dialogue Parmenides, 132a. Aristotle,
On Sophistical Refutations, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941). Plato, Parmenides, in Plato: The Collected
Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, trans. F. M. Cornford
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961).
7. Plato, Symposium, 212a3-5.
8. Plato, Republic, 401c4-d3.
9. Jim Nantz, CBS sports analyst,
http://www.oneshiningmoment.com/lyrics/index.html.
SECOND QUARTER
Zazen also helps Jackson and his players relate better with one another, the
referees, and the media. The images of a coach screaming from the sidelines at a
referee and a player getting into a brawl with an opponent are iconic in the
minds of sports fans. Jackson believes that the regular practice of zazen helps
him and his players gain control of a situation, calm angry or egotistic thoughts,
and concentrate on the immediate task at hand. 2
In the case of Michael Jordan, Jackson's request for more selfless play on his
part was crucial to the Bulls’ spectacular success. In particular, Jordan's
adjustment from point-maker to playmaker empowered his teammates to take on
certain roles that they had turned over to his stunning abilities. With Jordan
focused solely on scoring, his teammates didn't develop their own skills and
often complemented Jordan more as spectators than as contributors.
A second example of Jackson's philosophy of selfless play comes from the
kind of offense he has employed for many years: the triangle (or triple-post)
offense. The triangle offense was first developed by Tex Winter in the 1950s and
not used by the Bulls until Jackson became head coach. Jackson adopted the
offense, which can take years to perfect, because it makes every player a threat
and facilitates selfless, team-centered play. As Jackson says, the offense looks
like a five-man Tai Chi performance and demands that all players work in
unison, as a group. The point of the offense is not to attack the defense head-on,
but to get it off-balance and overextended through a carefully orchestrated series
of moves. For the offense to work, players must surrender the “me” of personal
glory for the “we” of coordinated free-flowing team movement.
Two principles of selfless play lie at the core of the triangle offense: (1) the
offense must give the player with the ball an opportunity to pass the ball to any
of his teammates; and (2) the offense must utilize the players’ individual skills.
The first principle holds that by opening up more opportunities to pass the ball
one can increase the probability that the defense will become unbalanced,
leading to a better shot for the offense. The second principle expresses the
sensitivity of the system to the skills of the players on the court. Each player
must see for himself how best to function in the triangle offense, and what skills
to employ to find weaknesses in the defense and take advantage of them. The
obligation is partly on the player to see how he can contribute best to the offense.
In some cases, this may require being a playmaker rather than a point-maker.
Jackson's involvement with his players goes well beyond his role as a coach.
He also takes a genuine interest in their personal lives and fosters their growth as
individuals. For some coaches, involvement in a player's personal life is thrust
upon them. For instance, if a player has a drug problem and gets caught, the
coach must become involved in the player's personal affairs. Some coaches no
doubt wish that their interactions with their players ended with games and
practices. But for those like Jackson who have taken philosophy to heart, it is
difficult to neatly separate one's role as coach from one's role as spiritual mentor
and friend. Jackson's approach to basketball flows from philosophical
underpinnings that are foundational to his own life. They force him to take the
needs of his players as individuals on and off the court into perspective,
recognizing that basketball is only an extension of their lives, not the whole of it.
Chamberlain in this regard. Over the course of his career, O'Neal averages 53.1
percent from the free throw line, but during the 2002-2003 championship season
he averaged an astounding (for him) 62.2 percent. 5
What does any of this have to do with Jackson? Again, we return to the role
that philosophy plays in Jackson's approach to coaching and his interaction with
his players. One year Jackson gave O'Neal a copy of Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics as a Christmas present. In this classic text, Aristotle argues that sustained
excellence is achieved through habit and repetition. For Aristotle, this is the
central dictum of moral education and personal growth. O'Neal has cited the
mantra of habituation to explain his improved free throw shooting: by
continuously practicing proper habits, he was able to internalize those techniques
and perform better, especially under pressure, when the maintenance of subtle
mechanics is more difficult. Indeed, he even went on to dub himself “The Big
Aristotle” because of the influence of Aristotle's teachings.
Admittedly, even those of us who are not sports psychologists won't find this
advice particularly novel: practice excellence and you are more likely to achieve
it. But paying lip service to the dictum and truly owning it are completely
different, and O'Neal was able to own it; Jackson certainly deserves credit for
educating his star pupil in the ways of the philosophers. (Kobe Bryant, by the
way, once said, “I don't know why Phil keeps giving me those books; he knows
I'm not going to read them.” As if we needed more reasons to favor O'Neal over
Bryant!)
Further, the relationship between Jackson and O'Neal has always been
characterized by warmth and mutual respect. In his most recent book, The Last
Season, Jackson defends Shaq against his many detractors and notes that for “all
his bravado, Shaq is a very sensitive, fragile soul who appreciates any sign of
tenderness.” The mentoring relationship between Jackson and O'Neal clearly
6
helped Shaq become a better team player and contributed greatly to the Lakers’
three consecutive championships.
Giving Back
Surely there is life beyond the basketball court, and this is another way in which
Jackson's coaching may have influenced O'Neal. As we noted earlier, one of the
chief tenets of Jackson's philosophy is that of putting the team over the self; this
was evidenced in his request that Jordan be willing to score less in order to make
his teammates better (and, of course, to win those six championships). Today,
O'Neal is unquestionably one of the most generous and unselfish professional
athletes. Whether this owes more to Jackson's influence or the big man's big
heart, we can't be sure; most likely it's a combination of both. Three recent
events attest to O'Neal's generous spirit.
First, after being traded to the Miami Heat, O'Neal returned to Los Angeles on
Christmas Day 2004 to play his former teammates. While this was certainly a
big game, and all eyes were on his dramatic reunion with Bryant, O'Neal spent
the morning giving to charity. Not only did he purchase presents for
disadvantaged youth with his own money, he donned his Shaq-a-Claus outfit and
handed them out personally. Then he went on to beat Bryant and the Lakers.
Second, following the 2004-2005 season, O'Neal's contract was up for
renewal with the Miami Heat. He had been scheduled to make $30.6 million
during the 2005-2006 season, but renegotiated his contract to make $100 million
over the next five years or, on average, $20 million a year. Why would O'Neal
leave $10 million (at least) on the table? In his own words: “This contract allows
me to address all of my family's long-term financial goals while allowing the
Heat the ability to acquire those players that we need to win a championship.” 7
O'Neal certainly could have had more money, but he sacrificed personal earnings
to give his team the chance to acquire the players that would give them the best
chance to get past the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs for the
championship in 2005-2006. This extra money has allowed the Heat to acquire
Antoine Walker, Steve Smith, and Jason Williams in the off-season. To be sure,
O'Neal won't be struggling for money, but $10 million per year is a large
concession and one that shows his commitment to his team, his teammates, and
to winning championships. Again, this sort of selflessness is exactly what
Jackson tried to instill in Jordan on the basketball court, and we now see it
reflected in O'Neal's contract negotiations as well.
As a final example, in the summer of 2005 O'Neal took an active role in
disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Along with his wife,
Shaunie, he has personally lobbied the residents of South Florida for
contributions, whether monetary or material, for those displaced by the
hurricane. O'Neal also challenged Heat president Pat Riley to make a
8
contribution to the relief program, and Riley came through by announcing that
all proceeds of the preseason game against the San Antonio Spurs would be
donated to Katrina relief programs.
Again, the extent to which Jackson deserves credit for O'Neal's big-
heartedness is open to question, though it is noteworthy that one heard far fewer
of these stories during O'Neal's pre-Jackson tenures in Orlando and Los Angeles.
At a minimum, Jackson brought Aristotle into O'Neal's life, and there is a
suspicious connection between Jackson's advocacy of selflessness and O'Neal's
displays of it.
In this chapter, we've explored how philosophical ideas can be translated into
real-world success through the example of Phil Jackson's coaching and the play
and character of Shaquille O'Neal. One of our targets has been the skeptic who
thinks that philosophy can't be of practical value. This critic stands refuted in
light of how philosophy has contributed to the winning of nine NBA
championships by Jackson and Jackson's positive influence on both Michael
Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal. Now anytime somebody asks Jackson what you
can do with a philosophy degree, all he has to do is point to his trophy case. Nine
NBA championship rings ain't bullshit!
Notes
1. Phil Jackson with Hugh Delehanty, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a
Hardwood Warrior (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 50-51.
2. Jackson also regularly encourages team discussions of ethics centered on
the Ten Commandments. Jackson, 124.
3. Jackson, 91.
4. For O'Neal's own take on his poor free-throw shooting, see Shaquille
O'Neal, Shaq Talks Back (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001), 87-91.
5. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/shaquille_oneal/index.html, accessed
September 12, 2005. Since the 2002-2003 season, Shaq's free throw percentage
has dipped below .500 every year.
6. Phil Jackson, The Last Season: A Team in Search of Its Soul (New York:
Penguin Press, 2004), 79.
7. Contra Costa Times (online):
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/12279972.htm?
template=contentModules/printstory.jsp.
8. http://www.nba.com/heat/news/shaq_hurricane_050907.html.
David K. O'Connor
WILT VERSUS RUSSELL
Excellence on the Hardwood
But most of Russell's supporters would have rejected the notion that all they
cared about was that Russell's teams were more successful than Wilt's. Russell,
they wanted to claim, was also a better player, regardless of the records, because
he was a better team player, especially on defense. They would compare
Russell's way of “making everyone around him a better player” with what they
perceived as Wilt's selfish play, hogging the ball and generally stealing the
spotlight. It wasn't only that Russell won more rings than Wilt, then. It's that
Russell embodied a different and higher ideal of basketball excellence, an ideal
of teamwork rather than of one-on-one domination.
Michael Jordan not a basketball player? Bill Cartwright was an unusually
thoughtful and articulate professional athlete. When he made this incredible
statement, he was measuring Michael by something like the Russellite ideal of
teamwork, not the Wiltonian ideal of domination. That is, he was noting the fact
that Michael was not “just” any old player who depended on his teammates to do
great things but, rather, a guy with such singular talents that he could do amazing
things on his own. But suppose Cartwright had looked at himself and said, “If I
and my teammates can't figure out how to get along with this transcendent first-
name genius Michael, then we're just not basketball players.” Why measure the
great man by how he gets along with the lesser men, rather than the other way
around?
Aristotle faced this problem when he compared democracy to kingship in the
third book of the Politics. Most of the time, he thought, democracy is better,
because everyone gets a chance to use his talents. But what if someone arises of
truly superlative political talent, someone who would do a better job for the
community ruling by himself, as a king, than the community could do by letting
all citizens have a turn to use their talents? Well, conceded Aristotle, “all that's
left, as is after all natural, is for everyone gladly to obey such a person, and for
such people to be perpetual kings in their cities.” But Aristotle realized that
getting everyone to obey a natural king was no easy task. The other citizens,
after all, do have real political talents, just as Wilt's teammates had real
basketball talents. Will these citizens really be better off by learning how to obey
a superlative ruler than they would by ruling on their own? Would you rather be
a servant who makes the great man's greatness possible, or be the master of your
own accomplishments, even though they fall short of greatness?
basketball excellence in a more harmonious way, one that fits him more
effectively into a partnership with his teammates and their talents.
You might do this by focusing Don on parts of his game that his current
dominating style of play doesn't draw on. For example, you could work with him
on finding the open man in situations where he now forces up a difficult shot.
You can help him appreciate the specific kind of excellence required for this
sensitivity to his teammates and their position on the floor. You might emphasize
how rare this sensitivity is and hold up for his emulation great masters of these
skills, like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Nancy Lieberman, or, more recently,
Steve Nash. He can learn to take as much pride in this aspect of basketball
excellence as he formerly took in shooting well.
Don shouldn't think of himself as sacrificing his own opportunities for his
teammates when he makes this change. If you're a good coach, he'll also change
the conception of basketball excellence by which he measures himself. Don will
be pleased if his new style of play makes the team better, to be sure. But more
importantly, you must also convince him that he will be a more excellent
basketball player by developing this more team-oriented aspect of his game. In a
sense, then, his game has become less selfish, and he shares the spotlight with
his teammates more than he once did. But your educative role as Don's coach
has not been to awaken altruism where once there was only egoism. You have
done something more like changing his taste from concertos (with himself
playing the lead, of course) to symphonies (where he enjoys his very ability to
blend in).
and responding to them effectively represent the highest, most refined level of
achievement in basketball. In effect, they see the Russellite ideal as a higher
ideal than the Wiltonian ideal, even in cases where the dominator ideal might
bring more victories than the team-oriented ideal. With all due respect to Vince
Lombardi, winning is not the only thing. Russell was not merely more successful
than Chamberlain. He also “played the game the way it should be played.”
Notes
1. For a fascinating account of the early years of the Wilt-Russell rivalry, see
John Taylor, The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of
Basketball (New York: Random House, 2005).
2. Sam Smith, The Jordan Rules (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 66,
249 (emphasis added).
3. Compare Aristotle, Politics, bk. 3.
4. It is noteworthy in this context that in 1980 Russell was voted Greatest
Player in the History of the NBA by the Professional Basketball Writers
Association of America.
Jerry L. Walls
THE WIZARD VERSUS THE GENERAL
Why Bob Knight Is a Greater Coach than John Wooden
DURING THE SUMMER of 2005, a remarkable movie entitled The Great Raid
was released. The movie is remarkable primarily because the extraordinary
events it depicts really happened. In 1945, during the Second World War, more
than 500 U.S. prisoners of war were under the threat of imminent death in the
infamous Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. The movie
recounts the story of how 121 men in the Sixth Ranger Battalion undertook a
daring, against-all-odds mission to liberate those POWs.
This task was daunting not only because these men would be far outnumbered
by the Japanese but also because they would have to travel, undetected, thirty
miles behind enemy lines to reach the camp and would have to rely heavily on a
strategic plan of attack and the element of surprise to have any chance of
success. Despite the unlikely odds, this most audacious raid was a spectacular
triumph. Nearly all the captives were rescued, and only two of the Sixth Ranger
Battalion lost their lives. 1
For my money, The Great Raid is a great movie. But for now, I am more
2
interested in the question of why the raid itself is worthy of being labeled as
great. The broader issue of how greatness is measured is an inherently
philosophical issue, especially since it involves judgments of value. Standards of
greatness usually are not obvious or set in stone. They often depend on
contestable judgments of comparative value. 3
So what makes a military operation like the one described above deserve to be
called great? I would suggest that there are at least two factors involved in this
assessment. First, the mission was impressive because it was accomplished by a
relatively small group of men who defeated a larger and better-situated group of
enemies. This was not a victory of superior strength and numbers overwhelming
an outmatched opponent. Rather, it was the triumph of an undermanned group
that succeeded by virtue of a strategy that was carefully thought out, planned,
and executed. But there is another factor as well. This raid also required
outstanding courage and commitment on the part of those who carried it out. So
in addition to the strategic brilliance of the mission, it demonstrated the sort of
heroic valor and sacrifice that makes for greatness. The character these men
displayed demands our honor and respect even more than their skill and savvy in
executing their ingenious plan of attack.
In this chapter I want to explore what makes for greatness in coaching. This is
admittedly not as important an issue as what makes a military operation great.
However, I think our discussion thus far gives us some clues that may be
pertinent to measuring greatness in basketball coaches.
This issue, I have discovered, incites considerable passion among fans. In my
many years of engaging in basketball arguments, some of the most spirited
disputes I have participated in have involved the question of who are the truly
great coaches of the game. My choice for the top of the list is admittedly
controversial. In fact, for many people he embodies the very idea of controversy
more than any other figure in all of sport. I refer, of course, to Bob Knight, the
man whom hoops fans also know as “the General.” I can hardly recall the
number of times people have reacted with surprise, if not indignation, when they
learn that I am an outspoken fan of the General.
Part of the reason some find it surprising that I love the General is that I teach
at a theological seminary. Some apparently see it as incongruous that a guy who
teaches philosophy to students preparing for the ministry can be a fan of a guy
whose most notorious moment in the public eye came when he threw a chair
across the gym in protest of what he took to be a bad call in a game. The chair is
only the most famous episode in a whole litany of incidents in which Knight's
volatile temper has gotten the best of him.
But my appreciation for Knight is not the only thing that evokes surprised
reactions from my fellow hoops fans. I have gotten similarly strong reactions
from a number of people when they learn that I am not a big fan of another
coaching icon, namely “the Wizard of Westwood,” John Wooden. Several times
people have brought his name up when they have learned I am a basketball fan
who also teaches in a seminary. Surely, they assume, I must be a fan of one of
the great statesmen of the game, a man known for his famous “pyramid of
success” and who is so much a gentleman that he wouldn't even tolerate
swearing in practice. When they hear that I am not, they are often flabbergasted
4
would likely find reasons to like both the “rough” General and the “smooth”
Wizard, I will argue that Knight, the scourge of the modern media, if not of God,
is a decidedly greater coach than Wooden, a darling of the media. In the process
it will become clear why I admire the General but have much less enthusiasm for
the Wizard.
My argument will hinge on two fundamental points that seem to me to be
obviously true, points that are suggested by my discussion of The Great Raid.
First, it is more impressive to succeed if one does so with comparatively fewer
resources at one's disposal than it is if one has more. Second, success is greater if
it is achieved in a way that is morally honorable than if one resorts to, or
tolerates, something unethical or dishonest in order to succeed. I will say more in
defense of these two points later, but for now I will take these two claims as
intuitively obvious. The more controversial issue is how these points apply to
Knight and Wooden.
Translating the point into hoops lingo, this means that it is more impressive if
a coach can win with players who have less natural talent than the opponents. To
see more clearly the force of this point, let's consider another area where this
principle applies, namely, education. This comparison is particularly apt since
many leading coaches conceive of themselves primarily as teachers, including
Knight and Wooden.
A great coach is a great educator who teaches his players not only how to play
the game of basketball but also how to succeed when the clock runs out on their
basketball career. A great teacher must be able to discern the potential of each of
his players and to develop that potential as fully as possible. Not all students are
equally gifted, so the success of a teacher must be measured not only by what his
students learn but also by the ability they had to begin with. One of America's
most noted educators, the philosopher Mortimer Adler, who also served as the
chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, made the point
by saying that not all students can be expected to move the same distance down
the track. “The measure or standard of accomplishment cannot, therefore, be
based on the expectation of a single arithmetical equality of results. It must be
based on a proportional equality of results—a mastery of what is to be learned
by all to the extent that is proportional to the individual measure of their capacity
for achievement.” 7
Now, some might object to this argument that development of talent is one
mark of great coaching and the fact that Wooden had so many NBA all-stars is a
credit to his skills in player development. Surely there is something to this point.
Some of Wooden's better players at UCLA, such as Jack Hirsch, who played on
his first championship team with Goodrich in 1964, were not particularly touted
in high school. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that most players who end
up becoming stars in the NBA are players with great natural talent. As the old
saying goes, size cannot be coached. Nor can speed and quickness and vertical
leap. And most of Wooden's players who went on to become NBA all-stars had
these in abundance.
The more telling cases of player development occur when players who are not
expected to do great things grow into players who end up doing so. Several of
Knight's players could be cited as examples, but consider two of his recent
players at Texas Tech, Andre Emmett and Ronald Ross. Neither of these players
was a high school All-American or highly recruited nationally. In fact, Ross first
joined the team as a walk-on. In the season before Knight arrived at Texas Tech,
Emmett averaged 7.7 points a game for a team that went 9-19. In Knight's first
year at Tech, Emmett averaged 18.7 points a game and became an All-
Conference player as Tech won twenty-three games and went to the NCAA
tournament. Emmett graduated as the leading scorer in Big Twelve history. The
year after Emmett graduated, Ross became an All-Conference player, averaging
17.5 points a game, and led Tech to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament.
It might also be argued that recruiting is part of coaching, so Wooden's
recruitment of great players is an integral component of his greatness as a coach.
There is also something to this point, but it should not be exaggerated, for a
number of reasons. First, recruiting is not a distinctively basketball skill. In
many ways, recruiting is a matter of salesmanship, and part of what makes one a
good recruiter is the same whether one is recruiting for basketball, football, or
the U.S. Marine Corps. The ability to evaluate talent is a basketball skill, and
some coaches have the ability to recognize talent that others overlook. But
recruiting as it is usually understood is not so much a matter of talent evaluation
as it is a matter of persuading those who are widely recognized as the top prep
players to attend one's school.
Recruiting is certainly a vital and legitimate part of the game, but
unfortunately it has become part of the sordid underbelly of college athletics. All
too often, recruiting is less about convincing a student that he will gain an
education and grow as a person than it is about pandering to the egos of
immature young men who have an exaggerated sense of their self-importance,
not to mention their talent. Moreover, recruiting has been heavily influenced by
shoe companies, television exposure, and other factors that have little to do with
the development of athletic skill or higher education. Worst of all, recruiting has
been corrupted by the involvement of boosters who have provided inducements
to recruits in the form of cars, money, and other benefits that violate NCAA
rules.
The reasons that cheating is viewed with such disdain are easy to see.
