Effort versus spite Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
The first article was truly masterful. I loved it. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
I read effort--very interesting.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
I don't get the connection of the second link, but the first one was amazing. Thanks for posting it.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"I don't get the connection of the second link"
quote:"Hoff found that high-caste players were more likely to punish their fellow gamers spitefully than low-caste players, leading her to suggest that context is everything. It is not that people in Uttar Pradesh are nastier than elsewhere, but rather that the structure of their society makes them acutely conscious of status. The sensitivity of higher castes to their position makes them tend not to support any changes that threaten to level the social hierarchy, such as development projects. But higher castes can also put others down, safe in the knowledge that "untouchables" are unlikely to strike back.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "I don't get the connection of the second link"
quote:"Hoff found that high-caste players were more likely to punish their fellow gamers spitefully than low-caste players, leading her to suggest that context is everything. It is not that people in Uttar Pradesh are nastier than elsewhere, but rather that the structure of their society makes them acutely conscious of status. The sensitivity of higher castes to their position makes them tend not to support any changes that threaten to level the social hierarchy, such as development projects. But higher castes can also put others down, safe in the knowledge that "untouchables" are unlikely to strike back.
Oh, well. I guess I'm dumb. I still don't see it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Armoth: The first article was truly masterful.
"Masterful" is now a synonym for "Malcom Gladwellian"
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Armoth: The first article was truly masterful.
"Masterful" is now a synonym for "Malcom Gladwellian"
Noted.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
True. I loved Blink and The Tipping Point (Blink more, of course), and I can't wait for his next one.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The first article "effort" helped me understand why I prefer to watch soccer over basketball. Over the years I've had a dozen or more fans of American football and basketball explain to me why they think soccer sucks. When I add this article to what they've said, I have a pretty good idea why the full court press has never caught on.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: True. I loved Blink and The Tipping Point (Blink more, of course), and I can't wait for his next one.
If you mean Outliers, you don't have to wait. It's already out.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The first article "effort" helped me understand why I prefer to watch soccer over basketball. Over the years I've had a dozen or more fans of American football and basketball explain to me why they think soccer sucks. When I add this article to what they've said, I have a pretty good idea why the full court press has never caught on.
I can't see how fans' perception of the sport has any influence on coaches' use of the full court press. I like watching basketball and can't stand watching soccer, and my enjoyment of basketball watching does not go down when someone is running a full court press. To the contrary. It increases the pace and excitement of the game. It's the lack of exciting action (as I perceive it) that makes soccer boring for me.
I suspect people have said "not enough scoring" when they explain why they find soccer boring. I suspect, however, if you asked them whether they'd enjoy watching a basketball game with a lot of steals more than one with a relaxed defense, they might reconsider whether scoring is the most important element of action.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
I was very lucky in college. My school's team was one of the top teams in the nation and they did it all with an unrelenting full court press. Ooo It was SO exciting!
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Good article. Very Ender's Game-like. It actually kinda made me angry at the world towards the end.
The second article seems to be at least somewhat related to the end of the first article. What the "Goliath" players did to the "David" players wasn't exactly spiteful (they benefited from not having to lose against these people who refused to fight them on their own terms) but the general act of punishing someone who at least appears to be breaking the rules is a fair comparison.
I also found the first article pretty relevant to how we treat terrorism (although I'm not the first one to have drawn a similar conclusion). Terrorists follow a strategy we find socially horrifying (killing innocent people to incite fear).
In this case, I think it's fair to say, in an objective sense, that it *is* socially horrifying. But it's also largely inevitable. You create a massively powerful military that spends 10 times what the second largest military spends... what can you expect other than the people who want to hurt you resorting to attacks that completely bypass the rules of the game?
Posted by neo-dragon (Member # 7168) on :
I hope I'm not the only person who thought of Ender while reading the first article.
Edit: Oops, clearly Raymond did too.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Interesting articles! The first one showed me why Antoine Walker was so bad on the Miami Heat after being so highly thought of before being drafted. His high points came because of the full court press his team was using. I do wonder why it's not used more often.
It was so sad that the computer scientist who kept winning that tournament was barred from the game. It's like they didn't want success, they wanted what they thought of as elegance, somehow. Such a short-sighted view, because then someone from outside who values success will come and clean their clocks someday. Instead, they should have included and learned from the program's strategies. It's as though the French before Agincourt were shown the marvels of the new longbow but said "no, no, that's just too ugly and cheap to let yeomen be the equal of a trained knight" and so got slaughtered. Or Hitler driving all the top scientists out of his country saying he wanted nothing to do with Jewish physics.
The article on spite has deep insight into the grade-school mentality, and it shows why most communities seem to value conformity far more highly than odd of offbeat individual contributions, be they ever so excellent. I've never gotten that, personally, I guess because of my ingrained xenophilia.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Since we are linking to the New Yorker, this article on the importance of checklists was a phenomenal read. I know checklists sound about as exciting as dried mud, but honest the article was so interesting. The bits about their roles in the ICU and on airplanes in World War 2 was absolutely fascinating.
Read it!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I can't see how fans' perception of the sport has any influence on coaches' use of the full court press. I like watching basketball and can't stand watching soccer, and my enjoyment of basketball watching does not go down when someone is running a full court press. To the contrary. It increases the pace and excitement of the game. It's the lack of exciting action (as I perceive it) that makes soccer boring for me.
I suspect people have said "not enough scoring" when they explain why they find soccer boring. I suspect, however, if you asked them whether they'd enjoy watching a basketball game with a lot of steals more than one with a relaxed defense, they might reconsider whether scoring is the most important element of action.