Cheating is not only a lie, but it is also a form of stealing. It is a lie because the
one cheating typically presents himself as competing honestly when in fact he is
not. It is a form of stealing because the cheater unfairly takes for himself honor
and recognition that rightfully should have gone to someone else, someone who
competed according to the rules, who would have received the honor of winning
if the contest had been fair. Likewise, the joy of winning is stolen from the fans
of teams who compete honorably, according to the rules. And ironically, the
cheater ends up cheating himself. This point was made recently by baseball great
Cal Ripken in reference to the much-publicized use of steroids by some of the
biggest names in his sport. Ripken remarked: “Ultimately, at the end of the day,
you couldn't say you were better than the other person because you knew you
had a secret. You knew you had cheated.” 10
At the heart of what makes Knight great as a coach is his rejection of this
mind-set and his unwavering commitment to honesty and fair play. One of the
things that positively leaps off the pages of his recent autobiography is that a
central driving force of his career is a burning passion to show that winning need
not come at the price of cheating. In the early pages of his book, he expresses
this point eloquently in describing the terms on which he wanted to succeed at
Indiana.
I wanted to win those games and build those championships the way some people, primarily in the
press, were saying could not be done anymore—by following NCAA rules; by recruiting kids who
could and would be genuine students and four-year graduates as well as excellent basketball players
and teams. I wanted to make the INDIANA they wore across their chests an identifying symbol that
meant to people throughout the state, the Big Ten, and the country that inside that jersey was a kid
who would compete like hell and represent his school on the court and off it, during his college years
and after them, in a way they would make the most important judges of all, that kid's parents, as
proud as they could be.
Several pages later, he reiterates that as badly as he wants to win as a coach, and
as much as he hates to lose, he utterly rejects the notion of winning at any cost.
“No. Absolutely not. I've never understood how anybody who cheated to get a
player, or players, could take any satisfaction whatsoever out of whatever
winning came afterward.” 13
Knight's record matches his word. Over his many years of coaching there has
never been any sort of cheating or rules violations involving his program.
Moreover, he has been staunchly committed to the idea of student-athletes,
demanding that his players attend class regularly and consistently maintaining
one of the highest graduation rates in the country. His record stands as a
monument to the fact that it is possible to win, even at the highest level, without
compromising academic standards or breaking the rules that define fair play and
honesty.
Cox's concern to be fair and tell both sides of the story with respect to Wooden
has also been expressed by a number of sportswriters in reference to Knight. A
few years ago, during the controversies surrounding the events that eventually
led to Knight's firing at Indiana, Wooden's name was often invoked as an
example of a perfect gentleman, a role model to be emulated, in contrast to the
more volatile Knight. One of the writers who saw this as an unfair comparison
was Dave Kindred of the Sporting News, who cited the following lines from
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's autobiography as evidence that Wooden tolerated
repeated violations of NCAA rules in order to build his dynasty at UCLA: “Sam
[Gilbert] was a very valuable and influential friend to me. He never did anything
illegal; all he did was ignore the NCAA's economic restrictions about helping
athletes. He was like everybody's grandfather, got us stuff wholesale, knew
where to get inexpensive tires for your car or a cheap apartment.… Sam steered
clear of John Wooden, and Mr. Wooden gave him the same wide berth. Both
helped the school greatly. Sam helped me get rid of my tickets, and once the
money thing worked out, I never gave another thought to leaving UCLA.”
Kindred concluded his article with what he called a “scruples question: Would
you rather have a coach who throws a vase against a wall or a coach who turns a
blind eye to the buying of players in his behalf?” 15
laundering money for a known drug runner, but he died just two days before
federal officials went to his home to arrest him. 18
Now what is curious is just how quiet the “shadow” of Gilbert has remained in
the consciousness of sports fans. Although Wooden's cheating appears to be
widely recognized among sportswriters and other basketball insiders, his image
remains untarnished in the larger public. Anyone who watches college basketball
regularly will hear numerous references to Wooden and his extraordinary legacy,
with not so much as a hint about the rules violations that fueled his
accomplishments. Moreover, he is typically depicted as the epitome of class, a
man whose contributions to the game deserve the highest respect and admiration.
The shadow simply disappears in the sunny picture that is painted of Wooden's
gracious personality and singular achievements.
In fact, in numerous conversations on these matters, I have found that few
basketball fans, even very knowledgeable ones, have even heard of Gilbert.
Many have reacted with utter disbelief, and in a few cases with something
bordering on angry denial, when I told them about Gilbert and his alleged role in
UCLA basketball. Their image of Wooden was such that it seemed completely
unthinkable to them that he might have cheated or tolerated cheating in any way.
So here is an interesting irony. Everyone who knows anything about
basketball knows about Knight's chair-throwing incident, but hardly anybody
seems to know about Gilbert outside of sportswriters and basketball insiders.
Moreover, while the chair and the litany of associated incidents gives Knight a
negative image in many people's minds, the shadow of Gilbert has done little to
tarnish Wooden's image.
Notes
1. Several Filipino guerrillas who assisted in the raid also lost their lives.
2. Though the movie got “two thumbs up” from Ebert and Roeper, it was
largely panned by critics and received little attention or publicity.
3. For more on this point, see the chapter by David O'Connor in this volume.
4. Ironically, according to sportswriter Charley Rosen, Wooden had a “not-so-
secret habit of viciously cursing opposing players during the course of ball
games.” http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story5505042?print=true.
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” available at
http://www.emersoncentral.com/greatmen.htm.
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Liberal
Arts Press, 1962), 1101a.
7. Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Program (New York: Collier Books, 1984),
3.
8. Well, fans from North Carolina may also remember some of these players.
The name of Dan Dakich, for instance, may ring a bell for Tar Heels fans. This
game, incidentally, provides support for the recent observation of sportswriter
Gregg Doyel: “There's a reason Knight has one more national championship
than Smith with less than half the Final Four appearances. Smith was a better
recruiter and a brilliant coach, but Knight's the best tactician in college
basketball history.” Gregg Doyel, “Take It to the Bank: Knight Will Pass the
Dean,” http://cbs.sportsline.com/print/collegebasketball/story/9035497.
9. As the play unfolds, the character who speaks this line succumbs to
dishonesty and as a result suffers a deep sense of disgust with himself. For an
insightful discussion of the play and its practical moral implications, see Tom
Morris, If Aristotle Ran General Motors (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 40-43.
10. Associated Press, “Ripken ‘in a State of Denial’ over Palmeiro's Test,”
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2130301.
11. Tom Morris, True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence (New York:
Grossett/Putnam, 1994), 219.
12. Bob Knight with Bob Hammel, Knight: My Story (New York: Thomas
Dunne Books, 2002), 6-7.
13. Knight, Knight: My Story, 24.
14. Earl Cox, “Earl Cox on Sports,” http://www.voice-
tribune.com/2_10_05/earlcox2_10_05 .html.
For details of how Gilbert flagrantly and frequently violated NCAA rules
during the latter years of Wooden's tenure at UCLA, see Mark Heisler, They
Shoot Coaches Don't They? UCLA and the NCAA since John Wooden (New
York: Macmillan, 1996), 44-62. According to Heisler, Gilbert did everything
from paying for abortions for players’ girlfriends to scalping their tickets. For
another account of Gilbert's role in UCLA basketball, see Jim Savage, The
Encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament (New York: Dell, 1990), 710.
15. Dave Kindred, “Indiana's Decision No Whitewash,”
http://www.sportingnews.com/voices/dave_kindred/20000518.html.
For more on Gilbert's relationship with Abdul-Jabbar, see Heisler, They Shoot
Coaches Don't They? 54-56. Heisler cites another vivid example to illustrate
Wooden's tolerance of Gilbert: “’I remember we were on a road trip in Chicago,’
said Greg Lee, ‘and five guys all got on the bus together wearing matching coats
with fur-lined collars. It was pretty conspicuous. It's not like Coach was an
ostrich about Sam but he wouldn't confront the problem’” (56).
16. Dan Wetzel, “An Old Hoops Battle,”
http://www.acctoday.com/Dan_Wetzel …
=6869&author=76&subject=2&school=0.
17. Apparently, Gilbert ignored the NCAA and continued his involvement
with UCLA until his death in 1987. See Heisler, They Shoot Coaches Don't
They? 60-62.
18. http://www.english.ucla.edu/ucla1960s/7071/austin12.htm. For an
insightful analysis of some pragmatic and self-serving reasons why the NCAA
may not have investigated UCLA during Wooden's tenure, see Brian Seel, “Time
to Be Honest about Wooden's Legacy,”
http://www.sportspages.com/content/blog.php?p=461&more=1. See also Heisler,
They Shoot Coaches Don't They? 57.
19. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: Modern Library,
1952), 521. The entry is for April 6, 1775.
THIRD QUARTER
Dirk Dunbar
THE DAO OF HOOPS
The Dao does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone.
—Daode jing (v. 37)
THE DAO (“THE WAY”) permeates popular culture. The yin-yang symbol is a
media icon, visible on car bumpers, TV commercials, T-shirts, surfboards, you
name it, while books such as The Tao of Pooh, The Tao of Physics, and the
Tao/Dao of almost anything imaginable can be found in most bookstores. The 1
reason is simple: the Dao and its related notions offer a model of balanced and
harmonious action that can enhance all kinds of ways of being and doing,
including the art of playing basketball.
For me, basketball is the ultimate sport: to play it well requires teamwork,
instantaneous decision making, spontaneous hand-eye-foot coordination,
patience, intensity, dedication, concentration, and selflessness. All these
elements are emphasized in ancient China's earth-wisdom tradition, particularly
in Daoism. Key Daoist concepts such as wuwei, qi, and ziran not only integrate
the most significant qualities of the sport but also demonstrate how basketball
can serve as a microcosm of a balanced, meaningful life. I am not just writing
theoretically but also speaking from experience. Both in basketball and in life,
Daoism has helped point me in the right direction. While I excelled in hoops,
admittedly, I'm still trying to navigate the rest.
I started playing basketball before I can remember. With help from my older
brother, I learned the fundamentals on a small court with a four-foot basket in
our basement. I could dribble equally well with each hand and shoot layups and
laybacks and even make an occasional free throw on a regulation basket by the
time I entered kindergarten. At the YMCA, on the court in our backyard, and in
school gyms all over town, I spent countless hours in pickup games or alone,
pretending to be (or to be playing against) Oscar Robertson or Jerry West.
Anytime anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was
immediate: a professional basketball player.
All through my youth, I lived and breathed the game, carrying a basketball
with me wherever I went. “If a basketball had hair,” a reporter quoted my coach,
“he'd marry it.” Following a fun-filled high school career (during which I was
selected to all-state and All-American teams, led the nation in scoring, and was
recruited by over two hundred colleges), I attended Central Michigan University
and was the third-leading scorer as a freshman in the Mid-American Conference.
I was contacted by a number of NBA scouts and agents and felt confident that I
had a future in pro basketball. I watched film, worked endlessly on
fundamentals, and continually broke down every aspect of my game in an effort
to become a complete player. Only later, however, when I discovered Daoism,
could I truly understand and fully appreciate the game.
To perform at the highest level possible, our goal cannot be any external
reward; rather, one must be so immersed in the action that the playing becomes
an end in itself, free of distraction and desire. Competition, when balanced with
a yin perspective, isn't focused on defeating the “other,” but on overcoming the
obstacles that suspend the sort of mindful surrendering necessary for optimal
performance. The same is true of strategy: if one concentrates solely on which
play to run, which trap to set, which pass to make, then the potential for a
spontaneous response to a particular situation is lost and so is the ability to
counteract the other team's defense or offense. Having a plan is important, but
not as important as cultivating the ability to react. That includes, of course, the
need for individual skills to shine within the context of the team. A good
offensive player should have the freedom to freelance, to take a risk and make a
move that is not part of a designed play. Basketball is a process, not something
that can be controlled, diagrammed, or mechanically executed. In nearly all
cases, a balance must be found, for whenever an action is forced or agenda-
driven rather than allowed to happen, the opposite of the intended outcome may
well occur.
basketball career. I can bear witness to many of the elements Murphy designates
as extraordinary: a unique sense of illumination, altered perceptions of time and
space, and exceptional feats. I scored sixty-five points in a high school game,
forty-one in a college game, and seventy-four in the European professional
league, and I can attest that there were phases in each game when I experienced
the zone, moments when time and action seemed to slow down and play became
effortless, not guided by me per se but by a kind of “flow” in which I sensed my
“self” and all action as one. That flow was not confined to moments in games
but was activated daily in a regimen of practice and playing. Although I cannot
presume to know how one initiates flow, I am comfortable describing it in terms
of the Daoist concept of wuwei.
Wuwei enacts the Dao, rhythmically balancing the orderly yang and chaotic
yin. Literally translated as “no action,” wuwei does not mean passivity, but a
natural, unstructured, playful, and egoless mode of action that is quite different
from the socially regulated activity emphasized in the Chinese Confucian
tradition. By embodying wuwei, the person of the Dao is as effortless as flowing
water. Gracefully guided by gravity to the lowest places and powerful enough to
cut through rock, flowing water is a common Daoist analogy of how one can—
by being humble, unassuming, yet effective—mirror the Dao. As the Daode jing
(v. 78) declares:
In the world is nothing
so soft and gentle as water.
Yet nothing hard and inflexible
can withstand its power.
Wuwei does not mean that one is merely reactive or content to avoid obstacles to
personal development; rather, wuwei means acting in such perfect accord with
the environment that you become so completely absorbed in what is happening
that your sense of self is not limited to a locality, but is part of the process or
field of action. As verse 48 suggests:
By not forcing things,
you embrace wuwei.
When nothing is forced,
nothing is left undone.
As Alan Watts points out, we use many phrases to characterize wuwei, such as
“going with the grain, rolling with the punch, swimming with the current,
trimming the sails to the wind, taking the tide at its flood, and stooping to
conquer.” “Practice wuwei, and everything falls into place,” the Daode jing says
4
(v. 3). To learn to go with the flow is not a matter of will but requires thousands
of hours of training and a ceaseless practice of disciplined surrender. Only when
motor memory has been thoroughly ingrained can one activate the unconscious
processes that transport one into the zone. As LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson
notes:
Basketball is a complex dance that requires shifting from one objective to another at lightning speed.
… The secret is not thinking. That doesn't mean being stupid; it means quieting the endless jabbering
of thoughts so that your body can do what it's been trained to do without the mind getting in the way.
All of us have had flashes of this sense of oneness … when we're completely immersed in the
moment, inseparable from what we're doing. This kind of experience happens all the time on the
basketball floor; that's why the game is so intoxicating.5
Watts calls wuwei a means of “taking the line of least resistance in all one's
actions” by exercising the “unconscious intelligence of the whole organism and,
in particular, the innate wisdom of the nervous system.” In other words, while it
6
takes years of discipline to cultivate instinctive bodily wisdom, only when one
surrenders the ego to the process can the highest level of performance be
attained. As Abraham Maslow explains, the key to peak performance lies “in the
Taoistic feeling of letting things happen rather than of making them happen, and
of being perfectly happy and accepting of this state of nonstriving, nonwishing,
noninterference, noncontrolling, nonwilling. This is the transcendence of
ambition, of efficiencies. This is the state of having rather than of not having.
Then of course one lacks nothing.” 7
To embrace the original oneness, to act without desire, to harmonize qi are all
tied to a process of disciplined surrender that comes only from countless hours
of practice and the willingness to relinquish the ego to unconscious powers.
“When compulsion controls qi, energy is misdirected,” according to the Daode
jing (v. 55). The practice of surrender is, perhaps, nowhere more important or
more difficult in hoops than on the free throw line. Standing alone with the
action stopped, it becomes imperative to yield and let pure concentration and
confidence take over, regardless of the score or how late it is in the game. As
George Leonard—a cartographer of levels of athletic prowess—points out, “The
courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender.” Or, as 8
Laozi puts it, “Surrender begets perfection” (v. 22). Although I'm older, slower,
heavier, and far from perfect, I can still surrender enough to hit over a hundred
straight free throws.
are in relation to your abilities, your opponents’ skills, and your potential to
perform spontaneously, without fear or anxiety. To achieve this requires a
harmony of self and surroundings, a unity that is captured in the Daoist concept
of ziran. Literally translated as “self-so,” ziran means both nature and
spontaneity and is illustrated in the endlessly unique configurations of
snowflakes, in the meanderings of rivers and biological evolution, and in
patterns of waves and seasons. Ziran implies a sort of planned randomness that
allows action to unfold spontaneously pure and chaotically ordered. The action is
unwilled, but driven; it is aimed, but goal free. The Daode jing advises,
“Embrace the great formless form and let things go their way” (v. 35).
To embody ziran on the basketball court would entail, for instance, aiming a
shot, releasing it, and instead of trying to will it in, simply letting it be. By
recognizing yourself as a partner to the action as opposed to being the source of
it, the ego is transcended and the counterproductive potential of willing
something to happen is avoided. If, on the other hand, one is focused on what
one is “trying” to do to make the shot, thereby separating oneself from the
surrounding field of action, “analysis paralysis” can result as thinking interferes
with unconscious muscle memory. As Zhuangzi expresses it:
The Unconsciousness
And entire sincerity of Tao
Are disturbed by any effort
At self-conscious demonstration.10
To sense ziran is to be aware that we are part of nature and that nature is not
completed by human consciousness. That awareness, which reveals nature as
perfectly complete, encourages a reverence for all being and teaches the value of
balance. To find the Dao is to find ways to counteract anger, to feel that we are
our relationships, and to be content in the search that is life by embracing its
dynamic and ever-changing nature. This helps explain why the Daoist sage is
renowned for being joyous as well as humorous. Always careful not to take
anything too seriously, including loss, regrets, or even death, the sage recognizes
the transitory nature of existence but sees it as the Dao in endless states of
transformation. Aware of the relativity of all positions, including his or her own,
the person of the Dao warns of the fallibility of not seeing the limits of goals,
distinctions, and convictions. Free of separation and able to abandon the ego, the
sage transcends the competitive, dominating attitudes that breed pride, hostility,
and senseless aggression. As the Daode jing (v. 30) puts it:
The sage does what is necessary then stops.
Using strength without coercion
The master ventures on the path,
Able to achieve without pride …
Able to achieve without possessing
Able to achieve without force.
jing avers, “When the supreme Dao is present, action ignites from the heart” (v.
18).
Over millennia the Chinese have discovered practices that allow the seeker to
get in touch with and enact the principles of the Way. Those practices include
dance, meditation, alchemy, acupuncture, fengshui, and martial arts, all of which
aim at harmonizing the bipolar aspects of the qi force. By balancing the in-and-
out of breathing, the meridian points of the body's energy system, the intake of
nourishment and medicines, the arrangement of objects in the physical
environment, and the movement of the body through space, practitioners are led
toward the Dao. In a similar fashion, basketball can serve as a path toward the
Way. It can open the door to action that is selfless, masterful, and completely
embedded in the here and now. The secret is to surrender to an inner force that
can be trained but not controlled and to a way of being that embraces a Self
beyond the self. In other words, there is more to a good hook shot than meets the
eye.13
Notes
1. With help from a variety of translations, my former Chinese instructor, John
Lu, and two of my colleagues, Li Ping Zhang and Sari Cinnamon, I have freely
translated the verses from the Daode jing. In concert with a scholarly movement
aimed at authenticating Daoist thought in contemporary terms, I have chosen the
pinyin as opposed to the older Wade-Giles system of transcribing Chinese
characters into alphabetical form. Hence, the more familiar transcription of
“Tao” is rendered as “Dao,” “Lao Tzu” as “Laozi,” and “Tao Te Ching” as
“Daode jing.”
2. Quoted in Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York: New
Directions, 1969), 107.
3. Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further
Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Tarcher/Perigee, 1993), 218.
4. Alan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 76.
5. Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, 2nd
ed. (New York: Hyperion, 1996), 124, 115-16.
6. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 76.
7. Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York:
Viking, 1975), 277.
8. George Leonard, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
(New York: Plume, 1992), 81.
9. Quoted in John McPhee, A Sense of Where You Are, 3rd ed. (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 1.
10. Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, 134.
11. Murphy, The Future of the Body, 455.
12. Jackson, Sacred Hoops, 7.
13. My journey into the Dao of basketball continues, as I am seeing the sport
through new eyes, not as a player or coach, but as an impassioned spectator who
is “trying hard” to practice wu wei in fan-filled audiences. My son, Jeremy, loves
to play and, if you ask me, he's got game.
Gender, of course, is not the only component that goes into the social
construction of black male manhood. Race and class also play important roles, as
do a host of other social and cultural factors. In this chapter, I focus upon the
vital roles of love and toughness in this process. I shall argue that while love is
critical to this construction, toughness is not.
his feelings is discouraged. Not only is such a stance difficult for all kinds of
relationships, but “holding everything in” is also stressful to the person himself.
But once again, such sharing is not encouraged among men; instead, hanging
with the boys is referred to as bonding. And the use of the term is quite
interesting, for we know that real bonding doesn't take place. We know that men
should engage in real bonding, but this makes us uncomfortable. Thus, we use
the term “male bonding”: men are not supposed to bond the way women do—
that is, men are not supposed to really bond. Unfortunately, this suits most men
just fine.
This difference in the way men and women relate to members of their own
gender raises two interesting philosophical questions. One is the classic
nature/nurture debate: are these differences due mainly to “nature” (the basic
biological differences between men and women) or to “nurture” (the way men
and women are brought up and socialized in contemporary American culture)?
This question is partly conceptual (i.e., philosophical) and partly scientific. The
second question is straightforwardly normative: should men be encouraged to be
more open and expressive in their relationships with other men? That is, should
there be more real sharing and genuine bonding between men, as opposed to
mere hanging?