You are making a lot of incorrect assumptions. I don't have time to fully explain how I've come to the conclusion so let me just jump to the conclusion.
Basketball is played the way its played because most players and coaches like it that way. Think of it as a sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy. The way basketball is currently played most of the time favors a particular skill set, so the people who end up as coaches and on good teams are people who have mastered that set of skills. The full court press favors an entirely different skill set. The full court press can't really be just one of many options you use on the court, because to ues it effectively you have to train for it and you have to master a different set of skills. Once a team recognizes this, most of them would prefer to keep working to master the original skill set (the one that they enjoy and to which they are naturally suited) than to switch and try to master the completely different set of skills. As long as the full court press remains a rare exception, teams can be successful doing exactly that and since the coaches and players on successful teams get promoted, the game will continue to be dominated by people who like the game played a certain style.
That is very unlikely to change until enough teams start using the full court press that teams simply can't be successful any other way. That's unlikely to happen without a fight. If too many teams start using the full court press regularly, you can be that there will be a major push to change the rules to try to negate the full court press before people give in. If basketball went to full time full court press for both teams, it would really radically change the game.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:It was so sad that the computer scientist who kept winning that tournament was barred from the game. It's like they didn't want success, they wanted what they thought of as elegance, somehow.
I don't think it is really that they valued elegance over success, its that what they wanted was to play a certain kind of game that rewarded a certain kind of skills. They thought they had set up rules that would result in the kind of game they wanted to play. When they found out this wasn't true, they didn't find the game they had made to be as fun as the one they invisioned. So they tweaked the rules to try to create the game they really wanted. When they realized how hard it would be to refine the rules enough to eliminate all the types of play they didn't think were fun, they opted instead to limit the game to people who they thought were fun to play with.
The question really is, why didn't they see how much fun it could be to simply stay with the original rules and try to invent totally novel strategies that worked within those rules.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
The first article is extremely slanted, to the point of being dishonest, in a way that might not be apparent to readers who don't know a lot about basketball - especially youth basketball. There are big negatives to full court pressing that are mostly skipped over by the article.
If we are talking a team of 12 year old girls, the biggest negative is that full court pressing tends to hurt their long term development as basketball players. In order to become a good defender in basketball, kids need to learn an array of basic fundamental defensive skills. Where do I stand when I'm guarding a player with the ball? How do I help when my player does not have the ball? How do I force a player one direction? Half-court man-to-man defense is typically considered best to teach these skills. Full-court pressing by youth teams, on the other hand, tends to reenforce bad habits. It encourages defenders to play a very sloppy style of defense, going for every steal, chasing the ball around the court, and double teaming in an often disorganized fashion. This is particularly true for the style of pressing described in the article, which mentions fronting all players who are trying to receive inbounds passes and playing in "maniacal" way. Advanced basketball teams often destroy teams that press in such a style, simply because it is easy to take advantage of those mistakes to get layups if a team knows what its doing. But against a team of 12 year olds, it's a very effective way to take advantage of the fact that the other team is still just learning how to play the game. They lack the knowledge or physical ability to make great passes, so it's usually going to result in a lot of steals. In other words, it's a great way to win youth basketball games, but often a poor way to help players become better.
Players who play that fashion are going to have trouble if they want to move on to more advanced levels of basketball. On high school or college teams, they'll get beat - because everyone will be giving 100% effort, everyone will be in shape, and the other team will know how to take advantage of sloppy defensive skills. And even if they don't move on to an advanced level, they're going to have trouble playing pick-up basketball, since pick-up basketball doesn't have organized team defenses and usually requires man-to-man defense.
So, coaches that press non-stop are often considered to have put the goal of winning above the goal of helping their players become better. They may be sacrificing their players' development for wins. A lot of youth leagues and youth coaches don't consider that appropriate for that age group; it shouldn't be solely about who wins. That is the explanation for why referees might be discouraging a team that presses in that fashion. That is also the explanation for why an opposing coach would be angry about that style of defense. It's not because he's not smart enough to understand the benefits of pressing, or because his team is too lazy to do it. It's because he's trying to teach his team defensive skills, and thinks the other coach is skipping over that for a cheap win. Many youth leagues ban pressing for that reason, particularly at younger ages.
That's not to say pressing is all bad. I've used presses when coaching and they do tend to emphasize the importance of non-stop pure effort. If run in an organized way, it also teaches a different sort of skill set, both for the defensive team trying to press and the offense trying to beat it. But still, it's very misleading for this article to suggest laziness or poor strategy are the reasons why every youth team doesn't press non-stop.
...
As for advanced basketball and the pros, the article is at least partially mistaken when it says presses are not popular. Most advanced teams know presses and use them occassionally. Most don't do it non-stop because they find that ineffective; other teams tend to get used to a press after a while and learn how to break it. But the great thing about basketball is that there are so many different offensive and defensive strategies; there's no universal defensive scheme that's perfect.
I will add, that article is also mistaken when it says that most teams dribble the ball down court and run a set play that it has practiced hundreds of times. The truth is that most teams will push the ball downcourt as quickly as possible for a fast break, if the defense allows them. If the defense is effective at preventing that, then usually there is an offensive scheme they run through with various options, rather than a set play.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Tresopax,
quote:The first article is extremely slanted, to the point of being dishonest, in a way that might not be apparent to readers who don't know a lot about basketball - especially youth basketball. There are big negatives to full court pressing that are mostly skipped over by the article.
Did you read the article? It doesn't seem like it. The premise of the article wasn't 'full-court press is always good and always wins'. Had you read attentively, you'd have noticed the premise was 'full-court press is almost always good if the other team isn't using it, and playing by traditional methods'.
And, you know, that premise is very, very accurate.
quote: In order to become a good defender in basketball, kids need to learn an array of basic fundamental defensive skills.
You're saying that in order to become a good traditional defender in basketball, kids must learn an array of good traditional defensive skills. That's obvious.
quote: Players who play that fashion are going to have trouble if they want to move on to more advanced levels of basketball. On high school or college teams, they'll get beat - because everyone will be giving 100% effort, everyone will be in shape, and the other team will know how to take advantage of sloppy defensive skills. And even if they don't move on to an advanced level, they're going to have trouble playing pick-up basketball, since pick-up basketball doesn't have organized team plays and usually requires man-to-man defense.
Except that the article examines things even at the college level, where the premise still works. Which makes your complaint entirely wrong.
quote:That is the explanation for why referees might be discouraging a team that presses in that fashion.
Well, no. As described, what that referee did was cheating, plain and simple. He was a crooked ref. You don't oppose unconventional tactics by breaking the rules yourself and then say you broke the rules in order to protest someone else breaking the rules. That's nonsense.
Also, my experience of angry coaches is universally - and I'm not projecting this to all coaches, just of my memory - is that universally IMO angry, shouting coaches (much less invective-heaping, fight-starting, chair-throwing coaches) is that they were concerned with winning quite a bit more than the development of their players.
Because if the priorities were reversed, you know, maybe they wouldn't be screaming and heaping scorn on their own guys.
quote: As for advanced basketball and the pros, the article is at least partially mistaken when it says presses are not popular. Most advanced teams know presses and use them occassionally.
That's not what the article said at all. It said that the full-court full-time press wasn't popular, and it was precisely right to say so.
quote: If the defense is effective at preventing that, then usually there is an offensive scheme they run through with various options, rather than a set play.
Now you're just quibbling, because those offensive schemes and their options have generally been practiced a great deal as well.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I also found the first article pretty relevant to how we treat terrorism (although I'm not the first one to have drawn a similar conclusion). Terrorists follow a strategy we find socially horrifying (killing innocent people to incite fear).
In this case, I think it's fair to say, in an objective sense, that it *is* socially horrifying. But it's also largely inevitable. You create a massively powerful military that spends 10 times what the second largest military spends... what can you expect other than the people who want to hurt you resorting to attacks that completely bypass the rules of the game?
That conclusion also implies that the way we've been handling terror is wrong. The best way to beat a pressing team is to press them back. Then the odds once again shift back to the better team. In other words, we can terrorize them better than they can terrorize us.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Did you read the article? It doesn't seem like it. The premise of the article wasn't 'full-court press is always good and always wins'. Had you read attentively, you'd have noticed the premise was 'full-court press is almost always good if the other team isn't using it, and playing by traditional methods'.
And, you know, that premise is very, very accurate.
I did read the article, and that premise is not accurate. Full-court presses are commonly beat by good teams using traditional methods. For man presses with traps, a series of good picks and passes are usually enough to break a press. For zone presses, most teams (regardless of whether they themselves press a lot or not) have set press breaks that will result in open layups for the offensive team if done correctly. A team that executes these correctly will be able to force a pressing team to stop pressing, or if that team doesn't know how to stop pressing then it would result in a fairly easy victory. The problem arises because executing it correctly requires smart players who can pass and move well, and requires them to play well as a team. Among 12 year old girls, that is unusual until you get to higher levels of select basketball.
It is true that pressing non-stop will be effective most of the time in youth leagues. It is especially true when your team is far more athletic, taller, or faster than the other teams. It is also especially true when the opposing teams do not play smart. This is true regardless of what the other team is trying to do on defense, pressing or not. That's why most youth select basketball teams press a lot.
BUT it's also true that it doesn't teach defensive skills that well, and it's often fairly easily beaten by a team that knows what its doing.
quote:You're saying that in order to become a good traditional defender in basketball, kids must learn an array of good traditional defensive skills. That's obvious.
But less obvious is the fact that to become a good full-court press defender in basketball, kids must learn an array of good traditional defensive skills. Pressing in the way that youth teams often do it is usually fairly simple if you are athletic and hard-working. Pressing in the way advanced high school or college teams do it, however, requires more than just running, going for steals, and trapping. It requires fundamental defensive skills - the sort not taught just by pressing.
quote:That's not what the article said at all. It said that the full-court full-time press wasn't popular, and it was precisely right to say so.
My complaint is that I thought it seemed to imply that full-time full-court pressing was innovative. That's not really true. It's common to see teams using non-stop presses at the youth level. Some teams do it at higher levels too. But almost all coaches, even the most inexperienced, know about it and know they'll at least face it at some point. Most teams prepare for it. The reason they don't use it is typically either because they don't think it is effective, or because they don't think their team is athletic enough to pull it off.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Tres: I repeat, my university's team was one of the best in the nation back when I was in school. I went to every single game and it was full court press all the time.
It didn't always result in early blow outs. In fact, often times much lesser teams would get an early lead. What it DID do was wear the other team out. At the college level, the vast majority of teams might have a good player.. or a few good players.. and the rest were crap. Once they sat on the bench, the scrubs were easy pickin's. And if they never sat down, they'd be too exhausted to play at their best. My Hawgs would rotate through their long, deep bench, often playing everyone on the team for significant minutes.