Most philosophical questions are notoriously difficult to answer, but these, I
suggest, are easy. The fact that intimate and expressive male friendships are
commonplace in many cultures around the world today, as well as in many past
cultures, shows conclusively that our society's unease with such friendships is
not due to nature. The normative question is equally easy to answer. Studies
3
show that people with intimate, supportive relationships tend to be both happier
and healthier than those who lack such relationships. Why, then, should men
4
We know that athletes engage in such battles, but what evidence do we have
that they resume their roles as brothers? Many basketball fans will remember the
1990-1991 Eastern Conference championship series between the Chicago Bulls
and the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons were the two-time defending NBA
champions, and the Bulls swept them in four games. With this victory, a new
dynasty was inaugurated in professional basketball—the Bulls went on to win
six championships in eight years— and the Pistons were not pleased that their
reign had come to an end. The Pistons, led by future Hall of Famer and self-
anointed leader of the “Bad Boys” Isiah Thomas (even though Bill Laimbeer,
Dennis Rodman, and Rick Mahorn were “badder,” Thomas was their leader),
stormed off the court, ignoring the Bulls and failing to shake hands or
congratulate Chicago on its victory. The Pistons were known for their boorish
behavior, so their failure to be congratulatory wasn't a big surprise. But in
basketball, and in football, the other professional sport dominated by black men,
such a failure is rare. The conclusion of an NFL or NBA game is usually a “love-
in”: opposing players embrace, discuss family issues, and make plans for later in
the evening. This is, of course, what brothers do. Players treat one another as
family members. In sports, there is the opportunity for real bonding to take
place.
most coaches, owners, league officials, and media moguls are white men. For
many white men, to engage in sports is to engage in war. In a recent film
depicting the early years of Paul “Bear” Bryant's reign as head football coach of
the University of Alabama Crimson Tide, Bryant calls football “war.” Pat Riley,
former head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and current coach and general
manager of the Miami Heat, made a similar comment about basketball. In fact,
Riley was one of the earliest supporters of the infamous “hard foul,” instructing
players to prevent opposing players from scoring at any cost. To Bryant and
Riley, two white coaches often referred to as geniuses, the opposition was the
enemy, and it was important that their players understood this. Those players
who didn't exhibit the requisite warrior mentality were scolded and punished,
usually by being labeled “soft.”
No player wants to be known as soft. David Robinson, a gentleman, an active
participant in the life of his community, and one of the nicest guys you'll ever
meet, was often stuck with this label. When the San Antonio Spurs continually
failed to advance past the Western Conference championships (things changed
when future first-ballot Hall of Famer Tim Duncan joined the team), Robinson
was always blamed for the failure. Never mind that he was one of the leading
scorers in the league, that he was one of the greatest defensive centers of all time
(in my opinion, only Bill Russell was better), and that his team won only 25
percent of its games when he was lost for the year to injury. Robinson was not
considered a physical player, and the soft label followed him throughout his
career. For this reason, Robinson may never receive his due credit, although he,
like Duncan, is a future first-ballot Hall of Famer.
I believe that most black players have internalized the idea that a great
basketball player must be tough. The mantra often reiterated in basketball circles
is that “defense wins championships,” and it so happens that good defense is
characteristically physical and tough. Toughness, however, has an ambiguous
place in the formation of black manhood. For white men, the message is clear: a
real white man is a tough man. Whether he's at home, in the boardroom, in the
gym, or driving his truck “off-road,” it's imperative that he be tough. This
toughness often spills over into violence, and the violence is accepted. One need
look no further than at the way hockey is now played. Once a beautiful game
that showcased speed, grace, and skill, hockey has become a haven for bullies.
And it may not be a coincidence that hockey is a sport dominated by white men.
But the most disturbing aspect of this violence is that it is accepted, even
encouraged. Hockey fans like to see their warriors battle it out; after all, hockey
is war. For black men, the message is mixed. Tough defense wins
championships, but it's clear that the marquee players are those who make the
game look pretty. No-look passes, crossover and behind-the-back dribbling, the
beautiful finger roll (George Gervin, the Ice-man, “rolleth”), and pretty 360
dunks—that's what people pay to see. The huge popularity of the Streetball
phenomenon is a testament, not to the glory of toughness, but to the reverence
accorded flashy play. One must be tough to survive in “the Hood,” but even the
toughest gangsters give basketball players respect.
“Coolness” is another aspect of the black masculine ideal of toughness. As
former New York Knicks great Walt Frazier remarks: “Coolness is a quality
admired in the black neighborhoods. Cool is a matter of self-preservation, of
survival. It must go back to the slave days, when oftentimes all a black man had
to defend himself with was his poise. If you'd show fear or anger, you'd suffer
the consequences. Today, the guy respected in the ghetto is the guy who resists
the urge to go off—who can handle himself in a crisis.” Don't get me wrong. I'm
7
not denying the value of toughness or poise, or the importance of these qualities
in the development of black men; nothing could be further from the truth. This is
where the dynamics of a simple game like basketball become quite complex.
Nowhere are these dynamics revealed more vividly than in the 1994 movie Hoop
Dreams. This award-winning documentary follows the lives of two young,
black, inner-city basketball players, Arthur Agee and William Gates, from their
early teens to their early twenties. While sociologists will undoubtedly find the
film fascinating, philosophers should pay attention to the film as well. (In fact, it
is a fine film that everyone should see.) Because my concern is with the film's
philosophical import, chronicling the entire film is not necessary. I'm especially
interested for the moment in what one of the players, Arthur Agee, learns about
the costs of a success-driven, “commodifying” culture.
It doesn't take long for the people around Agee and Gates to notice that these
two kids have superior basketball talent. Both are taken out of their black inner-
city schools and offered financial aid to attend St. Joseph's, a predominantly
white Chicago suburban high school known for its powerhouse basketball teams.
Agee struggles academically and fails to meet his coach's high expectations on
the court. When Agee's father is laid off work, his family can no longer afford to
make tuition payments, and Agee is forced to leave school. He returns to his
neighborhood high school, plays spectacularly during the state tournament in his
senior year, and earns a scholarship to a community college. At the film's
conclusion, Arthur is still “chasing the dream,” although it's obvious he doesn't
have NBA talent. Agee never fully comes to grips with the extent to which he is
being used. For him, the dream lives on.
It is the other player, William Gates, who learns the deeper philosophical
lessons. William suffers a serious injury during his junior year of high school,
and he is never the same player again. Nevertheless, he is talented enough to
have a stellar high school career and earn a scholarship to Marquette University,
an institution that boasts impressive athletic as well as academic credentials. The
injury sustained in high school hampers his college career, and he eventually
decides to quit the team. However, William's institution honors its commitment
to his education and doesn't revoke his scholarship.
One might think that William had the more successful career: he didn't flunk
out of his first high school, he had a fine high school career, and he earned a
college degree. However, this “success” didn't come without a high price. He
was a fierce competitor, and he often played hurt. Players are often encouraged
to play hurt, to “suck it up.” But when they are unable to perform to the best of
their abilities—and of course, most injured players are unable to play their best
—they are frequently criticized for coming up short.
Often this criticism comes from the very persons who encouraged them to
make the attempt in the first place. Gates was harshly criticized both by his
coach, Gene Pingatore, and by certain members of his family.
He knew his importance to his team, and he was determined to give it everything
he had. When he performed well while playing hurt, he was called “tough,”
“brave,” a “warrior.” When he performed poorly while playing hurt, his coach
described William—William the person, not simply his play—in terms that are
better left unprinted. Coaches want families to believe that they are second
fathers to their children, that their children can come to these coaches for advice.
William wasn't lucky enough to have such a coach. When Gates asked for advice
concerning a problem he had with a friend, Pingatore told him to forsake the
friend. Pingatore's thinking was transparent: anything that could distract William
from his performance on the basketball court was to be discarded, including
other people.
Why is this brief analysis of Hoop Dreams included in a discussion of
toughness? Both Gates and Agee were being used: by the “playground recruiter”
who led Agee to believe that he was the second coming of Michael Jordan; by
Coach Pingatore, who lured both away from their neighborhoods with the
promise of a better “educational” experience; and by their families, who
burdened them with the belief that success in basketball—and the “new house
for Mama” that comes with it—is a form of repayment for all their families have
done for them. However, these experiences have toughened these players—and I
don't mean that they are now ready to go out and fight someone with a club.
Agee holds on to the dream that will never come true. He never made it to the
NBA. But now in his early thirties, he continues to play and promote basketball,
has started his own clothing line, has moved his family out of the projects, and is
actively involved in many charities. Not everything has gone smoothly in his
life. He is the father of four children, each with a different woman. He knows
8
it's hard to be successful when one is a product of the inner city, but it's harder to
survive when one is not doing what one loves. To continue to dream and do what
one loves when the possibility of failure looms large is a measure of toughness.
Gates is tough as well. He has reinvented his life. After graduating from
Marquette, he became a minister. Much like Plato's enlightened prisoner in his
famous allegory of the cave, Gates has chosen to return to the projects, where he
now serves as a minister in the Living Faith Community Center in Chicago's
Cabrini-Green. In 2001 he made a renewed attempt to achieve his dream of
playing in the NBA. After practicing with Michael Jordan for five hours a day,
Gates was invited to tryouts with both the Chicago Bulls and the Washington
Wizards. As before, however, his dream ended when he suffered a serious injury.
Although Gates's love for basketball has waned, he now realizes that there is
more to life than basketball. It's difficult for some people to deal with the fact
that those who purportedly love you are really using you. I believe that William
has learned another valuable philosophical lesson: as Karl Marx (1818-1883)
noted, it is natural for human beings, especially in capitalist societies, to use and
exploit other human beings. So often in big-money sports, players are “looked
upon as a supply of a commodity like any other.” Gates, in fact, was bluntly
9
cautioned about this by the famous film director Spike Lee when Gates attended
the prestigious Nike All-American Basketball Camp the summer before his
senior year of high school. Lee told the mostly black players at the camp: “You
have to realize that nobody cares about you. You're black, you're a young male—
all you're supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason you're
here is because you can make their team win. If their team wins, these schools
get a lot of money. This whole thing is revolving around money.” Fortunately, 10
Notes
1. Naomi Zack, Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women's
Commonality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 41.
2. Thomas McLaughlin, “’Man to Man’: Basketball, Movement, and the
Practice of Masculinity,” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 1 (2004): 186.
3. See C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960), 87.
Think, for instance, of Tennyson's In Memoriam or Plato's Symposium.
4. David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (New York: Avon, 1993), chaps.
8 and 9.
5. McLaughlin, “’Man to Man,’” 171.
6. McLaughlin, “’Man to Man,’” 183.
7. Quoted in David Shields, Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA
Season (New York: Crown Publishers, 1999), 73-74.
8. Mike Wise, “Looking Back at Broken ‘Dreams,’” Washington Post, July 5,
2004, D1.
9. Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans.
Martin Milligan (New York: International Publishers, 1964), 120.
10. Robert Paul Walker, Hoop Dreams (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1995), 99-
100.
If you want to see the best basketball in the world, watch a women's basketball game.
—John Wooden
includes among these disciplinary practices, for example, the diet and exercise
programs promoted in mass-circulation women's magazines, which are intended
to restrict the size and shape of a woman's body. Other disciplinary practices
limit a woman's range of acceptable gestures: women are usually expected to
maintain a reserved posture (especially while seated), smile more than men,
avert their eyes when speaking to men, and gesture less broadly than men.
Perhaps the most recognizable disciplinary practice that women have learned to
master in their quest for the feminine body is what Bartky calls “ornamentation,”
the use of cosmetics, jewelry, and the selection of clothes. 4
In all three categories—shape, gesture, and ornamentation—discipline over
the female body is maintained through surveillance. Again, Bartky takes her cue
from Foucault, who showed how the actions and movements of prisoners and
students are controlled through constant surveillance by wardens and teachers. A
prisoner who knows that he is being watched (or even that he might be watched)
will discipline himself by practicing only those movements that are permitted
and avoiding those that are forbidden. Women, likewise, learn disciplinary
practices under the watchful and unrelenting eye of men. There is nothing
naturally feminine, in other words, about the woman who has managed to
become the slender, graceful, ornamented reflection of the model in a magazine.
Such a woman has merely disciplined herself; she has learned to alter her female
body to meet the demands and expectations of her beholder. In a patriarchal
society, the individual woman's identity—and her value as a woman—is
determined by standards established by men. Femininity, implicitly a term of
approval, is nothing more than an idea, a social construct, and the perfectly
developed woman is merely one who has achieved a level of social conformity
and sexual desirability.
Historically, female athletes living in a male-dominated society have keenly
sensed the scrutinizing gaze of men who reduce women to their shape, gestures,
and ornamentation. For a woman to use her body in sweaty games that require
speed, strength, and aggression is to invite commentary on her supposed lack of
traditionally feminine qualities and looks. Daniel Ferris, secretary-treasurer of
the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) in the mid-twentieth century, crystallized the
point in an article he wrote for Parade Magazine in 1952: “Many U.S. men do
[say], ‘We like our women beautiful and feminine. We don't want to marry
Amazons.’” It has long been a powerfully effective sentiment. Surveying
5
women in the 1950s for her doctoral dissertation, Laura Kratz found that the
most common reasons women gave for avoiding participation in sports were the
fears of developing muscles and of looking masculine. Such fears have a deep
6
history in the United States, where, before the late nineteenth century, women's
participation in sports was generally limited to nothing more strenuous than
footraces and horseback riding, which they could participate in “as long as they
maintained their grace and femininity.” In the second half of that century, as
7
and its use by patriarchy: a woman was supposedly limited in what she could or
should attempt, but she needed a strong body to become a good mother. What
was a girl to do?
The answer arrived, in part, in the form of basketball, which in the 1890s was
the country's fastest-growing sport for women. Within a few years of its
9
introduction, however, the women's game came under criticism from both men
and women who worried about women's capacity to handle the game's physical
demands without damaging their delicate reproductive systems, and from those
concerned that the intensely competitive nature of the game could make women
too masculine. Senda Berenson, who oversaw basketball at Smith College in the
1890s, noted, “Rough and vicious play seems worse in women than in men: …
[and] the selfish display of a star by dribbling and playing the entire court, and
rough-housing by snatching the ball could not be tolerated.” If stealing was
10
unladylike, fighting for a loose ball was worse: girls “become ‘scrappy,’” wrote
one commentator, “lose their tempers, and often go so far as to make a complete
spectacle of themselves.” Such competitiveness, noted a Wellesley teacher in
11
1903, was unhealthy for anyone, but especially for women since “the qualities
they tend to develop are not womanly.” Such women are perilously close to
12
becoming Amazons.
Whether the rule changes had the desired effect is a matter of opinion.
According to a male physician in 1931, women who play basketball “develop
ugly muscles and scowling faces and the competitive spirit. As an inevitable
consequence your girls who are trained in Physical Education today may find it
more difficult to attract the most worthy fathers for their children.” On the other
14
hand, the chair of the AAU's Basketball Committee reported to his committee
after seeing a woman's game in 1930: “I will admit I too was skeptical and fully
expected to see fainting girls carried away in ambulances, others laced in straight
jackets after severe cases of hysteria and some in complete collapse after
extreme cases of melancholia, the air permeated with smelling salts, etc., but I
was agreeably pleased that none of these things happened.” Must have been the
15
one-handed passes.
The history of women's basketball is filled with examples of players trying
courageously to thrive as both athletes and “feminine” women, including
participating in beauty pageants during tournaments, altering uniforms to make
them more revealing, openly discussing their heterosexual relationships and
motherhood, and fielding teams, like the Red Heads, who acted out coquettish
scenes in exhibition games with men's teams. Early commercials for the WNBA
16
assured fans that off the court, women athletes shopped for shoes and got
manicures. In 2001 Playboy offered Lisa Harrison, of the Phoenix Mercury, half
a million dollars to pose nude. Such deference on the part of female athletes and
the constant focus on the female body proves, of course, how impossible the
female athlete's position has often been: she must promote her femininity to
avoid being denigrated while at the same time fighting off suggestions that her
femininity disqualifies her from being taken seriously as an athlete. If she's too
pretty, she can't possibly be any good; if she's too good, she can't possibly be a
real woman until she shows us in some conventional way that she is. The
problem lies, of course, not in women but in the assumptions themselves and in
patriarchal attitudes about the female body.
Patriarchal notions of femininity, as they are described by Bartky and other
feminist philosophers, reveal that in a male-dominated society, women are
equated with their bodies. Told that they must maintain some physical measure
of desirability and femininity, women are also told that feminine traits are less
respected than masculine ones and that the body is less valued than soul, mind,
reason, and intellect. In an influential essay, philosopher Elizabeth Spelman lays
the creation of this trap at the feet of Western philosophy, arguing that the
traditional dualistic view of mind/ body, the devaluing of the physical part of our
existence, and the “assumption that woman is body, is bound to her body, or is
meant to take care of the bodily aspects of life” have “deeply contributed to the
degradation and oppression of women.” The notion that our minds are separate
17
from our bodies is not in itself sexist or oppressive, but when mind is equated
with men and body with women, as Spelman contends, oppression results, and
the oppressed have a difficult time liberating themselves. Women who reject the
body and its associated values or aspire toward purely intellectual goals merely
confirm the existence of a mind/body split and show tacit support for the notion
that mind has primacy.
As athletes, women face a similar irresolvable contradiction: play as women
are expected to play—with restraint, cooperation, teamwork— and they will
appear to have resigned themselves to their weaker side of the
feminine/masculine dichotomy; they will seem happy to have inherited a game
whose slow pace and frequent passing of the ball were created by rules designed
to limit women's physical movement, and they will lose the attention of fans
who, conditioned by men's sports, want to see a more exciting game. Imitate
men—play harder, faster, more aggressively, with more flash and athleticism—
and they again give credence to the feminine/masculine split, this time
suggesting that real accomplishment means acting like men. Either way, it's
women: 0, patriarchy: 1. The solution is the creation of a new game: a game that
undermines old categories of masculine and feminine, that evolves with the
increasing talents of female athletes, and that is not altered to reflect the
demands of patriarchy or evaluated on patriarchal standards. If the strong female
athlete challenges conventional social categories, create a new category.
beat Louisiana State to advance to the NCAA final game in 2006, the Associated
Press ran a photo of two Duke players celebrating with a jumping chest bump.
Slam dunks, individual showmanship, superstar statistics, determination,
power, aggression, violence, bruises, blood, chest bumps—women can, if they
want, play forcefully, powerfully, “above the rim,” with intensity, determination,
and flashes of individual brilliance. More or less than men? Who's to say, and
what's the point in asking? Any comparisons to the men's game will privilege
one game over “the other.” Our visitor might be cautioned not to generalize from
the few examples given above, but he (turns out it's a he) could justly conclude
that women are capable of playing with intensity and standing out individually.
Because the athletes are getting faster and better, not because the game needs to
live up to a standard established by men, the WNBA will institute rule changes
in the 2006 season. A new shot clock, for example, shortened from thirty to
twenty-four seconds, will aid today's faster, more athletic players. In the past,
rules changed to reflect gender stereotypes and paternal attitudes; today's
changes respond to the increasing talents of women.
There's no denying, however, that our visitor would also come away from an
experience of women's basketball believing that the game involves passing the
ball around and running plays to get an open shot, and that these plays occur
more often than one-on-one drives or attempted dunks. Indeed, reflections on
basketball written by female players often comment on the sense of togetherness,
camaraderie, teamwork, compassion, and concern that women athletes share.
Rather than choosing to believe that camaraderie is simply a defensive result of
patriarchal treatment of women, or that cooperation is an essential quality of
femininity, we choose instead to see the emphasis on teamwork as a conscious
choice made by women in an effort to win games and to make basketball more
enjoyable for those who play and watch it. Michelle Snow, the slam-dunking
Tennessee player, told a reporter for South Coast Today, “Our game isn't about
somebody coming out, going one-on-one and taking it coast-to-coast. It's about
being team-oriented, about passing to someone who's open. That's what I love
about the game. If it was one-on-one all the time, it wouldn't be any fun.” 19
Miss's Ron Aldy, have made similar comments: “The athleticism [in today's
female athletes] has made the game better, but women are still more receptive to
the team concepts of passing, cutting, ball-handling and pure shooting. We need
college coaches who keep demanding those things.” Aldy and Summitt and
21
coaches like them don't preach teamwork and fundamentals to their women's
teams as a message to ego-driven men's teams. Teamwork and fundamentals—
foul shooting, cutting, passing, picking, dribbling, shooting—are how basketball
games are won. Here John Wooden's comment about the “purity” of women's
22
basketball is correct: the essence of basketball is to help each other move to the
other side of the court and put the ball in the net. The woman's game can remain
“pure” because women's teams can decide to play it that way, to help each other
win games. Conscious control over their destiny—the decision to deliberately
play the game in a manner that balances individual and team-centered concerns
and that is enjoyable and rewarding to the women who play the game—is how
women's basketball best answers the demeaning and contorting demands of
patriarchy.
If Pressman and Wooden were our standard-bearers for both the negative and
positive views of women's basketball that result from comparison to the men's
game, Lisa Leslie and Michelle Snow are co-captains on this new team,
composed of women who can dunk but don't necessarily always want to, who
can shoot and pass, drive the lane or dish off, act independently and
cooperatively, defend and explain the game, and celebrate all the power and
strength in the female body without deference or apology. Where the strong
female athlete once seemed a contradiction, especially to men accustomed to
labels such as “masculine” and “feminine,” women's basketball players today
seem to cut across cultural, social, and ideological lines. Leslie, perhaps the best
WNBA player yet, a woman who once told People magazine that her motto was
“Go for the jugular,” is a runway model for the Wilhelmina agency.