The only problem came when playing another team with a long, deep bench. Which is why, despite multiple final four appearances, Arkansas only won the national championship once.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Yes, and that's what makes basketball great - different strategies can work for different teams. There is always going to be variety, since no single team strategy is universally best for every set of players.
What I take issue with is this article's suggestion that this coach is outsmarting the other teams, or that his players are outworking them. He is generally using a winning strategy, if winning is what you most care about. But the cost is that the players won't learn as much about defense. They won't learn the skills they'd need to run the sort of press that your university would ask them to, because I'm sure your schools' press involved far more skill and complexity than simply denying the inbounds pass and trapping the ball in a maniacal fashion, even if that's what it looked like to the fans.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Tres: Of course there was a lot more to it than that!
Just as I'm sure there was more to the team in the article.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Basketball is played the way its played because most players and coaches like it that way. Think of it as a sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy. The way basketball is currently played most of the time favors a particular skill set, so the people who end up as coaches and on good teams are people who have mastered that set of skills. The full court press favors an entirely different skill set. The full court press can't really be just one of many options you use on the court, because to use it effectively you have to train for it and you have to master a different set of skills. Once a team recognizes this, most of them would prefer to keep working to master the original skill set (the one that they enjoy and to which they are naturally suited) than to switch and try to master the completely different set of skills. As long as the full court press remains a rare exception, teams can be successful doing exactly that and since the coaches and players on successful teams get promoted, the game will continue to be dominated by people who like the game played a certain style.
That is very unlikely to change until enough teams start using the full court press that teams simply can't be successful any other way. That's unlikely to happen without a fight. If too many teams start using the full court press regularly, you can be that there will be a major push to change the rules to try to negate the full court press before people give in. If basketball went to full time full court press for both teams, it would really radically change the game.
This is clear and insightful.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Here's a link to a discussion of this article giving another pretty good description of why pressing at youth leagues relies on mistakes that higher level players would not make:
quote:Now, I like a press as much as the next guy. However, with good players, presses do not work. Presses give the offense more space to attack. Presses work in youth basketball because the defense is ahead of the offense. It takes almost no skill to play defense: when I coached u-9 boys, our best defender was a soccer player who missed half of our practices to play competitive soccer, but he was fast; when I coached junior college basketball, our best defender was a sprinter who could not dribble the ball even though she was 5′5, but she could defend anyone with her speed and a little bit of game understanding.
Secondly, presses rely on offensive players making poor or rushed decisions. As the offensive player feels pressure, his vision narrows and he makes bad decisions. In the NBA, players have time and space and do not feel the pressure.They have confidence in their ball skills. They have confidence to yell at a teammate if they need someone to set a screen or come back to catch the pass.
Third, with young girls especially, it is hard to throw the ball the length of the court. So, even if the player has confidence with the ball and has a wide open teammate 80-feet away under her offensive basket, the defense is fast enough to catch up to the flight of the ball. Therefore, the defense can condense the court and only cover the back court, turning a 94-feet game into a 50-foot game. In the NBA, that doesn’t work. Even against defensive pressure any NBA player can throw the ball 90-feet to a wide open target.
In basketball played by skilled players, the defense retreats to take away the space. The defense’s goal is to force the offense into a contested shot. By extending the defense, the defense gives the offense more space to find an open player for an open shot. This is why shooters are important. If a team has no three-point shooters, the defense can pack it in even further and force the offense to shoot 18-20-foot jump shots. However, if the team has a bunch of shooters, the defense has to spread all the way to the three-point line, which opens more lanes to get into the middle of the court and collapse the defense, leading to open shots.
In youth basketball, presses work, which is why 90% of youth teams use them. Apparently the only place where youth teams do not press is in Redwood City and wherever Gladwell watches youth basketball games.
Note the second to last paragraph - it explains why many coaches would prefer not to risk a press.
He is wrong to say "presses do not work" though. Presses can work at higher levels, but they work in a different way, and require different skill sets to work. You won't see a pressing college team generating turnover after turnover for easy lay-ups like you'd see from a pressing youth team.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:That conclusion also implies that the way we've been handling terror is wrong. The best way to beat a pressing team is to press them back. Then the odds once again shift back to the better team. In other words, we can terrorize them better than they can terrorize us.
I'm not sure that follows, for two reasons. A) There are legitimate moral reasons NOT to use terrorism to win. B) I'm not sure that terrorism can fight terrorism the same way a full court press can beat a full court press. Terrorism works largely by being invisible until it acts. Targeting random civilians wouldn't be any more effective than invading the whole country. It would demoralize the wrong people.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:The question really is, why didn't they see how much fun it could be to simply stay with the original rules and try to invent totally novel strategies that worked within those rules.
There are hundreds and thousands of games out there that you can try and min-max to a winning strategy. These folks wanted to play a game that simulates a naval battle. When the games no longer resemble a naval battle, it's no longer for for them. Games are played for fun. Some players get that fun from finding the absolute best strategy that the rules allow for. For other players, when that best strategy no longer resembles the reason you are playing that particular game for, you stop.
Lot's of games have tournaments that cater to the min-max crowd. For instance, I left heroclix in part because I wanted to play a game that simulates a comic book battle, not to participate in an arms race of cheesy tactics and exploits that have no resemblance to anything you'd find in a comic book. That AI program the gentleman used may be welcomed in those type of game tournaments.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Incidently, despite my complaints about the misrepresentation of basketball strategy in the article, I do think the article's larger point about David in Goliath is correct: David's best strategy is by questioning the established norms of the game and being innovative, and through hard work. If the goal is simply to win.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: If the goal is simply to win.
That's generally the goal of games, that and having fun.
'They're beating me and I don't wanna do what they do to beat me', though, is just sour grapes.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
quote:That conclusion also implies that the way we've been handling terror is wrong. The best way to beat a pressing team is to press them back. Then the odds once again shift back to the better team. In other words, we can terrorize them better than they can terrorize us.
I'm not sure that follows, for two reasons. A) There are legitimate moral reasons NOT to use terrorism to win. B) I'm not sure that terrorism can fight terrorism the same way a full court press can beat a full court press. Terrorism works largely by being invisible until it acts. Targeting random civilians wouldn't be any more effective than invading the whole country. It would demoralize the wrong people.
Pressing back doesn't mean using terror. It means not tying our own hands.
I'll give you an example. There's a group of people who inhabit 10 villages. A terrorist attack occurs, and a group based in the 10 villages claims responsibility.
The heads of the 10 villages do nothing whatsoever to find and punish the terrorist(s), so we take the village nearest the attack, load the people of the village up into buses, bring them to one of the other villages, and then we raze their village to the ground, leaving nothing but an empty field and rubble.
The 9 villages will scream in outrage, and they may even try another attack. But I strongly suspect that the 8 villages will find the terrorists and stop them. Even if they agree with the terrorists deep down. Or if not them, then the leaders of the 7 villages.
The issue isn't terror or not terror. The issue is implacableness. If they have it and we do not, they will win.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:That's generally the goal of games, that and having fun.
You just addressed your own point.
I can't speak much about basketball - everything in the game is so far removed from what I consider "fun" that I can't really see why one way would be more fun than another way.
But I do have similar experience with the card game Magic: The Gathering, the primary "fun" in the game comes from players interacting with each other. Yet oftentimes, the most effective strategies for winning are the ones with the least interaction. When the first "Davids" started figuring out how to create decks that won on the first turn or prevented their opponent from ever playing anything, ever, people said "Wow, that's cool," but then those strategies WERE adopted by the entire tournament scene. Suddenly going to a magic tournament was not fun at all, because the Goliaths of the world were copying all the Davids.
This was eventually fixed by creating new formats with new specific rules on which cards could be played. The development team for the game has to continuous evaluate cards for "unfun" ness and restrict or ban them whenever they threaten the enjoyment of the game.
In the case of the naval battle, I think there's one major thing that was preventing it from "accurately simulating naval conditions," which is that you got to use the same fleet over and over. I wonder what would have happened if ships that players lost in one game would still be gone in the next game. The whole notion of blowing up your own ships or creating ships min-maxed to have no defensive capabilities would probably be very different.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:The heads of the 10 villages do nothing whatsoever to find and punish the terrorist(s), so we take the village nearest the attack, load the people of the village up into buses, bring them to one of the other villages, and then we raze their village to the ground, leaving nothing but an empty field and rubble.
The 9 villages will scream in outrage, and they may even try another attack. But I strongly suspect that the 8 villages will find the terrorists and stop them. Even if they agree with the terrorists deep down. Or if not them, then the leaders of the 7 villages.
It seems to me just as likely the following:
After the eviction, either through sympathy kindled or strengthened by the injustice* of the forced eviction, or through the even worse threats the terrorists might make against the civilians, the tactic doesn't work.
Who're you going to listen to? The people who say if you don't comply, they'll evict you - and these people you already don't like anyway - or the people who say if you don't comply, your family will be brutally massacred before your eyes? Especially since, unfortunately, in this kind of contest terrorists and insurgents are quite a bit more reliable than we are.
Edit: Raymond, the order of those goals was important too. Winning - or at least, trying to win - is the primary reason people play games in my experience. Having fun - even if you lose - comes a close second, usually.
But especially in sports.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:That's generally the goal of games, that and having fun.
'They're beating me and I don't wanna do what they do to beat me', though, is just sour grapes.
I'd argue the primary goals of sports should be to challenge yourself and improve yourself (your body, mind, and character.) Winning can be a measure of that, but not the only or always the best measure. Fun is related to it too, but it's really a specific sort of fun.
Here's what njbl.org (the youth league mentioned in the article) lists as their "philosophy": - To acquaint the players with the fundamentals of the game. - To teach proper shooting, passing, dribbling and defense. - To teach good sportsmanship and teamwork concepts during the season. - To insure that each team is equal in talent and size by enforcing a draft system throughout the entire program. The Griffin method shall be implemented
Given those goals, I can imagine why the league could take issue with a non-stop pressing strategy.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I'd argue the primary goals of sports should be to challenge yourself and improve yourself (your body, mind, and character.)
The full-court full-time press certainly meets two of those requirements: improving one's body and character, because it takes a good bit of strength and endurance in both to commit to that kind of strategy.
The problem with those things listed, Tresopax, is that almost all of them aren't compatible with full-court full-time pressing simply because the league says they aren't. In fact, if it were to continue to be allowed, it would quite naturally lead to an improvement across the board for everyone, because everyone would have to start learning how to defend against it themselves, and execute it themselves.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The idea that a primary goal of youth sports is teaching kids skills they will need to move on to the advanced levels ignores the simple fact that very very few 12 girls who play basketball will ever play on a more advanced team.