Certainly, women's sports, and women's basketball in particular, have not
solved the gender wars. Women's basketball is still struggling with how far it
will go in breaking down barriers and crossing fault lines, such as those
regarding sexual orientation. And equality and respect have not been won simply
because Michelle Snow can dunk a basketball or because Lisa Harrison turned
down Playboy’s offer to pose nude. Indeed, the oppressive purveyors of body
image can easily convince young women that the muscular female body has
replaced the wafer-thin body as the feminine ideal. But female basketball players
today, less molded than before in the image of patriarchy's ideal woman, can
teach us much about the capacity and integrity of women. What women's
basketball has become, despite early efforts to contain and control it, reflects the
gain in society when individuals are liberated from forms of dominance.
Equality lets individuals grow and express themselves, and society can learn
from new ideas and approaches. Freedom from social expectations means
freedom to reveal the depth and range of one's talents and distinctiveness. And
basketball, perhaps all sport, is where that depth and range might be best
revealed. We'll give the last word to an anonymous high school student who tried
a century ago to say the same thing:
In this age of women's movements, few people have realized yet that the movement which is doing
most for womankind is centered in our High Schools. A new type of girl has sprung up in our
country. A girl more perfect mentally, morally, and physically, than the girl of twenty years ago. This
is the basket ball girl. Many are her detractors; numerous are her critics, but her champions and
supporters see in her the future greatness of American womanhood.
… From the High school basket ball girl is being developed that strong, self-reliant woman, that
woman who is cool and keen in her judgment, quick and sure in her action, calm and unselfish in her
dealings. Altogether the perfectly developed woman.23
Notes
The second epigraph is drawn from Stacey Pressman, “Slam-dunk: Why is it that
women's basketball is always on television even though no one is watching it?”
Weekly Standard, online edition, April 8, 2003. Accessed March 3, 2006.
Available at
http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/515gdyfj.asp
Metaphysical Madness
Kevin Kinghorn
SHOOTING WITH CONFIDENCE
These are times when the emotions of the moment interfere with the brain's
ability to process information as it normally would, times that allow Dick Enberg
to utter his trademark, “Oh my, what was he thinking?!”
Sports psychologists sometimes teach relaxation techniques to players. The
players might be told to imagine themselves in a familiar or “safe” place like
their practice gym. The players are taught to breathe deeply and slowly. These
are techniques for combating the first kind of detrimental emotion: the kind that
arises simply from the pressure and unfamiliarity of the moment. Sometimes
these techniques work. But if you take a freshman point guard, and put him in a
Final Four game televised around the world, and throw a full-court press at him
that his coach didn't have time to go over at the pregame meeting … well, I don't
care what breathing techniques he's been taught, he's going to get rattled!
that the belief represents some fact about the actual world. Now, if I could
somehow choose to believe something, Williams points out, then I would realize
that my belief stems from my own free choice, and thus doesn't necessarily have
any connection with facts about the actual world. But now we have a big
problem. For, if I realize that my belief doesn't necessarily have any connection
with what's true about the actual world, then it's not a belief in the first place!
Another way of putting this is to say that our beliefs are our “maps” of the
world. Just as a map represents what's true of the actual world, so, hopefully, do
our beliefs. Imagine if a mapmaker were to choose where to put the borders of
the fifty states. Suppose he says to himself, “I think I'll put Florida up here today,
and I'll put Kansas on the East Coast, and I'll make Wyoming the shape of an
oval.” If a mapmaker realized that the map before him was simply the product of
his own choices and didn't therefore necessarily represent the actual borders of
the fifty states, then he couldn't consider it a genuine map. Similarly, if a person
knows that his belief is merely the product of his own choice, then it simply
cannot be an actual belief.
The reason this kind of confidence is remarkable is that our beliefs generally
tend to develop from evidence that is presented to us. Just as a jury considers
evidence and renders a judgment as to whether the defendant is guilty, so we,
too, form most of our beliefs on the basis of what we think the evidence
suggests.
Suppose we're at a game where Larry Bird has missed nine shots in a row. (Of
course, Bird probably never missed that many shots in a row in his life, but let's
assume this for the sake of argument.) Surely, we wouldn't be confident that his
next shot was going in. Based on the evidence of nine straight misses, we'd
reckon that he's just having a really, really bad day. Certainly we wouldn't be
confidently expecting his next shot to go in. Yet, Bird stated that he would
confidently expect his next shot to go in. And I have no doubt that this is true in
the case of Larry Bird.
Confident players like Bird seem to be unaffected by any evidence that would
suggest that they aren't shooting well and could very well miss their next shot.
How can this be? Philosophers who study psychology have a ready explanation.
High school and college coaches will probably be the first to agree with
Bacon's statement. Coaches must often deal with parents who are convinced that
their son is destined for stardom and can't understand why he isn't getting more
playing time. Parents can also be among those who encourage their son to enter
his name into the NBA draft, when the rest of the world can see he isn't
anywhere near ready. What's going through the minds of these parents? Francis
Bacon's statement says it all.
Players like Larry Bird want to win and want to succeed so much that they can
be oblivious to anything that would suggest that they somehow shouldn't take
the last shot of the game. Again, this confidence serves them well on the court.
But what of the player who lacks confidence? If desiring something to be true
tends to lead a person to believe that it is true, does this mean that
underconfident players really don't desire to make their next shot or to be the star
of the game?
Well, of course they desire these things. However, there is another factor that
affects a person's beliefs. Bacon was right to point out that our desires often
affect our beliefs. However, it's also true that fears can have a powerful,
opposing effect on beliefs. Consider the case of a child who fears that there
might be monsters lurking under his bed. Such fears may be so acute that he
comes to believe that there actually are monsters under his bed. And this belief
arises, of course, despite the fact that he desires all monsters to be kept well
away from him.
So, just as wishful thinking can lead us to believe something we wish were
true, so our fears can make us believe something we wish were not true. A
basketball player undergoing a crisis of confidence desires—like Larry Bird—to
make his next shot. But his self-belief will be hindered by the fear of failing, of
losing the game, of being the goat.
A great example of this strategy comes from coach Rick Pitino and player
Kenny Walker, when both were with the New York Knicks. The Knicks’ half-
court offense was essentially to throw the ball in to Patrick Ewing, who would
either try to score from down low or kick it out to a guard. If neither of these
things worked, and if the shot clock was winding down, they'd swing the ball
around to the weak side, and Kenny Walker, the small forward, would usually
have an open twenty-footer. The problem was that Walker wasn't making very
many of these shots. He was undergoing a crisis of confidence.
Pitino told Walker, publicly, that the day he stopped taking that shot was the
day he would cease to be a New York Knick. This wasn't an attempt to create
evidence for Walker or get him to believe that his next shot was going in.
Instead, it was an attempt to take away the negative consequences of a missed
shot—and thus to lessen the effects that Walker's underconfidence had in
producing emotions like fear.
Pitino's strategy didn't produce a miracle. Walker was always going to be a
slam-dunk champion, never a pure shooter. But the strategy was right on the
money. My guess is that it had as positive an effect on Walker's jump shot as any
shooting drill ever did.
are strategies that can be adopted by players, coaches, and sports psychologists
alike. First, they can try to increase a player's evidence that he will make his next
shot. Second, they can try to lessen the negative impact of a player's beliefs on
his emotions.
Because strategies do exist to help the underconfident player, there will
always be a market for sports psychologists. And this is good news for all of us.
After all, sports presenters will need experts to interview when the next Fred
Brown or Chris Webber makes a bonehead play and we all want to find out,
“What was he thinking?!”
Notes
1. Since Dean Smith won both of his championships in these extraordinary
circumstances, conspiracy theorists might want to examine this. Did someone at
Carolina invent some sort of device or substance that discombobulates opposing
players in the waning moments of really big games?
2. Bernard Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” in Problems of the Self
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 136, 148.
3. Bill Walton with Gene Wojciechowski, Nothing but Net (New York:
Hyperion, 1994), 103. Readers may also recall the dramatic final scene in the
movie Hoosiers —recently named the best sports movie of all time in an ESPN
poll—when the championship hopes of the Cinderella Hickory Huskers are
down to one last shot, and star player Jimmy Chitwood confidently says to his
coach, “I'll make it,” and proceeds to do so.
4. Francis Bacon, Novum Organon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1855),
bk. 1, sec. 49.
5. A similar strategy is widely employed in male-impotence therapy—so I
hear.
6. Tom Morris, The Art of Achievement (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel,
2002), 59.
Steven D. Hales
THE HOT HAND IN BASKETBALL
Illusion or Reality?
staff of the Seattle Supersonics, writes: “In the first round of the NCAA
Tournament a few years ago, I began to sense my own hot streak. Every shot
seemed to hit the mark. Every pass of mine was converted and returned later.
The game felt completely natural.” Familiar territory, right?
2
Well, maybe not. Some psychologists and statisticians have recently argued
for a very surprising thesis: despite nearly universal beliefs to the contrary, there
is no such thing as streak runs of success in basketball; no one has ever been on
a roll or had hot hands. According to the late Harvard scientist Stephen J. Gould,
“Everybody knows about hot hands. The problem is that no such phenomenon
exists.” Psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky
3
write, “probably … most players, spectators, and students of the game believe in
the hot hand, although our statistical analyses provide no evidence to support
this be-lief.” Psychologist Robert M. Adams concurs: “Even though virtually
4
any basketball player, fan, or commentator would scoff at the notion that the ‘hot
hand’ is only an illusion, the present data confirm that.” 5
Before taking a look at the reasoning behind these claims, we would do well
to ask why a philosopher should have anything to say about the matter. One of
the most ancient philosophical specialties is epistemology—the theory of
knowledge—and one of the core epistemological issues is skepticism. Do we in
fact know the things we all think we know? Skeptics argue that, for one reason
or another, the answer is no. Hot hands deniers are a sort of epistemological
skeptic; they maintain that in fact we don't know something we all think we do.
We don't know that basketball players have hot hands despite widespread beliefs
to the contrary. In this chapter I will defend the view that there are hot hands in
basketball, that they are ubiquitous, and that players and observers are often right
in identifying them. The skeptics do have a point worth considering, but they
misunderstand the force of their own reasoning.
certainly not the reason sports participants give for the reality of hot hands.
Anyone who has ever played a sport will cite internal, felt experience in favor of
hot hand phenomena. When you are hot, it feels like you can't miss, that every
shot is just an easy layup. When you're cold, it feels like no matter what you do,
no matter how much you concentrate, every shot you take is a brick. A plausible
way of expressing these attitudes is that a player has a better chance of making a
shot after having just made his last two or three shots than he does after having
missed his last two or three shots. Ninety-one out of one hundred basketball fans
polled believe this statement; that is, they believe that success breeds success.
The success-breeds-success idea is the driving force in the first argument
against hot hands, an argument endorsed by all the skeptics. Call this the Success
Doesn't Breed Success Argument:
1. Someone has a hot hand only if he or she is performing in such a way
that success breeds success.
2. Studies show that success does not breed success in basketball.
3. So, there are no hot hands in basketball.
In a classic study of the hot hand phenomenon, Thomas Gilovich and his
colleagues found that players on the Philadelphia 76ers believed that success
breeds success, just as the fans did. In interviews, the 76ers often said that after
making a few shots in a row, they “knew” that they were going to make their
next shot, that they “almost couldn't miss.” This has a plausible psychological
explanation: when a player realizes that he is hot, his confidence in his
subsequent shots increases; he relaxes and doesn't overplay his shots; he just gets
in the groove and shoots smoothly and cleanly. Regrettably (and remarkably) the
data fail to bear this out. In fact they show a slight negative correlation between
a hit and the following shot. The 76ers were just a little bit likelier to miss after
hitting three in a row. The converse is true too—they were likelier to hit after a
cold period of zero or one hit in the last four attempts than they were to continue
missing. Moreover, this finding held true for both field goals (shot under
defensive pressure) and free throws (shot without such pressure), and in similar
studies of the New Jersey Nets and the New York Knicks. Knowing this, we can
refit our psychological explanations: when a player realizes he is hot, he tends to
push the envelope and attempt more difficult shots, believing that he can do
anything he wants. Such a strategy then leads predictably to failure. How
wonderfully malleable psychological explanations are!
One might conclude that the empirical results show that the internal sensation
of being hot is unreliable. As one group of researchers puts it, “The sense of
being ‘hot’ does not predict hits or misses.” Other critics have intimated even
7
more strongly that since one's own felt experience is not wholly trustworthy, it
adds nothing to the statistical study of the hot hand.
This is not the best explanation of the data. A more plausible interpretation is
that the 76ers were mistaken in thinking they could tell when their streaks of
success would end. That is, either they mistakenly believed that their prior
success had a causal influence on the future, or they reasoned that having made
several shots in a row was good evidence that they would make the next one. It
is of course interesting that neither form of reasoning turns out to be reliable, but
this doesn't undercut the players’ beliefs that they were hot. The problem isn't
that their internal feelings of having a hot hand are wrong but rather that they
have a misguided optimism about how long their streak will last and where they
are in it. They believe that they are toward the beginning, or in the middle of a
success streak. In fact, they may well be at the end of one, and their next shot
will be a miss. The streak could be three successful shots in a row, or it could be
ten. Upon sinking the third basket, a player may well feel confident about hitting
the fourth, believing hopefully that he is at the beginning of a ten-streak instead
of at the close of a three-streak.
In short, what the data show here is not that one's internal sense of being hot is
wrong, but that there is no telling how long one will remain hot—the streak
could end at any time, and induction from past success fails. Wilt Chamberlain
couldn't feel a cold front coming in as he went for a field goal on February 28,
1967. In fact, maybe he felt pretty optimistic about sinking his shot. Who
wouldn't, having not missed a single shot in the previous thirty-five attempts?
Does this positive attitude, however statistically mistaken or unjustified, show
that Wilt wasn't hot during his streak? Of course not.
The Predictable Streak Argument
The second skeptical argument tries a different tack—hot hands are not undone
by the failure of streaks to cause or predict future success, but by the very
predictable nature of the streaks themselves. Call this the Predictable Streak
Argument:
1. Someone has a hot hand only if his or her streak of success is statistically
unlikely.
2. Studies show that there are no statistically unlikely streaks of success in
basketball.
3. So, there are no hot hands in basketball.
Supporters of this argument include Gould (1991) and Gilovich, Vallone, and
Tversky (1985). There has been much debate over whether the second premise
of this argument is true. Gould endorses it except for “one major exception, one
sequence so many standard deviations above the expected distribution that it
should never have occurred at all: Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in
1941.” Debate over this “exception” has generated a small cottage industry
8
DiMaggio's streak was somehow so momentous that its description is beyond the
reach of probability. Every success run will be more or less probable given the
average skill of the player involved. Suppose someone achieves a sports success
with only a 1 percent chance of occurring. The only reason to think that it does
not have every bit as much of a claim to being a case of hot hands as the
DiMaggio streak is the acceptance of Gould's arbitrarily high standards. Every
sporting event will fall somewhere on the curve, whether it is four standard
deviations from the mean, or only one. It is nonsense to suppose that there is
10
something “off the chart.” There is no principled way of parsing the above-
average portion of the curve into “hot hand” and “not hot hand” zones.
Thus, if the word “unlikely” in premise 1 is defined strongly enough, a la
Gould, then the argument is bound to be right. Yet this smacks of thievery. On
the other hand, if “unlikely” is weakened enough, then every positive deviation
from the mean will count as a case of hot hands (some are just hotter than
others), premise 2 will be false, and the conclusion will not follow. We could fix
our improbability standard for hot hands at some precise level by fiat, but there
is no principled way of doing so. The Predictable Streak Argument is therefore
of little interest. It is sound only if we agree to a purely arbitrary account of how
statistically unlikely a streak of success must be to count as an instance of hot
hands.
In sum, there are three prominent arguments that conclude there are no hot
hands in sports. The first argument of the hot hands critics creates a tradition in
the very act of destroying it. By making “success breeds success” a necessary
condition of having hot hands, the critics have established a previously
undefended and barely articulated account of hot hands only to demolish it.
Instead I have argued that there are good reasons to reject “success breeds
success” as a requirement for having hot hands. While it is true that many
players believe that their future success is more likely when they are already hot,
either this is no more than a belief that their current “hot” state has causal
efficacy into the future, or inductive reasoning that their current high rate of
success is evidence of future success. Yet neither possibility makes “success
breeds success” part of the concept of having hot hands.
The second and third arguments offered by the hot hand critics are of a well-
known skeptical pattern: set the standards for knowledge of X extremely high,
and then show that no one meets those standards. The usual reply to this strategy,
of which I availed myself, is to reject those standards in favor of more modest
ones that charitably preserve our claims of knowledge. The skeptical insistence
upon exceedingly rare streaks or statistically remote numbers of streaks as being
the only legitimate instances of hot hands is arbitrary and severe. I have argued
that “being hot” is a continuum, one that consists in simply shooting better than
normal. And this obviously comes in degrees.
So what is proven by the hot hand studies? Some conclusions correctly drawn
by the skeptics include (1) having a hot hand does not increase the chance of
success for one's upcoming shot; (2) players who believe that their recent run of
successful shots increases the chance of making their next shot are unjustified in
this belief; (3) players perceived as streaky do not have more success runs than
what is statistically expected; and (4) having a hot hand is not the result of a
causal mechanism not describable by the laws of probability. Unfortunately, the
skeptics erroneously infer that the previous results mean that there are no hot
hands and that everyone is wrong in thinking otherwise. Instead I have argued
that being hot does not have to do with the success rate, duration, or even
frequency of streaks. It has to do with their existence. The conclusions to be
drawn are (1) one has a hot hand when one is shooting better than average; (2)
players often know when they are shooting better than average; and (3)
observers can often tell when players are shooting better than average. This
judgment of countless fans, coaches, and players is vindicated.
Notes
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in the Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport 26 (1999): 79-87. Copyrighted by the International Association for the
Philosophy of Sport. Used by permission.
1. Quoted in Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich, “The Cold Facts about the
‘Hot Hand’ in Basketball, Chance 2 (1991): 16.
2. Dean Smith, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hot Hand,”
http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/. December 21, 1997. Accessed July 1, 2005.
3. Stephen J. Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991),
465.
4. Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky, “The Hot Hand in
Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences,” Cognitive Psychology
17 (1985): 302-3.
5. Robert M. Adams, “The ‘Hot Hand’ Revisited: Successful Basketball
Shooting as a Function of Intershot Interval,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 74
(1992): 934.
6. Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 468.
7. Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky, “Hot Hand in Basketball,” 310.
8. Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 467.
9. Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 467.
10. A standard deviation is a statistical measurement of how far a given data
point is from the mean value of all the data points in a given data set. The larger
the standard deviation, the further from the mean.
11. Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky, “Hot Hand in Basketball,” 296.
12. Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky, “Hot Hand in Basketball,” 311.
13. One possible objection here is that a distinction should be drawn between
above-average success runs due in some identifiable sense to the player's skill
and effort and those runs due to fortuitous deviant causal mechanisms. Only the
former, goes the objection, are genuine examples of hot hands. Tossing five
consecutive tails in a row with a fair coin is not an act of skill. Neither is
birdying several holes in a row at golf through a series of bizarre shots and
circumstances. Are these legitimate examples of hot hands? I feel the pull in
both directions. My inclination is to say that hot hands are simply above-average
success runs, however they are accomplished. I think this accords best with our
everyday expressions of “running hot” or “being on a roll.” Yet even if one
insists on adding a clause requiring this success to be the result of some
appropriate causal mechanism, my central point remains untouched. The core
element of having hot hands is deviation above mean performance—not success
breeds success, extreme statistical unlikelihood, or somehow outpacing chance,
as the skeptics contend.
Tim Elcombe
Olympic basketball games, for example, last forty minutes of playing time.
The durable quality of lived time and space, particularly in a well-defined
context such as a basketball game, gives continuity and meaning to the
embodied experience. Basketball's form and structure create uniformity, a way to
share experience and meaning with others. Without James Naismith getting the
ball rolling (and eventually bouncing), basketball, as we “know” it, would never
have existed metaphysically. And as Criswell Freeman reminds us, without the
existence of some shared notion of a game we call basketball, “there would have
been no epic battles between Chamberlain and Russell. And we would have
missed that magic rivalry between Bird and Johnson. Pete Maravich would have
been an anonymous lanky kid with droopy socks. And Hakeem Olajuwon would
have been the world's tallest soccer goalie.” 3
puts it: “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable.… [It] is a complex
dance that requires shifting from one objective to another at lightning speed.” 5
age, seasoned hardwood warriors (including Michael Jordan when playing for
the Washington Wizards) turn to “fundamental” basketball—a slower-paced,
more horizontal version of the game that emphasizes passing, shooting, and
screening. What little jumping is done is performed at great risk to the few
Achilles tendons and anterior cruciate ligaments still intact.
On a temporal level, one great thing about basketball, something “vintage”
athletes truly appreciate, is that one can “stop” time. Most games allow teams to
call timeouts to rest, strategize, make substitutions, slow the other team's
momentum, or stop precious seconds from ticking away. With the exception of
FIBA—the governing body of international basketball—most basketball rules
allow players a predetermined number of times (Chris Webber take note) to
pause in the middle of the action when in possession of the ball and ask the
referee to stop play. The same thing occurs every time the referee blows her
whistle or the game clock buzzer sounds as basketball time is suspended. The
world does not stop turning, we continue to slowly age, clocks tracking “real”
time keep ticking; but basketball time literally stops. 7
Sometimes, in basketball, time only feels like it stops. For New York Knicks
fans, the experienced time of Reggie Miller's majestic, high-arching, game-tying
three-point shot in game 1 of the 1995 Knicks-Pacers playoff series far exceeded
the mathematical time of its trajectory. Players “in the zone” often report a sense
of time stopping or slowing down. Time in its scientific, objective sense never
stops. But lived time in basketball stops both literally and experientially.
vertical leaping in the arts. Virtually every basketball movie includes a slow-
motion scene featuring an improbable dunk. A werewolf in Teen Wolf, a kid in
Like Mike, a dog in Air Bud, and, of course, Woody Harrelson in White Men
Can't Jump. Even ESPN's middle-aged “PTPer,” college basketball commentator
Dick Vitale, got into the act, dunking “for the W” in a Pizza Hut commercial.
Why do we celebrate the dunk with such enthusiasm? The answer probably
lies, in part, in our day-to-day relationship with gravity. For most of us, gravity
keeps us firmly on the ground. As we get older, gravity seems to work even
harder at keeping us grounded. Rarely do we summon our powers to try to lift
our body vertically into the air. When we see athletes dunk, it seems as though
gravity doesn't work on them as it does on us. And when we witness incredible
leapers like Julius Erving, Dominique Wilkins, or Vince Carter soar high above
the rim, they seem to defy gravity altogether, becoming, in “Pistol” Plato's
famous phrase, a “moving image of eternity.” We can't do that—few people
fixed to the earth can—and so we find ourselves in awe of those capable of
challenging a basic force that humans must deal with on a daily basis.
The same can be said for time. At one level, nothing is more familiar to us
than time. In fact, as the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant
(17241804) pointed out, we can't even imagine having a thought or sensation
that is not experienced as occurring in time. Yet most of us, if asked to define
“time,” would probably respond much as the philosopher Augustine (A.D. 354-
430) did: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to
one that asketh, I know not.” Our rough-and-ready theoretical understanding of
10
space in basketball goes far deeper than the dunk and the buzzer-beater. Part of
the reason for basketball's worldwide popularity is that the game affords us the
opportunity to live time and space in complex and nuanced ways.
5, 4, 3, 2 … I Was Fouled!
To understand the significance of lived time and space to basketball, it is helpful
to look at the game in comparison with other sports. Basketball, I will argue, is
the world's most “phenomenal” game because of its use of lived time and space.
To defend this claim, I will first explain from a phenomenological perspective
why timeregulated games are richer experientially than event regulated games.
Scott Kretchmar, in an essay in Baseball and Philosophy, champions the
moral and aesthetic superiority of baseball. His argument relies on the fact that
baseball is an “event-regulated” game rather than a “timeregulated” one.
Requiring players to play to the end of a game, to “honor the amount of mutual
testing that was committed to at the start of the activity,” as Kretchmar puts it,
makes baseball a morally superior game to sports such as basketball, soccer, and
football, in which stalling is a commonly used tactic. In addition, Kretchmar
argues, timeregulated sports such as basketball and football are aesthetically
displeasing because they “tend to unravel at the end.” 12
Kretchmar makes a forceful case for the moral and aesthetic superiority of
baseball. Certainly there is a charming quality to event-regulated sports. Players
cannot shorten the game by using stalling tactics. A degree of hope always
remains despite the long odds a team may face in the ninth inning—it is not
scientifically impossible to score a hundred or more runs even with two outs in
the ninth. Consider as well the description of baseball by Michael Novak in his
book The Joy of Sports: “Baseball players are watched one by one. Those who
are not connoisseurs of every individual are bored by the (to them) tedious
tempo of baseball. They want grand opera, not a string quartet. The game of
baseball is civilized, mathematical, and operates upon the tiny watchlike springs
of infinite detail—a step covertly taken to the left here, a batter choking up just
an inch there, a pitcher shortening his step upon delivery by 2 or 3 inches. One
must have a passion for detail to appreciate baseball.” 13
Undoubtedly many fans in the United States and elsewhere have a passion for
baseball's detail, for the game's event-regulated subtleties. But we need to look
more closely at the temporal descriptions of baseball offered by Kretchmar and
Novak. Baseball moves forward discrete moment by discrete moment—like the
slow ticking of a clock. The “infinite detail” and event-by-event quality of
baseball at times renders the game “tedious” and “mathematical.” One envisions
an afternoon or evening at the ballpark as a sedate, relaxing experience
interspersed with occasional moments of excitement and possibly a tense
conclusion. This is why connoisseurship is required to truly love the game of
baseball. If you don't revel in the analytical quality of baseball, you'll probably
only find excitement in the “long ball”—something that traditionalists abhor.
Timeregulated sports, on the other hand, add a dimension that event-regulated
sports, such as baseball, golf, tennis, and volleyball, lack, namely, the tension
that arises from a ticking clock. Time takes on new meanings in the lived context
of sport. Watching a clock tick down in the final minutes of a timeregulated
game heightens the tension of a contest. In many ways, time is what makes
sports such as basketball, hockey, football, and soccer most interesting. Teams
that are behind must turn to riskier and more exciting strategies, including faster
tempos and longer three-point shots in basketball, deep passes in football,
pulling the goalie in hockey to add an extra attacker, and having all players push
forward in soccer. The team in the lead must delicately balance the temptation to
stall with the understanding that it could lose momentum should the game's
outcome come into question. So while mathematically an event-regulated
sporting event might appear more aesthetically pleasing, the lived tension and
drama made possible by the ticking of a game clock points to the experiential
superiority of timeregulated games.
To underscore this point, consider how timeregulated games could be changed
to make them more like baseball. Basketball, for instance, could change the rules
so that each team scores as many baskets as possible before the defense makes
three stops (outs). Football, hockey, and soccer could make similar rule changes.
No longer would it make sense to pull the goalie in hockey, to throw risky
bombs in football, to push the tempo in basketball, or to send crowd-gathering
crosses into the box in soccer. These sports instead choose to make use of time
for the purpose of creating a sense of flow, to generate excitement by providing
teams only a finite amount of time to gain an advantage over opponents. In this
way, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer all use time to make their games
more dramatic and engrossing. 14
Good “Spacing”
The use of a clock in basketball puts it in a group of aesthetically superior sports
including hockey and soccer. But its temporal quality is only one reason why
basketball stands as the most “phenomenal” game ever invented. Once we
consider the game's lived spatial quality, basketball clearly rises above all other
sports from an experiential standpoint.
Basketball uses lived space better than any other sport. First, by hanging a
basket ten feet off the ground, Naismith's invention makes it virtually impossible
for opposing players to guard the goal. Goaltending rules further protect the
basket from being defended by a defender as in soccer and hockey.
Consequently, basketball becomes as much a vertical game as a horizontal game.
Soccer and hockey, in contrast, are virtually horizontal. While the soccer ball and
puck do leave the playing surface, the focus in both is on a single plane.
Basketball, in contrast, builds a vertical dimension into the fabric of the game
that enhances its experiential potential.
Even on the horizontal plane, however, basketball stands as the richest game
from a phenomenological standpoint. For instance, the size of the basketball
court in relation to the number of players enhances the artistry and excitement of
the game. Five players for each team have enough room to spread out, yet all are
potentially involved in the action at all times. Players cannot “hide” or “rest” on
the far side of the court as they do in soccer, where the size of the pitch makes it
impossible for all players to stay involved in the action. This is highlighted by
the fact that in soccer a team can lose a player to a red card and still have a
reasonable opportunity to win. Playing four against five (assuming the teams are
fairly equal in ability) in basketball would undoubtedly result in a lopsided affair.
Furthermore, with so much ground to cover, scoring opportunities in soccer are
negated. Subsequently, the experiential quality made possible by the limits of
time in soccer is reduced, as players cannot transition from one end to the other
quickly enough to generate a consistent level of excitement.
Furthermore, basketball's comparative lack of reliance upon technology
allows it to make better use of space than a game such as hockey. Hockey
players—wielding fiberglass sticks, skating on a low-friction surface, and
wearing extensive protective gear—move at a speed that reduces their freedom
to explore. As a result, hockey players tend to race swiftly from end to end with
relatively few scoring opportunities. Basketball, in contrast, makes little use of
technology. Players run, jump, and shoot virtually without the aid of
technological devices. Therefore the speed of the game is limited, not by
technology, but by human possibility. Plays happen as quickly as humans move
—not as fast as technology allows. This also explains why versions of basketball
played on trampolines don't grab us, despite their heightened vertical appeal. We
still love the horizontal, organic quality of basketball that is lost when the game
is transformed into a technological sideshow that reduces the complexity of lived
space.
Notes
Thanks to Greg “Skywalker” Bassham and Jerry “High Wire” Walls for their
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
The following is a transcript of what might very well have been five telephone
conversations between Michael Jordan and former Chicago Bulls coach Phil
Jackson in early March 1995, juast before MJ's comeback after more than a year
pursuing a baseball career.
Phil: I'll pretend you said “all thirteen of us, including our beloved coach and
spiritual leader.”
Mike: That's what I meant.
Phil: Well, in that case, let me tell you: in a way your worry is warranted. If
teams are just their players (and coaches), then it might seem that you can't ever
play on the same team if the players aren't the same.
Mike: So I was right? We won't really be the same?
Phil: It depends on what you mean by “same.”
Mike: Don't get all hair-splitty on me, now.
Phil: No really—think about it. “Being the same” is ambiguous. Things can
be qualitatively the same or numerically the same. Our trophies are
indistinguishable, except for their inscriptions: in other words, they're
qualitatively the same. But they're not the same trophy: they are distinct.
Numerically distinct trophies can be qualitatively identical. The question it
seems you want answered is whether a thing can change yet be literally one and
the same thing.
Mike: Right. How can it? If a team is just its players (and coach), how could it
survive gaining or losing any of them? I'll tell Krause that I'll come back only if
it's gonna be the same team, okay? If we get everyone back together, I'll play.
3
Phil: So you think that having the same players is a sufficient condition for
having the same team? That if you have the same players, you'd have the same
team?
Mike: I guess that's what I'm saying. But now that I think about it, I figure it
depends on you as much as Krause.
Phil: How so?
Mike: Well, you decide who plays what position. Even if we had all the same
players, if you ran Cartwright at point guard and me at center, we'd have a
problem. We'd lose (and you'd get fired)—and people might not recognize us as
the same team. So perhaps merely having the same players back together isn't
sufficient after all; we need them playing in the same positions.
Phil: I can guarantee that I'd never try Bill at point (I'll tell you about this
nightmare I had sometime), but I can't guarantee that I won't make some minor
adjustments. Remember when Doug Collins moved you to shooting guard and
had B. J. Armstrong run point? Did that destroy the team or just make it better?
Mike: Ah, Doug … now he was a superstar's coach! “Give Michael the ball
and stand back,” he'd say. I hope that I get to play for him again someday. You
know, I don't think I …
Phil: Ahem!
Mike: Sorry. Okay, I see the point: My “same players, same positions”
criterion might be a bit strict, but it's hard to deny that it's a sufficient condition
for team identity. If we have the very same players in the very same positions,
that's definitely enough for it to be the same old team.
Phil: Granted. I guess now we also need to know what the necessary
conditions are for your comeback. What minimum conditions must we meet for
it to be the same team and to get you back?
Mike: It figures that you'd want both necessary and sufficient conditions. I'll 4
be the same team if and only if we have the same players playing the same
positions.
Phil: Okay, but even if we managed it, the team wouldn't last for
Mike: Change is inevitable, I suppose.
Phil: Sounds like you wanna be like Heraclitus.
Mike: Who?
Phil: Heraclitus. An ancient Greek philosopher who thought that change was
the only constant. He said that one could never step twice in the same river since
the water would always be different.
Mike: Exactly!
Phil: Of course, even if the water stayed the same, you could never step twice
in the same river since you are constantly changing too.
Mike: What do you mean?
Phil: How tall are you?
Mike: Six-six.
Phil: But you weren't born that tall. Remember that little boy in North
Carolina cut from his high school team who was shorter than six feet?
Mike: I'm so tired of that story.
Phil: But it's a story about you, right?
Mike: I suppose you're gonna tell me it's not? That since I've changed—like
the river water—I'm not really the same person?
Phil: I'm not telling you that. But if you think that rivers and teams can't
survive any change of their parts, why think that people can survive such
changes? You are qualitatively different from that little boy in North Carolina.
Why think that you really are that boy?
Mike: Well, for one, my changes have all been gradual. I didn't go from five-
eight to six-six overnight. When I left the NBA in ‘93, though, the team was
radically and suddenly changed. It'd be as if someone replaced your brain—no
one can survive that kind of drastic change.
Phil: I'm not sure I buy the analogy, but we're getting there. Surely teams too
can survive gradual change, like other things. Perhaps what matters is not losing
too many players all at once. Of course, if Krause went nuts and decided to
replace all the players on the team before the season began, he'd have a different
team on his hands, right? But players retire and new ones get drafted and traded
all the time. None of those sorts of changes seem significant enough to affect the
team's identity (present company excepted).
Mike: Thanks. Okay, maybe you're right. So while the “same players, same
positions” condition is sufficient for team identity, it's not necessary. Some
degree of change is unavoidable and acceptable, as long as it's gradual and
continuous.
Phil: It seems to be the norm, in fact.
Mike: But what if the change becomes total? What if every player is gradually
replaced until none of the original players are left?
Phil: For all we've said, it could still be the same team, so long as those
changes were made slowly enough. Even you, Michael, constantly lose and
replace cells all the time. As a result, your body probably has none of the same
parts it had when you were a little boy.
Mike: So you think continuity, even when it results in a complete change in
parts, is a necessary condition for team identity?
Phil: Perhaps. But I'm not so sure. It's not even clear that all abrupt changes in
players should result in a team change. Suppose the whole team was lost in a
tragic airplane crash. Most people would probably regard the team as going on in
spite of this loss.
Mike: Let's not speculate about that.
Phil: It was just a thought. These matters are not easily settled. Perhaps if
Krause fired everyone, the team might survive by virtue of the new players
pursuing the same goal in the same way (running the triangle offense, playing
tenacious D, bringing home the trophy, and so on).
Mike: What worries me now is that a lot seems to depend on Krause— on
whether he wants to make the changes in the right way. I'm gonna call him and
explain all this to him.
Day 3: Traveling
Mike: Phil?
Phil: Hi, Michael.
Mike: Answer me honestly: do I travel?
Phil: Michael, I think that life is a great journey and that everyone is traveling.
Mike: That's not what I meant, and you know it. Anyway, listen, about the
team: maybe we're overthinking things. Say Krause fired us and replaced us with
a bunch of rookies. They'd still play in Chicago, they'd still wear white and red at
home, and all that. Don't you think it'd be the same team by virtue of playing in
the same city and being called the same name?
Phil: Krause threatened to fire all of us, didn't he?
Mike: Oh yeah.
Phil: He wouldn't. But let's think about the suggestion that location is what
matters for team identity, rather than sameness of players and positions or
continuity of player change. Let me ask you: how many championships have the
Lakers won?
Mike: Eleven, I think. They were an awesome team, but we'll beat that record
6
someday. Speaking of the Lakers, what's up with that name? There weren't any
lakes in LA last I checked. Or what about the Utah “Jazz”—I've never heard of
much of a scene there.
Phil: So I take it you've never heard of the Minneapolis Lakers or New
Orleans Jazz, either? Teams travel too, Michael. In Minnesota—
“the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes”—”Lakers” is a perfect name. So what if it
doesn't fit very well in Los Angeles? It was move or lose their best players to
financial trouble. Likewise, we wouldn't bat an eye if the New Orleans Jazz
became the New York Jazz.
Mike: You're right. Perhaps a team's city isn't as important as I thought.
Phil: Perhaps. On the other hand …
Mike: What now?
Phil: As before, we can look at the situation in two ways: either the move to
LA destroyed the Minneapolis Lakers and a new team with the same name was
created in LA, or one and the same team just moved— like you might one day
move from Chicago to, say, Washington, D.C. In the first case, the Lakers have
won six championships; in the second, they've won eleven: six in LA, five in
Minneapolis.
Mike: I'm a little torn. I want to say that the Lakers just moved, but then again,
I can't imagine our team moving to Cheyenne or Cheboygan. Even if everyone
came with us (heck, even if Reinsdorf still owned it), it'd have a different feel,
different home court, locker room, different fans— it'd be a different team.
Phil: Your loyalty is admirable, but maybe a little old-fashioned. Remember:
in the early days of basketball, some teams were only loosely, accidentally
associated with cities. Often, they were extensions of corporations. The Detroit
Pistons began their existence as the Zollner Pistons of Fort Wayne, Indiana—
they literally made pistons. Company owners like Fred Zollner would suit up
factory workers for a few games a week. A few “barnstorming” teams traveled
from city to city for a cut of the door. I heard of one owner who had reversible
uniforms made so he could bring the same team through the same venue twice.
People didn't realize they were paying to watch the same players again in
different uniforms. 7
Mike: I couldn't do that as a player: I'll always be number 23. Okay, so maybe
things aren't so simple. We've got to think about this some more.
Mike: I just said I've come to accept change. It would still be the same team,
as long as the trades were sufficiently gradual. That's pretty much what happens
to teams over time in the normal course of things, as with people who grow older
and change their body cells.
Phil: But imagine that you were each gradually signed to an expansion team:
call it the “Cheboygan Boars.” So after a few years we would have two teams—
the Bulls, which have proceeded continuously through the years (getting slightly
worse each season) and then (suddenly) the Boars with a starting lineup of
Michael, Scottie, Horace, B. J., and Bill— the familiar, championship-winning
group. 9
Mike: So?
Phil: So the question is, which team is really the Bulls? The team in Chicago
that changes only gradually through the years, or the new team in Cheboygan
that eventually comes to have all the same players as the Bulls do now? Each
team meets one of the two sufficient conditions you've suggested.
Mike: Well, only one team would be named the Bulls.…
Phil: But of course names can be misleading: a team can survive a mere name
and location change just as a different team can adopt an old team's name. To be
clear, let's call the team in Chicago after all the gradual trades are completed the
“Continuous Team.” Then the question is: are the Bulls identical with the Boars
or with the Continuous Team?
Mike: I see the problem.
Phil: Good. So the Boars are now indistinguishable from the original Bulls:
the players are exactly the same—the coach too, let's suppose. They play like
Bulls; they win like Bulls. The Continuous Team, on the other hand, may be
struggling dead last with not one recognizable player. But ordinarily—if there
were no expansion Boars—we'd regard the Continuous Team as the Bulls.
Mike: Well, it might be a nice reunion to play with the guys again on the
Boars, but I don't think I'd be playing for the same team. Yeah, it'd be the same
group playing the same positions and such, but there'd be a weird gap in the
team's history. What would've happened to the Bulls in the meantime, before the
Boars were assembled?
Phil: I suppose they wouldn't have existed. But I'm not sure. What happens to
a watch when you take it apart and put it back together again? Does it cease to
be for a while, or does it exist in a scattered, non-ticking state?
Mike: Are you philosophers just interested in raising problems? You ever
come up with any answers?
Phil: I've heard that before. But you must agree: not just any answer is a good
answer.
Mike: I suppose there has to be a fact of the matter one way or another. But
anyway, the continuity criterion doesn't force us to decide what it is. Let's just
drop the strict criterion altogether. The Continuous Team would be the Bulls
even if last year's players were playing in Cheboygan.
Phil: I still have my doubts. Consider this: the Bulls and the Pistons begin to
trade players with each other and …
Mike: Are you crazy!?
Phil: It's just an example—hear me out. Imagine that the trades happen as
before, one a year. This year they exchange a power forward, next year a
shooting guard, the year after a center. Eventually all twelve players have been
switched. Let the coaches switch too, if you like. The change is gradual, and
your continuity criterion is satisfied. Would you say that the teams have stayed
put? That the Pistons still play in Detroit and the Bulls in Chicago?
Mike: Argh! I don't know! I could never be a Piston, I know that.
Phil: Nor could any self-respecting Bulls fans cheer for the Pistons. But they'd
certainly root for you, Scottie, Horace, Bill, and Dennis—even if you happened
to play in Detroit. There'd be some years of confusion, to be sure (I can't quite
picture you and Dumars together in the backcourt night after night). But in the 10
end, I know which team I'd think of as the Bulls, even if some cruel twist of fate
had renamed them the Pistons. Think of it this way: If you and I gradually
exchanged all our furniture, wouldn't you say that in the end your furniture just
moved to my place, and mine to yours?
Mike: I suppose so.
Phil: So if we see the Bulls and Pistons as gradually switching names and
cities, the continuity criterion can't be right.
Mike: Strike three …
Phil: That might be right when we do aesthetics, especially these days. But
here we are doing metaphysics, Michael. We are trying to nail down some good
identity criteria for entities of a certain kind—teams. And you don't think
metaphysics is a matter of opinion, do you? You don't think existence and
identity are just a matter of what people think?