I disagree that winning is the primary reasons people play games. I think having fun is the primary reason but its sort of hard to separate because trying to win is an essential part of what makes games fun. While its possible to have fun even if you loose, it's a lot easier to have fun if you are winning.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I saw Gladwell interviewed about Outliers when it came out. I wasn't particularly impressed, honestly. He came across as though he basically thought about something that struck him as odd, came up with an explanation, and then just wrote it down rather than following through and exploring the question, other possible answers, and the consequences of those answers.
Maybe he does that stuff in the book, but there wasn't even a hint of it in the interview. The interview was just data point, conclusion, data point, conclusion, over and over.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Players who play that fashion are going to have trouble if they want to move on to more advanced levels of basketball.
Tres, You are still thinking inside the box. You are equating traditional basketball skills with advanced skills.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
That assumes skilled pressing would work against teams with strong traditional skills, which Tres has already said isn't the case.
I don't know enough about basketball to know whether Tres is right, but he's already addressed your criticism.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
The article says that it does and can work against teams with strong traditional skills, especially if they are not used to the full court press. Not every time, but very often, and it only falls down at the highest levels.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I'd argue the primary goals of sports should be to challenge yourself and improve yourself (your body, mind, and character.) Winning can be a measure of that, but not the only or always the best measure. Fun is related to it too, but it's really a specific sort of fun.
In that case, isn't training to be fit enough to run non stop through the full game an excellent way to do it. Isn't teaching persistence and endurance are much more important life skills than dribbling and shooting. If your goal is to improve your mind, body and character, playing the press seems much better than teaching traditional basketball skills.
quote:Here's what njbl.org (the youth league mentioned in the article) lists as their "philosophy": - To acquaint the players with the fundamentals of the game.
Unless you don't consider full court defense a fundamental of the game, I don't see the problem.
quote:- To teach proper shooting, passing, dribbling and defense.
Kids have got to be able to shoot, pass and dribble to score even if they are playing the press. Once again unless you don't consider the press proper defense, I do don't see the problem.
quote:- To teach good sportsmanship and teamwork concepts during the season.
In the article, it sounds much more like this team was learning good sportsmanship and teamwork much more than the other teams whose coaches went into scream fits when the team was loosing.
quote:- To insure that each team is equal in talent and size by enforcing a draft system throughout the entire program. The Griffin method shall be implemented.
Basically irrelevant to the story being told. If all the teams are really equal in talent, you have a completely different set up. We could argue about whether its better for 12 year olds to play on a team of friends who they've played with for a couple years or be drafted on to teams of equal strength if you'd like but its still irrelevant to the question at hand.
quote:Given those goals, I can imagine why the league could take issue with a non-stop pressing strategy.
Given those goals, there is no way I'd have my child play in that league. It sounds like a league that is under the delusion that its preparing kids for playing in the pros. PFFFF!!
But that's also irrelevant. Unless you start with the presumption that the press isn't an fundamental part of defense, I can't see how a non-stop pressing strategy is not in accord with their rules.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:But less obvious is the fact that to become a good full-court press defender in basketball, kids must learn an array of good traditional defensive skills. Pressing in the way that youth teams often do it is usually fairly simple if you are athletic and hard-working. Pressing in the way advanced high school or college teams do it, however, requires more than just running, going for steals, and trapping. It requires fundamental defensive skills - the sort not taught just by pressing.
I'm not getting it. If pressing requires those skills, why can't you teach those skills as part of teaching the press. You are presenting this as an either or proposition -- but it isn't.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
The original article presented it as "focusing on the pressing as opposed to normal skills" because he knew he didn't have time to teach his girls enough "normal skills" for them to matter. I suspect if they went on to become a long-term team going for college level basketball they would eventually have had time to work on those skills as well.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Incidently, despite my complaints about the misrepresentation of basketball strategy in the article, I do think the article's larger point about David in Goliath is correct: David's best strategy is by questioning the established norms of the game and being innovative, and through hard work. If the goal is simply to win.
There is a virtual non-sequitur here. If the strategy works well when you are a heavily out gunned underdog, why wouldn't it work even better if you are evenly matched? If it gives weak teams an edge, why wouldn't it give strong teams an even bigger edge.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
I agree with Tres that focusing on the press is probably detrimental to the development of basketball skills - namely because more time is spent of fitness than other skills. Whether or not this is a bad thing, I don't really have an opinion.
They discuss it mostly in the context of underdogs ie less talented team, for good reason. I don't think it would be worth the effort for a team with title pretensions as playoff basketball and regular season basketball differ hugely in that in the former the opposition has had the opportunity to practice and develop strategies specifically to combat you. This essentially eliminates the press as anything but a 2 minute surprise tactic. It's not surprising that basketball orthodoxy be defined by how people see basketball played at the highest level.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky: I saw Gladwell interviewed about Outliers when it came out. I wasn't particularly impressed, honestly. He came across as though he basically thought about something that struck him as odd, came up with an explanation, and then just wrote it down rather than following through and exploring the question, other possible answers, and the consequences of those answers.
I have read outliers. I can assure you he explores questions, checks out possible answers, and the consequences of those answers.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "I don't get the connection of the second link"
quote:"Hoff found that high-caste players were more likely to punish their fellow gamers spitefully than low-caste players, leading her to suggest that context is everything. It is not that people in Uttar Pradesh are nastier than elsewhere, but rather that the structure of their society makes them acutely conscious of status. The sensitivity of higher castes to their position makes them tend not to support any changes that threaten to level the social hierarchy, such as development projects. But higher castes can also put others down, safe in the knowledge that "untouchables" are unlikely to strike back.
Oh, well. I guess I'm dumb. I still don't see it.