Mike: I surely didn't. I was looking for objective criteria for team identity, like
composition, location, continuity. But then you suggested we take the fans into
account. And that's right: the fans don't play on the team, but they sure seem to
play a role in team identity; they somehow contribute from the outside. External
factors may matter when it comes to determining which team we are part of,
especially when the intrinsic factors don't seem to settle the issue.
Phil: Have you told the Jerrys about that?
Mike: I'm telling you. And I thought you'd be happy, since it was your idea.
Phil: I'm content. But I'm not a materialist—you know that.
Mike: Come on, I've seen your Montana ranch.
Phil: I meant in the philosophical sense; I don't believe everything boils down
to physical bodies and processes. I'm happy to say that the team is not just you
guys (and me); it's something over and above its actual members. And I'm happy
to say that the extra bit comes from the fans, among other things. But that means
that when the season starts, there will be two things after all: the group
consisting of all of us, which exists and is what it is regardless of the fans, and
the team, whose identity depends on the fans.
Mike: I don't like that. I'm definitely a materialist.
Phil: That's fine. You don't want two things in the same place at the same
time. You want the team to be the group.
Mike: No, Phil, that would take us back to the initial deadlock between the
composition criterion and the continuity criterion.
Phil: Then what?
Mike: That's where the fans come into the picture. None of the other criteria
work because we are confusing two concepts: the group, with its composition,
location, history, and so on; and the team, with its fans. You are saying these two
concepts identify two entities, the group and the team. I'd say we've got two
concepts and the problem is to see how they interact.
Phil: Holy Toledo Mud Hens: baseball did have an impact on you! Go ahead
… keep swinging!
Mike: Wise guy. So we've got the group, that's for sure: a bunch of guys, with
a coach—convention doesn't decide this. Now is this group a team? Yes, as long
as they do certain things. What team it is, however— and whether it always
counts as the same team—is up to the fans. It's not that we are the Bulls or the
Boars. We count as the Bulls or as the Boars depending in part on what the fans
think.15
Phil: Just like Clinton counts as the president so long as he plays a certain role
and is properly acknowledged by certain laws?
Mike: That's the idea. Clinton definitely exists—he's part of this world,
regardless of what people might think of him. That he's president, on the other
hand, is a matter for some sort of social convention to decide.
Phil: So in our case you agree with me: we have a group and a team.
Mike: No. We have a group, period. And that group counts as a certain team
only if the fans think so. A bit like art, if you like, but not because everything is
up for grabs. Take a modern sculpture, say one of Henry Moore's Large Forms:
there's a piece of bronze, shaped in a certain way, and the question is not whether
there is also a sculpture, something over and above the bronze. The question is
whether that piece of bronze counts as a sculpture—whether it has features that
qualify it as an artwork. Maybe that's up for grabs, for different people may feel
differently. But that is not a metaphysical question. It's sociology, you know. The
only metaphysical question is whether the bronze is there, and that has a straight
answer. 16
Phil: I think I see. So tell me, Michael: how does this help you out?
Mike: Well, I guess I was after the wrong answer, because I was asking the
wrong question.
Phil: You were asking whether the team we're putting together is the same old
Bulls you used to play with.
Mike: Right. It turns out that I'm interested in two things: whether it'll be the
same group, and whether that group will count as the same team. But it matters
less whether the group is really the same, since different groups can count as the
same team.
Phil: So have we been talking about group identity all this time? Are we not
back at square one?
Mike: I'm not sure. Perhaps composition, continuity, and all that are criteria
that the fans can use to decide where their allegiance lies. But perhaps group
identity is a more subtle and fickle business than we had in mind. Perhaps there
are no necessary and sufficient criteria informing their decision—the criteria
may not even be consistent.
Phil: Okay, so where does this leave us?
Mike: I guess it depends on the fans. I'll come back only if they're happy. I'm
sure it's gonna be a good group, whether or not it's strictly the same old group. I
wanna be sure the fans think it makes a good team— their team.
Notes
1. Horace Grant, B. J. Armstrong, Bill Cartwright, and Scott Williams all left
the Bulls during or after the 1994-1995 season.
2. JoJo English, an undrafted journeyman player not known for his offense.
3. Jerry Krause, general manager of the Bulls from 1985 to 2003.
4. In philosophical lingo, a “necessary condition” is something that must be
present in order for something else to exist or take place. Being on the roster, for
example, is a necessary condition of being a starter. A “sufficient condition,” on
the other hand, is something that is all that is needed for something else to exist
or take place. Thus, in the NBA, having six personal fouls is a sufficient
condition for getting expelled from a game; so is head-butting a referee.
5. Presumably Jerry Reinsdorf (the owner of the Bulls) and Jerry Krause (their
general manager).
6. Of course, this number is higher now. Remember, these phone calls took
place in 1995.
7. Mark Stewart, Basketball: A History of Hoops (New York: Franklin Watts,
1998), 48.
8. Evidently, Phil has read Plutarch's Lives: “The thirty-oared galley in which
Theseus sailed with the youths [to Crete on a mission to kill the Minotaur] was
preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius of Phalerum. At
intervals they removed the old timbers and replaced them with sound ones, so
that the ship became a classic illustration for the philosophers of the disputed
question of growth and change, some of them arguing that it remained the same,
and others that it became a different vessel.” Plutarch, The Rise and Fall of
Athens, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (Har-mondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1960),
28-29.
9. So Phil has read Thomas Hobbes, too: “If the ship of Theseus were
continually repaired by the replacing of all the old planks with new, then—
according to the Athenian philosophers—the later ship would be numerically
identical with the original. But if some man had kept the old planks as they were
taken out and were to assemble a ship of them, then this ship would, also,
without doubt be numerically identical with the original. And so there would be
two ships, existing at the same time, both of which would be numerically
identical with the original. But this latter verdict is absurd.” Hobbes, De
Corpore, pt. 2, chap. 11, para. 7.
10. Jackson is referring to Joe Dumars—a Detroit guard Jordan repeatedly
played against in several testy and closely contested playoff series—as the best
defender Jordan ever faced.
11. David Stern has been commissioner of the NBA from 1984 to the present.
12. Phil is referring here to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 2.
13. Thomas Senor offers some interesting reflections on fandom in his
“Should Cubs Fans Be Committed? What Bleacher Bums Have to Teach Us
about the Nature of Faith,” in Baseball and Philosophy, ed. Eric Bronson
(Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 37-55.
14. Sounds like Mike has read Nelson Goodman's “When Is Art?” in The Arts
and Cognition, ed. D. Perkins and B. Leondar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977), 11-19.
15. Has Mike supplemented his reading of Goodman with John Searle's The
Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995)? Unlikely, since the
book came out at the time of this phone call. But the phrase “counts as” is really
Searle's.
16. Mike must have read at least some of the papers that are now collected in
Michael Rea's reader, Material Constitution (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1997).
Daniel B. Gallagher
Coach Plato
So far, we've focused on two parts of the soul: spirit and reason. But Plato, in
fact, distinguishes three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. It is the appetitive
power of the soul that is responsible for the basic bodily appetites, such as the
desire for food, sex, sleep, and drink. The appetitive soul also clearly plays a role
in basketball. Many a teenaged hoopster drools as much for the rock as he does
for a double cheeseburger. But, according to Plato, it is the rational and spirited
parts of the soul, and the ways they interact with each other, that separate
humans from other animals. After all, my sister's golden retriever “Magi” drools
more for a ball and a double cheeseburger than I do.
In the Republic, Plato offers a fascinating description of an ideally just and
harmonious state as an extended allegory on the three-part structure of the
human soul. For a society to operate smoothly, he says, three separate social
classes are needed. Workers are needed to build houses, grow food, make
clothes, and provide other basic necessities. Warriors are necessary to protect the
state from the threat of attack and to maintain internal order. Rulers are needed
to oversee and coordinate the various functions of the working and soldiering
classes, as well as to provide overall leadership and direction. In Plato's analogy,
each of these classes corresponds to some part of the soul. The workers in the
Republic correspond to the power of desire (the appetitive soul), the warriors to
the power of courage (the spirited soul), and the rulers to the power of reason
(the rational soul). Each of these classes is essential to a safe, stable, and well-
governed state. Just as the state won't operate smoothly if any one of them is
absent, neither will the presence of any one of them alone be sufficient for a
smoothly operating state. As Bill Bradley wisely reminds us, “a player is only
one point in a five-point star.”
A successful basketball team also mirrors the qualities found in the soul of a
great individual player. Like the state, a good team needs workers, warriors, and
rulers. Plato claims that citizens must be trained to have only the good of the
state in mind. Political philosophers often point out how closely Plato's republic
resembles a socialist state. For Plato as well as for Mao, dutiful citizens must
give no thought to individual recognition or selfish gain but focus exclusively on
promoting the common good.
Many championship teams would never have achieved such success had it not
been for the unselfish play of “workers” on the team. Rather than scoring
themselves, these players usually make it possible for others to score. Victory is
impossible without them. Larry Bird urges us to “get the ball to the open man
closest to the basket. That's your job on the offensive end. That's the only way
you can win basketball games.” Although he could also shoot the three, most
1
Blue Devil fans will remember Bobby Hurley as an incredible playmaker who
could slash across the court and feed the ball to his teammates again and again.
Avery Johnson, currently head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, built his playing
career on the reliable support he provided to his teammates by means of a steady
stream of assists and outstanding ball protection on offense. Steve Nash won
back-to-back NBA MVP awards in 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 because of his
brilliant passing and unselfish play. Such players exemplify the indispensable
value of “workers” in the Platonic republic of the basketball court.
The warriors of Plato's republic, in turn, must possess heroic courage in the
face of danger. Their role in the state corresponds to the spirited part of the soul.
They must be willing to take chances when the stakes are high. They are the
ones who dive on loose balls and battle for the big rebound when the game is on
the line. Patrick Ewing, Bill Laimbeer, Brian Cardinal, and Dennis Rodman
stand out as examples of the warrior class of players in basketball. Often their
style borders on the physically dangerous, as they play more effectively by
relying on visceral rather than cerebral inspiration. In fact, in the Timaeus, Plato
locates the rational part of the soul in the head, the spirited part in the chest, and
the appetitive part in the gut.
Then there are Plato's rulers. Every successful team needs at least one player
with the intelligence, poise, and leadership ability to carry his team to victory.
Sam Jones, Willis Reed, John Stockton, Rebecca Lobo, Jason Kidd, Magic
Johnson, and Isiah Thomas are just a few of the greats we might classify as
“rulers.” As Oscar Robertson once remarked, “The really great player takes the
worst player on the team and makes him good.” “Rulers” are able to elicit the
best from their teammates but also to keep them in check when necessary.
Basketball is a game of fundamentals. Every player must possess the basic
skills of dribbling, passing, rebounding, defending, and shooting. A kid must be
taught and drilled in these fundamentals long before he or she can master the
finer points of the game. After players learn these fundamental skills, they will
discover how their individual strengths and weaknesses predispose them to a
specific role on the team. Without leaving behind the general skills of shooting,
passing, and dribbling, a player will go on to specialize. As former UCLA coach
John Wooden likes to say, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what
you can do.”
Plato, too, finds individual citizens within the republic to be endowed with a
variety of gifts that naturally predispose them toward fulfilling the particular
functions of a worker, a warrior, or a ruler. Had Plato been a basketball coach, he
would have strongly agreed with LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson that “good teams
become great teams when the members trust each other enough to surrender the
‘me’ for the ‘we.’” A just and well-ordered society, while recognizing the value
2
Coach Aristotle
Like Plato, Aristotle loved to classify things into various categories. Ethically
speaking, he says, there are four types of people: the virtuous, the self-
controlled, the weak, and the vicious. Each of these types is determined by the
way in which an agent's reason interacts with his or her inclination. In virtuous
persons, reason and inclination are in harmony. For the self-controlled agent,
reason masters inclination, but thought and desire are often opposed. Inclination
usually wins out over reason in the weak agent, and in the vicious agent, both
reason and inclination tend toward what is bad.
Let's say I want to improve my jump shot. I go to a shooting coach who
notices that I have a bad habit of not squaring up my right elbow before my
release. I'm already a pretty good shot, but I would improve my shooting
considerably if I could correct this bad habit. I have, at least when it comes to
shooting the basketball, a vicious character. Not only am I inclined to let my
right elbow float away from my body when I jump, my reason actually urges me
to do this because the rest of my habitually acquired bodily mechanics depend
on the floating right elbow. In this way, both reason and inclination lead me to
shoot in this skewed manner.
My coach first explains and demonstrates to me the correct positioning of my
right elbow. Squaring my body more evenly with the basket, I am directed to
visualize my forearm to make it perfectly perpendicular with the top of the
square painted on the backboard. At first, this seems completely awkward and
unnatural to me, and I miss almost every shot. My reason now tells me to shoot
this way, but my inclination is to shoot the way I've always shot. I am now what
Aristotle calls a weak agent. I know what is right, but my inclination leads me to
do otherwise.
With practice, however, my body starts to respond to my brain, as Aristotle
anticipated: “What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.” My elbow begins
to assume the correct position more readily, and my set, jump, and release flow
more fluidly. I still have to think about the movements, but usually my
inclination follows my reason, and my shot percentage gradually climbs to
where it was before. Patience and persistence have made me a self-controlled
agent.
With still more practice, I notice that I have to think less and less about my
shooting mechanics. My body adjusts automatically to the correct angle no
matter where I am on the floor. Reason and inclination are now working together
in harmony, and my shooting has improved significantly. My new shooting form
now “feels right.” Although I'm far from perfect, I have become a virtuous
shooter.
Every good basketball coach, even if she's never read Aristotle, employs some
version of Aristotle's theory of human excellence in teaching her players. First of
all, one can't acquire a virtuous character merely by thinking about what's right.
You can memorize every detail found in every book ever written on the
mechanics of shooting, but you will only become a virtuous shooter by shooting.
Moreover, the only way to develop good shooting habits and become a
virtuous shooter is by repeated shooting. As University of Louisville coach Rick
Pitino says, it's not practice that makes perfect: it's perfect practice that makes
perfect. If I make the first shot I take after repositioning my elbow according to
my coach's instructions, it's probably a lucky accident. If I make the thousandth
shot after repeated practice, and follow that up with the thousand-and-first, and
the thousand-and-second, then my reason is in harmony with my inclination.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence … is not an act, but a habit,” is an
Aristotelian quote treasured by more than a few coaches.
Aristotle also teaches an important lesson about how we should theorize about
ethics and excellence. Many contemporary moral philosophers, following the
great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804), believe that we can
discover a lot about ethics just by sitting in our armchairs and spinning ideas out
of our heads. By contrast, Aristotle believes that we must start theorizing about
morality and excellence only after we have spent a great deal of time observing
the real actions of real human beings.
Who's right, Aristotle or Kant? Well, ask yourself this: could anyone have
figured out what a perfect jump shot looks like before the game of basketball
was invented? Pretty clearly not. And it's instructive to think about why this
would have been all but impossible. 3
Yet as Aristotle notes, the precise mean is often very hard to determine. Virtuous
persons can trust their instincts more than those who are merely self-controlled
or weak-willed. Moral agents of these types are in greater need of direction and
general rules to determine their course of action.
One of the things that made Michael Jordan such a phenomenal player was his
uncanny ability to trust his instincts. He was well aware of his extraordinary
abilities, but he was also aware of his limitations on an “off” day (as if he ever
had one). He never hesitated to pass up a shot when he sensed that it had little
chance of getting through the hoop. But he also never failed to take the shot
when it really counted. “I never looked at the consequences of missing a big
shot,” he once said. “When you think about the consequences you always think
of a negative result.” 5
Notes
1. Larry Bird, Bird on Basketball (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987), 26.
2. Phil Jackson with Hugh Delehanty, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a
Hardwood Warrior (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 21.
3. See John Christgau's fascinating book The Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight
Great Men Who Shook the World of Basketball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1999).
4. John Wooden with Jack Tobin, They Call Me Coach, rev. ed. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1988), 216.
5. Pat Williams, Quotable Michael Jordan (Hendersonville, TN: TowleHouse,
2004), 23.
6. Many thanks to John Kopson for counsel on examples.
Thomas P. Flint
THE BASKET THAT NEVER WAS
Prologue
THERE ARE EXACTLY 2.34 seconds remaining in the game to decide the
conference championship, and it looks as though good old Yoreville U just might
pull off an upset that will be world famous in Yoreville for a millennium.
Yoreville trails Emeny by a single point, Yoreville has the ball, and Coach
Quoats is using his last timeout to design a play. Actually, you and everyone else
in the arena know what's coming: somehow or other, the ball is going to South
Shore, Yoreville's famed shooting star. The players return to the court, the ref
hands the ball to Yoreville's trusty guard Gard, and we're off. Gard inbounds the
ball to his backcourt companion Dwibbles, who cuts toward the basket and
passes, sure enough, to Shore. Shore hesitates for an eternal instant, then shoots.
Shot, horn— which came first? You see the ball ascend, stop, descend, and …
nothing but net. Yoreville roars, but then sees what you feared. The ref is waving
off the points. The shot came too late, he says; the game clock had expired.
There was no shot, and thus no points, and thus no victory, and thus no
championship for Yoreville. Coach Quoats and half the crowd are livid,
imploring the refs to check the monitors. They do, but the combination of poor
camera angles and a technical gaffe render the available video evidence
inconclusive. The call stands, and the crowd slowly leaves, angry and dejected.
It's all over.
Or is it? The next morning at the office, your boss, Gervais, says he has
something to show you. Gervais was at the game last night, in his usual front-
row seat, and tells you he was recording parts of the contest with his new
camcorder. “Take a look at this,” he tells you as he starts the disc. And there it is,
plain as day. From Gervais's perfect location, you can see the ball leave Shore's
hand while the clock in the background shows .03 seconds remaining. “We was
robbed!” you scream. “No doubt about it. Shore shot in time! Two points for
us!” Gervais nods, and the two of you spend the next few minutes
commiserating over the injustice of it all.
two-pointer—the refs just didn't call it. But if he hit a two-pointer, then Yoreville
really earned more points than Emeny, whatever the official scorer said. And if
Yoreville scored more points, then Yoreville really won the game, and hence the
championship. So Yoreville is the real, true champion, no matter what the league
says. Facts are facts, no matter what people (or refs, for that matter) say. Wasn't
it Lincoln who once posed the question, “How many legs does a dog have if we
call its tail a leg?” The correct answer, he said, was four, because it doesn't
matter what we call a tail; the fact is, it just isn't a leg.
All this makes sense. But then you start to wonder. Are there really facts here
no matter what the ref, the scorer, or the league says? Well, there's no doubt (in
your mind, anyway) that there are physical facts in the neighborhood—facts
about people, balls, nets, clocks, and so on— facts that are facts no matter what
anybody says. Dwibbles passed the ball to Shore; the ball was shot before the
horn sounded; the ball went through the net—all these are facts about the world,
facts independent of anything we say or do about them. But basketball's a game,
2
and games don't just exist on their own, independent of what we say and do.
They're governed by rules, and those rules create facts that wouldn't be facts
without our consent. Take the three-point shot. Prior to 1980, there was no three-
point shot in college basketball. Lots of players, of course, shot baskets from
what we now refer to as three-point range. Did they really hit three-pointers, a
fact that the refs perversely refused to recognize at the time? Of course not.
Since the rules didn't allow three-point baskets back then, there simply were no
three-point baskets then. Here, reality is created by convention. Maybe we
should say the same thing about Shore—that since the ref didn't call it a basket,
it wasn't a basket? Or is that to confuse what the rules say with what the refs
say?
at the game, or who read about it in the paper or heard the results on ESPN—
think they know how many points each team got, which team won, and who the
conference champion is, but they're all mistaken. They don't know; you do.
That sounds a bit strange. You like yourself (and sort of like Gervais), but can
the two of you really know so much more about this sort of thing than anyone
else does? Can everyone else be wrong about who won the game, and only the
two of you be right? But wait a minute; do you really know? Emeny's center was
twice called for goaltending. But you weren't sure at the time, and you're even
more uncertain now. Was it really goaltending? Was the ball really on its way
down when he swatted it away? Maybe, but maybe not. If it wasn't, then does it
follow that Yoreville didn't really score those four points? If they didn't, then
they still lost, even with Shore's buzzer-beater.
But wait another minute. Thinking back on it, there were lots of close calls in
that game. How about those two shots Shore hit that you (and half the crowd)
thought were three-pointers, but were called two-pointers? Maybe they really
were three-pointers. How about that intentional technical foul call against
Dwibbles at the end of the first half? You surely didn't think it was intentional.
Maybe it really wasn't; maybe if we could look inside Dwibble's mind, we'd see
that no intention to trip Emeny's guard was present. On the other hand,
4
remember those two out-of-bounds calls against Emeny at the start of the game?
The Emeny bench surely didn't believe those two players were out of bounds;
maybe they were right. And so on, and so on.
The more you think about it, the more it looks as if, once you start down the
“Shore really did hit that basket” path, the less confident you become about what
really happened in that game, or about what the real score was, or who really
won. And not only for that game: surely the point, if valid at all, can be
generalized. We'd have to say that nobody knows what really happened in just
about any game. You always thought you knew that UCLA's eighty-eight-game
5
winning streak was ended by Notre Dame on January 19, 1974, but maybe it
wasn't; maybe the Bruins actually won that game. (You smile at the thought,
since you never cared much for Digger Phelps.) And what goes for games, of
course, goes for seasons as well. How well you recall Michael Jordan's leading
North Carolina to that championship back in 1982. Well, alas (you've always
liked MJ), maybe in reality he didn't lead them to a championship; maybe they
really lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Who knows? The same
depressing conclusion seems to follow for individual players and their career
statistics, too. Officially, Pete Maravich is the leading scorer in NCAA history,
with 3,667 points. But, again, if you take the “Shore really scored” route, it looks
as though the official statistics shouldn't cut much ice with you. “Officially,
schmicially,” you're apt to say. “Who cares what the record book says? How
many points did Maravich actually have? Who really scored the most points?