Seems pretty straightforward to me: if you're used to rules and/or customs that are advantageous to you- whether it's an assumption that the defensive portion of the basketball game will be limited to the scoring court or a caste system in which you are born into a priveliged class- you're more likely to oppose, be angered by, and/or punish those who step outside those rules and/or customs.
I'd suggest that the combined implication is also that a failure to consider the possibility of maneuvers outside of those rules and/or customs- whether it's punishing the good fortune of someone you view as a social inferior despite inflicting the punishment coming at a personal cost or failing to allow for a legal basketball strategy that's legal but significantly different from your own- will often come at a significant cost to the individual/team/society.
I'm of mixed minds; it's certainly good to think outside of the box, but thinking "too" outside the box just leads to a kind of lowest common denominator, a "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" mentality. There was a "Talk of the Nation" episode in which the subject was rough play- hits after the whistle and the like- and I was frankly disgusted by the number of people who called in to brag about their use of such tactics with a kind of pride and a sense that it was just one more aspect of the game.
In a way, it's another aspect of the whole "do the ends justify the means" question. A full court press is one thing, but can a war fought for, say, "freedom, justice, and our way of life" every really wash out the stain of tactics that target the innocent?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:The full-court full-time press certainly meets two of those requirements: improving one's body and character, because it takes a good bit of strength and endurance in both to commit to that kind of strategy.
That's completely true. I'm not saying pressing is necessarily a bad thing or contrary to the purpose of the game. I've coached youth teams to press non-stop myself, and I've seen plenty of other good teams that did it well, so I am not against it. But my beef is with the way that this article seems to present non-stop pressing as a novel idea that other coaches would all do if they were simply more open-minded and smarter. (1) It is not novel - most youth teams press, and many do it non-stop, especially at the select level. (2) There are plenty of reasons not to press, including that it can be an ineffective strategy against smarter and more skilled teams, and that it is often consider weaker for player development. It also often leads to tons of fouls, which apparently is what sunk the Redwood City strategy.
quote:The idea that a primary goal of youth sports is teaching kids skills they will need to move on to the advanced levels ignores the simple fact that very very few 12 girls who play basketball will ever play on a more advanced team.
This is a good point. The situation is a little bit like what a high school chemistry teacher faces. He knows that most of the students won't go on to be scientists or doctors, so should he prepare them all as if they all might go on into science as a career?
But there are definitely many coaches who consider it a primary goal to teach fundamental skills so players can advance to higher levels, and that league officially states it as one of their main purposes.
quote:I'm not getting it. If pressing requires those skills, why can't you teach those skills as part of teaching the press.
Here is one example: One basic skill young basketball players learn is how to defend against players that do not have the ball. This varies depending on whether they are playing a man-to-man defense or zone. In man-to-man, players are typically taught to see their man and whoever has the ball simultaneously, so they can help if necessary but so they don't lose track of the man they're assigned to guard. If they have to leave their man to help defend the player with the ball, one of their teammates should adjust over to help defend the man they just left. In a zone, it's a bit different, but the idea is still the same that he or she needs to be aware and ready to guard players who don't have the ball. A college team that presses would define very precisely how players should adjust to defend against the players who don't have the ball, while still keeping pressure on the ball. In fact, if a college-level team that presses is not extremely good at adjusting to defend all five players on the other team, their press will almost certainly fail because the other team will take advantage of it.
A 12-year-old girls team, however, will likely press in exactly the opposite way, for two reasons: Firstly, 12-year-old girls are not normally advanced enough to be aware of everyone on the court and where they need to adjust to on defense while running full speed in a press. (If they are good enough to do that, they are extremely good, and probably don't need a press to win games.) Secondly, regardless of if the coach is teaching them to play organized help defense, they will be rewarded for not doing it. That's because teams at that age and level are not good enough to take advantage of a press that is doing it wrong. They probably aren't strong enough to make good passes the length of the court, so anyone downcourt can be left almost completely open. They probably don't have the reaction time to see a teammate who is left open before they are double-teamed into a corner. Many players that age will dribble with their head down, meaning they won't see if teammates are open, meaning the other team can simply swarm them whenever they get the ball to get a steal. As a result, the pressing team will be rewarded for ignoring half the players on the court and for wildly attacking the ball instead. This might not be how the coach teaches them to do it, but if they are rewarded over and over for doing it that way, they can easily develop that habit anyway.
But again, this is not to say I think pressing is an evil thing in youth leagues. But there are definitely reasons for not choosing to use it other than "refusal to think outside-the-box".
quote:In the article, it sounds much more like this team was learning good sportsmanship and teamwork much more than the other teams whose coaches went into scream fits when the team was loosing.
This seems true. Certainly there's no excuse for scream fits. Complaining about how it's unfair that the other team is using a press doesn't seem appropriate either - unless it is literally against the rules of the league.
[ May 21, 2009, 10:09 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:This is a good point. The situation is a little bit like what a high school chemistry teacher faces. He knows that most of the students won't go on to be scientists or doctors, so should he prepare them all as if they all might go on into science as a career?
It's not a fair comparison because a basic understand of chemical principals is beneficial to most everyone in a modern society, even if they don't go on to study advanced chemistry. Those principals can be valuable to anyone who needs to read a food label, takes a prescription drug, paints their house or participates in community decisions about things like pollution, energy or climate change.
You just can't say the same thing about learning how to shoot and dribble.
And its not a valid comparison because it presumes that lower level chemistry curricula are designed based on the content of advanced level curricula. In truth, it works exactly the opposite way. The content of college level general chemistry class is designed in part based on what skills can generally be expected from entering students.
Furthermore, I think it is fair to say that at every level of basketball, only a very small fraction will move on to the next level. That isn't true except in very basic introductory level courses and in those courses we intentionally do not try to teach the skills people will need to pursue careers in science and engineering. Instead, we try to gear those courses to teaching things that will be most useful to the average citizen who will never take an advanced chemistry course. On the other hand, in a course with a title like "General Chemistry for Scientists and Engineers), it's a very good assumption that better than 95% of the students in the class are there because they want to pursue a field of study that requires mastery of certain skills. I've been on enough curriculum committees to know that a lot of effort goes into identifying which skills people in those classes are most likely to need in their advanced course work. I'm not saying we succeed, but we try.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: [QB]
quote:This is a good point. The situation is a little bit like what a high school chemistry teacher faces. He knows that most of the students won't go on to be scientists or doctors, so should he prepare them all as if they all might go on into science as a career?
It's not a fair comparison because a basic understand of chemical principals is beneficial to most everyone in a modern society, even if they don't go on to study advanced chemistry. Those principals can be valuable to anyone who needs to read a food label, takes a prescription drug, paints their house or participates in community decisions about things like pollution, energy or climate change.
Isn't Tresopax's point here that there is a choice for the introductory course - one could teach a very grounded real world course focusing on everyday ways in which chemistry would be useful, or you can start teaching academic chemistry? My school went the latter route even though chemistry was only mandatory for the first year.
quote: Furthermore, I think it is fair to say that at every level of basketball, only a very small fraction will move on to the next level.
It depends what you mean by next level. If you're talking about 12 year olds, while many won't (I guess) play a higher level of organized basketball, I would guess a high percentage will play pick-up, which is just a lot more fun if reasonably adept at basic basketball skills (having been part of successful pressing team wouldn't carry over).
quote: That isn't true except in very basic introductory level courses and in those courses we intentionally do not try to teach the skills people will need to pursue careers in science and engineering. Instead, we try to gear those courses to teaching things that will be most useful to the average citizen who will never take an advanced chemistry course. On the other hand, in a course with a title like "General Chemistry for Scientists and Engineers), it's a very good assumption that better than 95% of the students in the class are there because they want to pursue a field of study that requires mastery of certain skills. I've been on enough curriculum committees to know that a lot of effort goes into identifying which skills people in those classes are most likely to need in their advanced course work. I'm not saying we succeed, but we try.
You're talking about at the college level. Colleges can do this- "physics for pre-meds" vs. physics 101, "calculus for business majors" vs. calc 101 etc. are pretty common examples of segmentation where you can tailor a course to meet the expectations of the audience. At least where I went to secondary school there was no possibility of segmenting the chemistry offerings into classes for those with a mild curiosity and those more serious.
Edited to add: this was just to say that this tension does still exist in teaching an academic subject. However, I do think that intro chemistry in secondary school should be taught rigorously. I don't give a huge amount of credit to someone deciding to press in a youth league; there is a downside. However, losing by 40 points every game is not a lot of fun, so if pressing makes a team competitive then go for it.
[ May 21, 2009, 06:55 PM: Message edited by: natural_mystic ]
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Much of what I learned in high school chemistry I've never used as a person who doesn't work in the sciences. I assumed the reason they taught it to me is that it might have been a necessary foundation if I later went into the sciences.
Regardless, even if you don't like that analogy, my point remains the same: Many coaches feel it is important to teach young players the fundamental skills they'd need if they move on to more advanced levels of basketball. For a 12 year old girl youth league player, "more advanced" might be WNBA, or it might be high school, or it might just be 13 year old youth league basketball. A significant number of players do come back and play at one higher level or another, if you are talking about all higher levels from the pros to adult pickup games to older youth leagues.
It's not just coaches who feel that way. Many players and/or their parents feel this way too. That's why developmental leagues like this one exist - there is a demand for it.
My philosophy is that this (aiming to help players improve and move towards a higher level) is a good approach to take towards youth sports - but not because I actually expect most young athletes to move on to the most advanced levels. It IS true that most young players won't move on to play for a high school or a college or the pros. In the case of basketball, the chances of playing for the pros are similar to the chances of being struck by lightning. That's not why I like the developmental approach to the game. I think the developmental approach is a good approach because I think players get far more out of trying to become better players, even if they never end up playing at an advanced level. Those who approach it as just something fun to fill their time enjoy themselves, but the value in playing ends as soon as they leave the court. In contrast, those who approach it with the intent to improve as a player tend to come out with a sense of accomplishment, greater confidence, and seem to enjoy it more. They tend to be the ones who end up valuing the sport enough to keep playing as they get older. Or to put it another way, the pursuit of the goal is more important than actually reaching the goal, because pursuing a goal is enjoyable in itself.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I found in high school that the foosball equivalent of the full court press was very effective against better players. I always played front, and most of the people playing back, the ones I would be directly up against, were used to people carefully setting up a shot, taking aim, and then shooting. Thus, they had time to line up their guys to defend.
I, on the other hand, shot wildly and rapidly, fielding balls from the backboard quite often, as my wild shots went wide, and sending them into the goal before the defender even knew what was happening. It was indeed an effective way for unskilled me to score points against skilled defenders. I threw them off their game, this way, and left them rather flummoxed and unable to use their superior skills effectively.
I guess this adds little except to say that this strategy really works, in more diverse circumstances than described in the article.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
"The best swordsman in the world fears not the second best, but the worst; for who knows what the fool might do?"