How many did he score?” And since there's no way for anyone to answer such
questions, the upshot is that, for the most part, nobody knows nothin’.
That's such a goofy conclusion that you know you can't take it seriously. You
have a clear and distinct memory of discussing skepticism in your Intro to
Philosophy class, and you never could quite understand the amount of time and
energy some philosophers seemed to spend trying to show that we do indeed
know things. Whatever the philosophers might say, you're intent on saving
Michael Jordan his championship, on securing for Pistol Pete his scoring record,
and on maintaining for all of us our knowledge of such accomplishments. And if
that means denying that Shore scored, so be it.
that that just ain't so. Refs do make mistakes. Blown calls are as much a part of
the game as blown shots. If a referee couldn't make a mistake, then why would
knowledge of the rules be considered a requirement for becoming a ref? And
why would referees ever examine videotape during a game and change a call on
the basis of such evidence? Why change a call if there's no way the initial call
could have been wrong? In this and so many other ways, don't referees signal
that they don't think of themselves as infallible, that they don't view themselves
as possessing unlimited or tyrannical power? If they don't buy into the Tyranny
of the Zebras, surely we shouldn't.
Come to think of it, isn't the Tyranny of the Zebras in conflict with the very
rules that establish the game? You think so, but you're not sure. Well, there's an
easy way to find out. You look around to make sure that no one's watching you,
then turn to your computer. You quickly find the rules online and, sure enough,
uncover ample evidence of the restrictions placed upon, and the fallibility of, the
officials. Rule 2, section 2, article 2 states, “No official has the authority to set
aside any official rules or approved interpretations.” That makes it as clear as
clear can be; basketball is a game of laws, not of unfettered zebras. Nor are
zebras infallible. For example, rule 2, section 5, article 2 says that “the officials
after making a call on the playing court shall use replay equipment, videotape or
television monitoring that is located on a designated courtside table …, when
such equipment is available, to … (b) Ascertain whether a try for field goal that
will determine the outcome of a game (win, lose, tie), and was attempted at or
near the expiration of the game clock, was released before the reading of 0.00 on
the game clock.” Note that the rule says the official shall (not may) check the
7
monitor even though he's already made the call. This rule makes sense if the
official can make a mistake in judging whether or not the shot was made in time;
it would make no sense if officials can't get it wrong. Similarly, rule 2, section 5,
8
article 1i, states that officials can use a replay to determine “if a try for goal is a
two-or three-point attempt”; again, why check the tape if your original verdict
can't be mistaken? None of this language would be appropriate if the Tyranny of
the Zebras were in harmony with the rule makers’ vision of the game. One more
reason, then, to oppose Tyranny.
consult a number of witnesses, compare their stories, weigh their veracity, and
eventually come up with a claim that, say, Gard traveled. They base their
decisions on their own observations, not on those of others. And that's a good
10
Rules are akin to divine commands telling an official how he should act in
different situations—”Thou shalt call a charge when the player with the ball runs
into a defender who has established a stationary defensive position,” or “Thou
shalt not allow an offensive player to remain in the free throw lane for more than
three consecutive seconds unless there is a shot,” or the like. Judges in any
contest have such rules to follow, to one degree or another, and (in the long run)
the contest can flourish as a social activity only if those rules are honored. The
good judge is the one who follows the rules correctly; the bad judge is the one
who fails to do so. 13
Epilogue
So South Shore didn't score. In an ideal world, he would have been awarded two
points, Yoreville would have won the game, and the Yoricks would have been
champions. In the actual world, they aren't champions, because they didn't win.
Alas, poor Yoricks! And all because of the basket that should have been, but
never was.
Notes
1. As you'll discover in a few minutes when you consult the official NCAA
rules, the language actually reads: “A goal from the field other than from beyond
the three-point line shall count two points.” You'll find this wording in rule 5,
section 1, article 1, which you'll locate online at
http://www.ncaa.org/library/rules/2007/2007_m_w_basketball_rules.pdf.
2. Sure, sure, you've heard of Einstein, but you're confident that the theory of
relativity doesn't really challenge any of the claims you're making about reality.
3. Campus legend has it that the team's distinctive nickname was bestowed
upon it by Richard Tarlton, Yoreville's first president and reputedly a fellow of
infinite jest.
4. You remember once reading that the official NCAA rules don't explicitly
refer to a player's intentions when defining an intentional personal foul, but do
when defining an intentional technical foul. As you'll discover in a few minutes,
this is indeed the case. Rule 4, section 21, article 7 reads: “An intentional
technical foul involves intentionally contacting an opponent in a non-flagrant
manner when the ball is dead.”
5. The “nobody” here and elsewhere is meant to cover only normal, merely
human persons. God would presumably know the real score all the time. And it's
at least conceivable that other nonhuman observers would suffer none of the
epistemic uncertainty that flesh is heir to.
6. The popes of baseball (umpires) often seem attracted to this view. Think of
Hall of Fame ump Bill Klem's famous remark, “It ain't anything ’til I call it.”
Come to think of it, not even a pope would say that. What he defines to be true
can't be false, but it isn't made true by his speaking. If Mary was assumed into
heaven (as Pius XII declared in 1950), she didn't have to wait around for his
declaration before she could enter the pearly gates! But Shore doesn't score
unless and until the ref says he does.
7. Italics have been added to note the section of the rule that seems to be
especially pertinent.
8. One might think that, given this rule, Gervais's camcorder and the
indisputable evidence it offers could have been used to reverse the official's call.
Alas for Yoreville, such is not the case. See rule 2, section 5, article 1, A.R. 6.
9. The same goes, of course, for being an umpire in baseball, a point you
recall having read in J. S. Russell's “Taking Umpiring Seriously: How
Philosophy Can Help Umpires Make the Right Calls,” in Baseball and
Philosophy, ed. Eric Bronson (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 87-103.
10. Obviously, an official can be blocked on a play and defer a ruling to one of
the other referees. Still, he does this only if, and only because, he assumes that
the other ref can appropriately make a ruling based solely on the testimony of his
own senses.
11. It also seems to you, though you suspect others might disagree, that juries
and judges, like historians, can be mistaken in a way that referees just can't. If
the officials call Dwibbles for traveling, it follows that he traveled. But
remember that French movie your girlfriend made you watch last year, The
Return of Martin Guerre? There was a fact of the matter about whether the
recent returnee to the village was identical with the Martin Guerre who had left
years before, a fact that didn't depend on the decision of the court.
12. Obviously, beliefs have an impact upon action, and typically an official
who makes a bad call does so because of a mistaken belief about some game-
independent fact (such as whether or not someone's foot is on a certain line).
Still, the official makes a bad call—makes an officiating mistake—if and only if
the rules of the game oblige him to act in a certain way (given the
circumstances) and he doesn't act in that way. Whether his blown call is due to a
mistaken belief about feet and lines, or to ignorance of the rules, or to
malevolent intentions on his part is inessential to his action's being mistaken.
13. If you were a philosopher, you would probably feel obligated to point out
to readers that the discussion here is in certain respects reminiscent of
controversies concerning realism and antirealism in various areas of philosophy.
And you would probably then go on to point out that an excellent general
introduction to the disputes, along with suggestions for further reading, can be
found in Edward Craig's article “Realism and Antirealism,” in The Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), also
available online at http://www.rep.routledge.com.
Michael L. Peterson
Play by Play
The story line is compelling: a small school, shorthanded for players; a
controversial coach; turbulence surrounding the team; a romantic interest; a
father-son relationship; a dark moment of despair, then victory through
perseverance, hope, and determination. This template, of course, has been used
in sports movies forever, but in Hoosiers the nostalgia for Indiana in the 1950s,
superb acting, and a thrilling musical score work together to create a
masterpiece.
Gene Hackman stars as Norman Dale, a formerly successful college coach
haunted by his past, who takes a coaching job at fictional Hickory High School
in the fall of 1951. The opening scene pictures Dale sipping coffee as he drives
1
slowly through the Indiana countryside on his way to Hickory. On the way, he
stops briefly at a rural crossroads, where stands a lone white clapboard church,
before driving on. Upon arriving at Hickory High, Dale gets a less-than-
affirming third degree from coteacher Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey). When he
finds the principal, his longtime friend Cletus Summers (Sheb Wooley), he's
informed that this small, rural school of 161 students has only six players on the
basketball team. To make matters worse, Hickory's star player, Jimmy Chitwood
(Maris Valainis), a troubled boy, has quit the team, causing great anxiety
throughout the town.
Dale's early actions—failing Miss Fleener's interrogation, firing the self-
appointed assistant coach, and dismissing two players at the first practice—don't
win him any popularity contests. Players’ dislike for his fundamentals-oriented
practice sessions, personality conflicts with basketball-crazed townsfolk, and a
string of early-season losses further compound the coach's problems. Dale even
hires the town drunk (Dennis Hopper as Shooter) as his new assistant, another
not-so-savvy move in the public eye or in the opinion of Shooter's son, Everett,
who's on the team.
In spite of losses on the court and conflicts off the court, Dale sees the team
“coming together” as they learn his system. At the lowest point in the fortunes of
the team, the town calls a meeting at a local church for the purpose of dismissing
Coach. Dribbling a ball all the way to the church door, Jimmy makes an
unexpected entrance. He strides to the front and promises to return to the team—
but only if Coach stays! With the coach and the team getting a new lease on life,
the winning begins, Myra starts coming around, and Hickory hysteria is in full
swing.
The team—Jimmy, Buddy, Rade, Merle, Everett, Strap, Whit, and the hapless
Ollie—puts together a seven-game winning streak into the sectional finals,
where it wins against Terhune. The Hickory Huskers defeat Linton in the
2
regional finals and end up in the dramatic state finals in Indianapolis against
powerful South Bend Central. When these farm kids enter enormous Butler
Fieldhouse before the big game, Coach brilliantly eases their apprehension by
pointing out that the basket is ten feet high and the free throw line is fifteen feet
from the basket—the exact same measurements as their gym back in Hickory.
Billed as a massive underdog, the Huskers get way behind in the championship
game and look like they'll soon be sent back to the cornfields and old tractors.
Coach Dale calls a timeout to rally the team: “Maybe they were right about us.
Maybe we don't belong up here.” The team refocuses and goes on to pull off a
thrilling last-second win. 3
We can savor this movie at many levels. First, it's the perfect vehicle for a
nostalgic history of Indiana basketball: peaceful farmlands, old gyms with
gleaming wood floors and golden-toned wall tiles, cheerleaders with ponytails,
the one-legged set shot, fanaticism for basketball, and every resident a walking
encyclopedia of this great sport. Larry Bird, probably the most famous product
of Indiana basketball, said of the movie, “Those guys got it right.” Having grown
up in Linton in the 1950s, I reply, “They sure did.” (But, hey, Hollywood, it's the
Linton Miners, not the Linton Wildcats!)
Second, in this wonderful setting, the movie's main plot is interlaced with
engaging subplots: Coach Dale's respect for Jimmy's decision not to play earns
Jimmy's and Myra's respect; Coach's dogmatic insistence on fundamentals, team
play, and integrity brings out the best in his boys; friction with Myra blossoms
into romance; Shooter gets an opportunity to rebuild his self-esteem and restore
his relationship with his son.
Third, Hoosiers conveys so many great messages: the power of dreams fueled
by drive, selflessness over individualism, the necessity of character, the need for
courage in the face of great odds, the nobility of giving second chances, and the
beauty of redemption. The grit and realism and sheer humanity of Hoosiers
make it a microcosm of life itself. But if Hoosiers is such a microcosm, what
important lessons does it teach us about life? Let's probe a little deeper.
minds off ourselves for a while or to be transported to another place and time,
whether fictional or not. But while fun and entertainment are part of life, they
shouldn't divert us from thinking deeply about life. Consider those deep
questions we ponder in our more serious moments: Why am I here? What does it
mean to be a human being? How should I live? How can I be happy? These are
attempts to solve the puzzle of the meaning of life. Existentialist thinker Albert
Camus insists that “the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.” And
nothing matters more than finding the answer.
A common stereotype of the search for the meaning of life is a person
traveling to a far-off land (perhaps a mountain top in Tibet) and seeking wisdom
from an oddly dressed, bearded, old sage. But what if the answer doesn't lie in
what is extraordinary, esoteric, even mysterious? What if somehow the answer is
much more related to ordinary life? In fact, what if the downright earthiness of
Hoosiers is a tip-off (pardon the pun) to critical clues that help us make sense of
life? One function of philosophy is to notice interesting features of the world so
that its depth and wonder can be thoughtfully explored. Without having to go
anywhere or do anything extraordinary, we simply need to see the clues around
us everyday: personal decisions and attitudes, how we treat others, how we
respond to adversity. In portraying some of these very common experiences,
Hoosiers provides some amazing clues about the meaning of life.
At one level, Hoosiers is about a search. From the opening scene, Coach Dale
is seeking to get his coaching career back on track. The town of Hickory is
searching for basketball glory. Shooter is looking for self-esteem and connection
with his son, Everett. All involved feel they need something to fall into place,
something to make their lives work better, to make them happy. Aristotle (384-
322 B.c.) says that all persons seek happiness. Everything that people do,
whether consciously or unconsciously, is related to their search for happiness, for
meaning and fulfillment. But then what is it that will make us truly happy? What
5
fatherly interest in his players’ character development. He tries to teach them that
the same qualities that make for a competitive basketball team make for real
success in life: discipline, motivation, maximum effort, unselfishness, teamwork,
loyalty, and commitment to the good of the whole. We can hear the echo of
Coach Dale in the locker room before the Linton game: “If you put your effort
and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I
don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. In my book, we're
going to be winners!” Dignity and self-worth are found in playing fairly and
giving 110 percent, regardless of the outcome of the game. Sports is not all about
the scoreboard. Work hard, follow the rules, do your best, help others, and you
will be a winner in life.
Players with good character bring much more to the game of basketball than
those without it. Obviously, some extremely talented players lack character.
They may be poor students or magnets for trouble, and such liabilities injure
their teams. And the behavior of some high-profile NBA players, both on and off
the court, is clear evidence that talent is not always correlated with character. But
even unparalleled individual talent is usually not enough to win consistently in
team play. Acclaimed NBA coach Pat Riley (Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat)
says that selfishness— what he calls “the disease of me”—destroys the
teamwork necessary for consistent winning. Selfishness is the worst character
flaw in team sports and clearly a major flaw in the big game of life. “Our
significance,” Riley explains, “arrives through our vital connections to other
people.” We are all on many “teams”—family, job, sports—where we have to
7
understand the dynamics of teamwork and not think “It's all about me.”
Remember Coach Dale telling the Hickory Huskers that the “five players on the
floor function as one single unit. Team, team, team. No one more important than
the other.” Actress Ashley Judd, arguably the most famous Kentucky Wildcats
basketball fan, says that “passing the ball … is the most spiritual element of the
game. It's like a secret shared amongst kindred spirits.” Selfishness is put aside,
8
and organic connectedness takes the team to a new level. The truth of
interdependence and teamwork is so important that it is engraved on our coins: E
pluribus unum, “Out of many, one.”
In Leading with the Heart, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski suggests that a key
indicator of whether a person has his “self” in proper perspective is how much
he cares. Coach Dale models caring to his team and to the whole town: he cares
9
about the boys on the team, the principal, his own integrity, and even the town
drunk. In the locker room before the final game, after giving tactical instructions,
Dale gets very personal with his team: “I want to thank you for the last few
months. It's been very special for me.” Then he asks the players why they want
to win, what they care about. Merle answers with determination, “Let's win this'n
for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here.” “I want to win,”
states Everett, “for my dad.” Buddy says, “Let's win for Coach, who got us
here.”
Caring makes real winners in the larger arena of life, and it's a kind of winning
that doesn't require anyone else to lose. When asked at the end of a season
whether it was a success, legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was fond of
saying, “Ask me in ten years and I'll tell you if it was a success.” Time will tell if
people care about the right things, and Stagg knew that.
Aristotle taught that character rests on habits that reflect moral principles:
honesty, courage, self-control, and many more. The best coaches help student-
athletes learn character lessons in basketball so that they can face life's full-court
press. Dean Smith, former coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels, believes that
character is essential. He reports telling players to “put academics first and
basketball second” and to take their “citizenship role seriously.” Interestingly,
10
this highly successful Carolina coach says that during recruiting visits he looked
for signs of character in potential players: “If I witnessed a young man being
disrespectful to his parents, I was concerned whether or not we should recruit
him.” 11
once moving her players out of the plush, trophy-filled home locker room and
into the visitors’ bare locker room for a month to send the message that they
weren't “paying the rent,” weren't fulfilling their responsibilities. She reports that
this tactic for motivating the team to strive for excellence made a bigger
impression on her players than all the awards and hype surrounding the program.
Aristotle thought that morality is learned by doing. And basketball, like all
sports, is best learned by doing. The other side of this is that teaching morality is
a lot like coaching rather than, say, lecturing or simply verbalizing a list of rules.
We learn basketball by practice based on good instruction in fundamentals,
followed by drill, correction, and repetition. To teach a right-hand layup, the
coach might say something like, “Okay, off the last dribble, shift your weight to
your left foot, raise your right leg up, and release the ball with your right hand.
Try it. No, that's not quite right. Back up and try that again with a little more
rhythm. There, now you're getting it.” Likewise, we learn moral virtues—such as
loyalty, unselfishness, and initiative—by being “coached.” A morally mature
person, such as a parent or teacher, provides a moral example and guidance to
those who are not as far along in their moral development. In sports, the coach
has the opportunity to teach life skills and character right along with teaching the
game. In Hoosiers, basketball becomes a wonderful venue for teaching and
nurturing character. 13
The most dramatic test of character for the Hickory Huskers comes in the title
game against the mighty South Bend Central Bears. In this David-and-Goliath
scenario, the Huskers are determined not to let the superior size and athleticism
of the Bears intimidate them. Many basketball fans remember coach Jim
Valvano (former coach of the North Carolina State Wolfpack, the improbable
1983 NCAA champions) speaking at the 1993 ESPY Awards, presented by
ESPN, shortly before his death from cancer. Announcing the creation of the V
Foundation for cancer research, he proclaimed that the foundation's motto would
be, “Don't give up. Don't ever give up.” The Hickory team simply refused to
quit, refused to believe that they couldn't win. Courage, perseverance, drive,
teamwork—all come together for the Huskers in that dramatic championship
game because Coach Dale had created situations all season long in which they
could develop those qualities. Hoosiers conveys an important message about the
meaning of life: character is essential to our fulfillment as human beings.
Character first, winning second.
from the team for being disrespectful, his father brings him back to practice.
Whit is apologetic: “Sorry, coach, about walkin’ out. I'd be obliged if I got
myself another chance. It won't happen again. You're the boss.” Coach accepts
Whit back on the team and helps him get back on track.
Strictly speaking, character is attuned to moral right and wrong as well as the
corresponding consequences. If we commit a wrong, morality may instruct us to
make restitution, take appropriate consequences, or undergo punishment. But a
morality of rights and wrongs per se doesn't teach us how to repair relationships.
If a wrong has been committed by someone else, morality itself tells us to fit the
consequences to the crime. It doesn't tell us how to make everything new again.
That's exactly what we long for, something that will release us from
condemnation and restore broken relationships. But that is up to the other
person. Early in the movie, for example, Myra is moralistic and judgmental and
refuses to give Coach a break. Her gradual change of heart becomes an
interesting study of this point.
Hoosiers deals in a very earthy way with concepts of mercy, forgiveness, and
the possibility of redemption. At the psychological level, forgiveness means
overcoming negative feelings and judgment toward an offender, not by denying
that we have the right to such feelings and judgment, but by endeavoring to view
the offender with benevolence and compassion, while recognizing that he or she
has abandoned the right to them. Just think about it. Person X has done a huge
15
wrong in the estimation of person Y, and Y has the right to her negative reaction.
So, X has lost the “right” to Y's goodwill; but Y is able to show goodwill to X
anyway. Myra's case is instructive along these lines. In many scenes, she cannot
find it within herself to treat Coach Dale with respect. All along, she suspects
that he's done something bad to put him in Hickory; later in the story she finds
out the nature of his past offense. At the town meeting, however, she decides to
show mercy by not publicly reporting his suspension from the college ranks for
hitting a player. She's one more person who starts showing faith in Coach. Such
actions demonstrate the human ability to transcend the strictly moral categories
of justice, obligation, and retribution and move our thinking to a higher plane.
In psychology, most studies of attempts to act on this higher plane focus on
the benefits of forgiveness for the forgiver. Forgiveness has been shown to rid
the forgiver of negative, self-destructive feelings of hostility and resentment. But
the benefits of forgiveness to the one being forgiven are enormous as well.
Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century,
attributes the discovery of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs to
Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian scriptures portray Jesus modeling to people a
16
forgiving God and forgiveness having amazing effects on the people forgiven
(e.g., Mary Magdalene and Zacchaeus the tax collector). The incredibly touching
example in Hoosiers is Coach Dale's making Shooter an assistant coach and
creating situations to build his self-esteem. Coach laid down some conditions,
gave him some structure, and helped him start rebuilding his life, particularly his
relationship with his son. Just think of the awful spot Shooter was in, being
condemned by everyone. Even his son, Everett, protests to Coach: “He's a drunk.
He'll do something stupid. He doesn't deserve a chance.” But Shooter was given
a tremendous gift: a new lease on life and the chance to set relationships on a
new level.
Philosophers typically agree that we cannot change the past: the past is
objectively what it is. Yet from a theological perspective it is fascinating to
explore whether forgiveness is somehow the power to change the past. In a
moral universe run by strict justice, the past cannot be canceled. But when mercy
and forgiveness enter human affairs, although past actions are not changed, a
new way of looking at them is provided. We are creatures who make meaning
out of our lives according to the categories in which we think about ourselves
and others. So, for the forgiver and the forgiven alike, forgiveness provides a
way of reframing an experience that involves moral failings so that it is not as
negative, not as destructive. Mercy and grace, both given and received, restore a
sense of personal meaning and provide a positive, healing way of looking at the
past. Forgiveness is as close to changing the past as there can be. Forgiveness
allows for a future that is not just a continuation of the past; it paves the way for
breaking old patterns. The mobilization of so many human faculties in the
experience of forgiveness—compassion, intellect, will, imagination—gives birth
to hope. Look at what it did in the life of Shooter. Forgiveness prevents an
unerasable past from destroying the promise of the future.
If forgiveness in human affairs is not possible, then we are indeed the most
miserable of all creatures. Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, speaking of human
alienation, quotes the Fuegian saying, “They look at each other, each waiting for
the other to offer to do that which both desire but neither wishes to do.” One of 17
our deepest needs is forgiveness, although we often fail to give or receive it.
Forgiveness, writes John Patton, is “not doing something but discovering
something—that I am more like those who have hurt me than different from
them. I am able to forgive when I discover that I am in no position to forgive.” 18
Could this be part of Coach's motivation with Shooter? There is humility and
surrender of false superiority involved in giving to others exactly what I myself
need. When reminded of some wrong against her, Clara Barton, founder of the
American Red Cross, is noted for replying, “I distinctly remember forgetting
that!”
naturalist, Kurt Baier, says that individuals may find some “meaning in life”
despite the fact that there is no overarching meaning of life. So, within a
20
naturalistic universe, we can subjectively approve of the values of Hoosiers and
even embrace such values to give our lives some sense of fulfillment. But we
can't claim that these values are the way things “ought” to be because there is no
ought in a purely naturalistic universe, no objective moral ideals or norms. For
naturalism, there is simply the brute fact of the natural physical universe. So, the
values of Hoosiers really have no ultimate support in naturalism.
Postmodernism, in its extreme “deconstructivist” form, denies both that there
is an objective reality and that human beings can know it. What we have are
“linguistic descriptions” or “narratives” masquerading as reality. These
narratives and the language they employ are used to keep one group in power at
the expense of another (e.g., aristocratic, white, European males suppressing
lower socioeconomic classes, women, non-Europeans). The dominant group or
culture pretends that its narrative is superior, that the group possesses a
“metanarrative” that judges all other narratives to be inferior or mistaken.
Obviously, dramatic consequences follow for meaning and purpose, social and
political affairs, and ethics and values. For postmodernists such as Jacques
Derrida, no one narrative is superior to any other. When properly deconstructed,
21
most fundamental level of reality, there is no basis for our standards of good and
evil, personhood as we know it, or even a concept of the divine as somehow
personal. So, once again, the values and virtues so convincingly portrayed in
Hoosiers have no place in this worldview.
Although we could survey more worldviews, it is starting to become clear
what it's going to take for any worldview to be adequate. An adequate worldview
must account for the incredible depth of personhood, including the values we
cherish and virtues we admire. Inadequate worldviews miss this point in a
number of different ways, either by reducing the personal to the impersonal
(naturalism), by reducing the personal to the nonpersonal (neither personal nor
impersonal; Hinduism), or by denying that we can know or say anything reliably
about the nature of the personal (postmodernism). Hoosiers depicts something of
the richness of what it means to be a person—the capacity for courage,
conviction, achievement, compassion, and mercy—and compels us to revisit our
earlier question: In what kind of universe do such attitudes and actions make
best sense? In what kind of universe do they line up with the way things are?
They obviously don't fit in a naturalist, postmodern, or Hindu universe, and they
don't fit in an array of other universes envisioned by most other worldviews.
Having grown up in Indiana in the 1950s, I'm an instinctive realist. When I see
people do good things and resonate with those actions, and when I admire
certain values, I think that these things are something real, that they reflect
something of the way things are. I think this about the wonderful human
qualities in Hoosiers. Back in rural Indiana, we also had a saying: “Water cannot
rise higher than its source.” It is preposterous, then, to think that the personal
reality we know—indeed, the personal reality that we are —is supported by a
universe that is less than personal itself at its very core. Naturalism,
postmodernism, and Hinduism just begin the long list of worldviews that, in
effect, assert that water rises higher than its source. But the Hoosier in me says
no way.
The worldview of theism holds that ultimate reality is intensely personal and
that this personal reality is God. God brought everything else into being: finite
personality as well as the physical world. The prospects for finding valid clues in
our search for the meaning of life are much brighter when the most important
aspects of personhood as we know it can be anchored all the way down to the
deep structure of reality. Finite personal reality argues for an infinite personal
source.
Among theistic religions that recognize ultimate reality as personal,
Christianity specifically maintains that the being of God is interpersonal, social,
and relational. And this infinite personal life is perfectly morally good. Such
goodness, then, is the kind of goodness that aims at the best for created persons
(honesty, courage, fidelity, and so forth) and enhances relationships. Although
we never achieve perfect moral character, the theme of character in Hoosiers
leads us to recognize a theistic universe as its only adequate support. To develop
character in this universe is actually to reflect in our own lives something of the
way things really are, and thus to find something of the meaning of life. It is not
that nontheists or non-Christians can't have moral character or approve of some
moral values, but the reality of character and values in personal life receive no
ontological support from other worldviews, whereas they do from theism.
Christianity also has much to say about mercy and forgiveness under the
general concept of grace. Grace tells us that the God who is morally perfect also
has unlimited love for persons—that in spite of our moral failings God offers
forgiveness and redemption. Some of the religious accoutrements of Hoosiers —
meetings in church to discuss basketball, preachers traveling with the team, and
frequent prayers for basketball games—serve as “window dressing” suggesting a
religious zeal for Indiana basketball. But the Christian symbols also suggest the
kind of universe in which the drama takes place: a universe in which moral
character is important and in which forgiveness is possible. No wonder we
identify with the character dramatized in Hoosiers and long for the forgiveness it
depicts to be operative in the way human beings relate to one another. The
beauty and nobility of forgiveness, as we now see, are rooted all the way down
to the very heart of reality.
The nature of this deeply personal universe—deriving from an infinite
personal source—is such that character is necessary for our own personal
fulfillment and that forgiveness is necessary for repairing relationships and
giving new hope. This is surely the way things ought to be. Christian theism says
that this is indeed the way things are. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) explains that
God's nature itself is love. Creatures may possess properties that are distinct
from their natures (as a person might or might not have love), but in God love is
identical with God's nature. This means that the very heart of reality is personal-
relational love. And this love “wills the good of others, and loves everything that
exists.”23
Morality and mercy in human affairs, then, reflect perfect love at the core of
reality and teach us that love is the key to life. The closing scene of Hoosiers
features a little boy shooting hoops in the old Hickory gym, dark, empty, quiet,
filled with wonderful memories. As the camera closes in on the 1952
championship team picture mounted on the wall, we hear Coach's voice saying,
“I love you guys.”
Notes
1. Scriptwriter Angelo Pizzo reveals in the trailer that the character of Coach
Dale was initially inspired by Woody Hayes, who had to leave Ohio State after
punching a Clemson player during a bowl game on national television. Pizzo,
who attended Indiana University and was a huge IU basketball fan, also based
the coach on Bobby Knight, with his emphasis on “fundamentals” and “four
passes before a shot” philosophy. Both of these real coaches, like Coach Dale,
have aggressive personalities and short fuses. In the film, Dale, a former coach
of the national champion Ithaca Warriors, was banned from college coaching for
hitting a player. By contrast, the actual Milan coach, Marvin Wood, was a young,
happily married, soft-spoken man who was well liked by both the townsfolk and
the players.
2. When Coach Dale visits Shooter to keep him on track, he says, “We got ten
games to play, right? We're going to be a tough team to beat. Now you come
along for the ride.” Ray Craft, associate commissioner of the Indiana High
School Athletic Association, who was high scorer in the actual Milan-Muncie
game and appeared in the film as the person who meets the team bus at Butler
Fieldhouse, interprets Dale to mean that there are ten games to win all the way
through the championship (Ray Craft, interview by author, May 12, 2006). But
the alert viewer knows that after that conversation with Shooter, the movie
shows only games against Decatur and Dugger before the sectional finals. On
Craft's interpretation, there would be five games not shown. Also, sectionals and
regionals in Indiana—all single-elimination—usually involve two games at each
level before semistate and state playoffs. The movie simply does not get bogged
down in this level of detail.
3. Jimmy Chitwood of Hoosiers, who makes the last-second shot to win the
game at 42—1-0, is based on the character of Bobby Plump, the shy Milan
sharpshooter who sank the final shot against Muncie in 1954 to win 32-30.
Milan was behind in the fourth quarter, pulled even, and then Coach Wood told
Plump to hold the ball and take the last shot.
4. See Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch
Baseball, Football, and Basketball, and What They See When They Do (New
York: Public Affairs, 2004). Also see the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport for
occasional discussions of this topic.
5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Richard McKeon (New York:
Random House, 1947), bk. 1.
6. Tubby Smith, interview by author, December 18, 2005.
7. Pat Riley, The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players (New York:
Putnam's Sons, 1993), 16.
8. Ashley Judd, “More UK Games, More Chances to Savor the Pass,”
Lexington Herald-Leader, March 25, 2005, C5.
9. Mike Krzyzewski, Leading with the Heart: Coach K'S Successful Strategies
for Basketball, Business, and Life (New York: Warner Business Books, 2000),
78-79.
10. Dean Smith and Gerald Bell, The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from
a Life in Coaching (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 101.
11. Smith, The Carolina Way, 100.
12. Pat Summitt, Reach for the Summit: The Definite Dozen System for
Succeeding in Whatever You Do (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 39.
13. See the discussion of character building in basketball by Gregory Bassham
and Mark Hamilton in this volume.
14. Steve Smith, interview by author, May 10, 2006.
15. See Luke Witte's moving and insightful discussion of this theme in this
volume.
16. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958), 242-43.
17. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1970), 70.
18. John Patton, Is Human Forgiveness Possible? A Pastoral Care
Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 25.
19. Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man's Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), 107.
20. Kurt Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” in Philosophy: Contemporary
Perspectives on Perennial Issues, ed. E. D. Klemke, A. David Kline, and Robert
Hollinger (New York: St. Martin's, 1994), 378-88.
21. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
22. Upanishads, Kaivalya Meditation, bk. 11.
23. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pt. 1,Q 20, A 1 and 2, in Aquinas: A
Summary of Philosophy, ed. Richard Regan (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 2003).
Also see the biblical statement “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
THE LINEUP
LUKE WITTE played college basketball at Ohio State University and spent four
seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers. After graduating from Asbury Theological
Seminary in 1993, he served for many years as family ministry team leader at
Forest Hill Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use
the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms
that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem
Achilles
actions
acts
acupuncture
Adams, Robert M.
Adler, Mortimer
adversity
Agassi, Andre
Agathocles
Agee, Arthur
Air Bud (film)
Alcindor, Lew. See Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem
Aldi, Ron
Alford, Steve
Andy Griffith Show, The
Anspaugh, David
Aquinas, Thomas
Arendt, Hannah
Aristotle
Armstrong, B. J.
Artest, Ron
Atman
Augustine
Aurelius, Marcus
Azubuike, Kelenna
Bacon, Francis
bad calls, in basketball. See referees
Baglioni, Giovanpaolo
Bailey, Damon
Barry, Rick
Bartky, Sandra Lee
Barton, Clara
baseball, versus basketball
Baseball and Philosophy (Bronson)
beauty, and basketball
Behagen, Ron
Bell, Gerald D.
Berenson, Senda
Bettis, Jerome
Bird, Larry
black manhood, and basketball
Blackie, Debbie
Blaylock, Mookie
Blue Chips (film)
bonding, male
Boston Celtics
Boswell, James
Bozich, Rick
Bradley, Bill
Brahman
Brewer, Jim
Brown, Fred
Brown, Larry
Bryant, Kobe
Bryant, Paul "Bear"
Buber, Martin
Bucher, Ric
Buddha
Buddhism
bullshit, and basketball
Butler Fieldhouse
Cabrini-Green
Cameron Indoor Stadium
Camus, Albert
Canton McKinley High School
capitalism
Cardinal, Brian
Carrier, Josh
Carril, Pete
Carter, Vince
Cartwright, Bill
Castaneda, Carlos
categorical imperative
Central Michigan University
Chamberlain, Wilt
Chaney, John
Chariots of Fire (film)
Charles, Lorenzo
Charlotte Hornets
cheating, in basketball
Chesterfield, Lord
Chicago Bulls
Christianity
City Slam
Cleveland Cavaliers
Clinton, Bill
Collins, Doug
communitarianism
confidence
Cooper, Cynthia
Conseco Fieldhouse
Cornell University
Cox, Earl
Crawfordsville, Indiana
Crispus Attucks High School
Dallas Mavericks
Daode jing (Tao Te Ching)
Daoism (Taoism), and basketball
Daugherty, Brad
Davis, Hubert
Davis, Latina
Dawkins, Daryl
deconstruction
Deford, Frank
Degernette, Dave
Dennett, Daniel
deontological ethics
Derrida, Jacques
Descartes, René
Detroit Pistons
Dewey, John
DiMaggio, Joe
dirty hands argument
Divac, Vlade
dojos
Donovan, Billy
Drexler, Clyde
Driesell, Lefty
Duke Blue Devils
Dumars, Joe
Duncan, Tim
dunks
Dydek, Margo
fairness, in basketball
feminist theory
fengshui
Ferrell, Will
Ferris, Daniel
FIBA
Fife, Barney
Florida Gators
football, versus basketball
forgiveness
forms, Plato's theory of
Foucault, Michel
fouls
Frankfurt, Harry
Frazier, Walt
Freeman, Criswell
French Lick, Indiana
functionalist argument, for purist basketball
Garrett, Dean
Gasol, Pau
Gates, William
Georgetown University
Gervin, George
Gilbert, Sam
Gillom, Jennifer
Gilovich, Thomas
Ginobili, Manu
Globetrotters.See Harlem Globetrotters
glory
goals
Golden Mean
Golden State Warriors
Goldsmith, Jerry
Goodrich, Gail
Gould, Stephen Jay
grace
Grant, Horace
greatness, criteria of
Great Raid, The (film)
Greer, Hal
habits
Hack-a-Shaq strategy
hacking, ethics of
Hackman, Gene
Half Man Half Amazing
Hamilton, Richard
Hampton, Jean
hard work
Harlem Globetrotters
Harris, Franco
Harrison, Lisa
Havlicek, John
Heraclitus
Hegel, G. W. F.
Hershey, Barbara
“Hickey, Mr,”
Hinduism
Hirsch, Jack
Hobbes, Thomas
hockey, versus basketball
Holdsclaw, Chamique
Homer
Hoop Dreams (film)
Hoosier Dome
Hoosiers (film)
Hopper, Dennis
Horry, Robert
hot hand, in basketball
Houston Cougars
Huangdi
Hume, David
Hurley, Bobby
Hurricane Katrina
“Immaculate Reception”
Indiana high school basketball
Indiana Hoosiers
Indiana Pacers
intentional fouls
Jackson, Matt
Jackson, Phil
James, LeBron
James, William
Jay-Z
jazz, basketball compared to
Jeffress, Robert
Jenkins, Sally
Jesus
Johnson, Avery
Johnson, Magic
Johnson, Marques
Johnson, Samuel
Jones, K. C.
Jones, Sam
Jordan, Michael
Judd, Ashley
Kant, Immanuel
Kentucky Wildcats
Khan, Pir Vilyat
Kicking and Screaming (film)
Kidd, Jason
Kid Rock
Kilgo, John
Kindred, Dave
Knight, Bob
Korbut, Olga
Kratz, Laura
Krause, Jerry
Kretchmar, Scott
Krishnamurti, Jiddu
Krzyzewski, Mike
Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth
Laimbeer, Bill
Laozi (Lao tzu)
Large Forms (sculpture)
Last Season, The (Jackson)
Lebanon, Indiana
Lee, Spike
Lemon, Meadowlark
Leonard, George
Leslie, Lisa
liberalism
Lieberman, Nancy
Life magazine
Like Mike (film)
Linton, Indiana
Lobo, Rebecca
Locke, John
Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Sparks
love
Machiavelli, Niccoló
MacIntyre, Alasdair
Madison Square Garden
Magdalene, Mary
Mahorn, Rick
Malone, Karl
manhood, black social construction of
Mao Zedong
Maravich, Pete
March Madness
Marciniak, Michelle
Marlboro, Ohio
Marques, Iziane Castro
Marquette University
martial arts
Martinsville, Indiana
Marx, Karl
Maryland University
Maslow, Abraham
McKay, Nicholas C.
McLaughlin, Thomas
Mean Girls (film)
Mears, Ray
Merchant, Dave
metanarrative
Miami Heat
Michigan State University
Michigan University
Milan, Indiana
Miller, Reggie
Milton-Jones, DeLisha
Minas, Anne
Ming, Yao
Minneapolis Lakers
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Monty Python
Moore, Henry
Moore, Johnny
moral hatred
moral rules
Morgan, William
Morris, Tom
Mount, Rick
Muncie Central High School
Murphy, Calvin
Murphy, Jeffrie G.
Musselman, Bill
Naismith, James
Nash, Steve
Nater, Swen
Natural, The (film)
naturalism
nature/nurture debate
Nelly
Nelson, Don
New Castle Fieldhouse
New Jersey Nets
New Orleans Jazz
New Yorker
New York Knicks
Nicholson, Jack
Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle)
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Nike All-American Basketball Camp
Nix, Bob
North Carolina State Wolfpack
North Carolina Tar Heels
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Novak, Michael
Nowitzki, Dirk
Parade magazine
Parker, Tony
Patton, John
Pearl Jam
People magazine
Perkins, Sam
persistence
Pharmacist
Phelps, Digger
Philadelphia 76ers
Phillips, Donald T.
"Philosopher's Drinking Song" (Monty Python)
Phi Slamma Jamma
Phoenix Mercury
Pingatore, Gene
Pippen, Scottie
Pitino, Rick
Pizzo, Angelo
Pittsburgh Steelers
Plato
Playboy magazine
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plump, Bobby
Politics (Aristotle)
Pope Julius II
postmodernism
prana
predictable streak argument
Pressman, Stacy
Prince, The (Machiavelli)
purist versus modernist basketball
Pyramid of Success, Wooden's
Qi (chi)
Sacramento Kings
San Antonio Spurs
Sandel, Michael
Sanders, Summer
Schelling, Friedrich
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Searle, John
Seattle Storm
Seger, Bob
Seneca
Shakespeare, William
Shaq Diesel (album)
Short, Purvis
Simmons, Rachel
Simon, Robert
single-class basketball, in Indiana
Smith, Katie
Smith, Kenny
Smith, Steve
Smith, Tubby
Smith College
Snow, Michele
Snyder, Jim
Socrates
Sophocles
soul, Plato's theory of
South Coast Today
Spelman, Elizabeth
Spinmaster
Sporting News
SportsCenter
Sports Illustrated
Sports List, The
Stagg, Amos Alonzo
state of nature
Stern, David
St. Joseph's High School
Stockton, John
Stoics
St. Paul
Streetball
Strouse, Jean
Success Doesn't Breed Success Argument
Summa Theologica (Aquinas)
Summitt, Pat
Suzuki, Shunryu
Syc Wit It
Symposium (Plato)
UCLA Bruins
University of Illinois
USSR vs. U.S. (1972 Olympics)
Utah Jazz
utilitarianism
Valainis, Maris
Vallone, Robert
Valvano, Jim
variety argument
Vertinsky, Patricia
Vitale, Dick
Wade, Dwyane
Wagar, Mark
Walker, Antoine
Walker, Kenny
Walton, Bill
Waltzer, Michael
Washington, Indiana
Washington Wizards
Waters, Bucky
Watts, Alan
Webber, Chris
West, Jerry
Wetzel, Dan
Whitehead, Alfred North
Whittenburg, Dereck
White Men Can't Jump (film)
Wicks, Sidney
Wilkes, Jamaal
Wilkins, Dominique
Williams, Bernard
Williams, Bob
Williams, Jason
Williams, Scott
Winfield, Dave
Winter, Tex
Witherspoon, Teresa
Witte, Luke
Witte, Verlyn
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
WNBA
women's basketball
Wooden, John
Wooley, Sheb
worldviews
Worthy, James
wu wei
Zacchaeus
Zack, Naomi
zazen
Zen Buddhism
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki)
Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)
ziran
Zollner Pistons