Friday Notes, May 13, 2022
Dear Friends —
Are you suffering from friggatriskaidekaphobia? I mean, are you paraskevidekatriaphobic? If so, today has probably been a rough day for you. But from tomorrow on you’ll be fine . . . at least until mid-January 2023.
For years, my husband has been trying to convince me that profound life lessons come from, variously, tennis or basketball. Tennis has been a hard sell, partly because I was three years into our relationship — and three-quarters of the way through a day at the U.S. Open — before I had the courage to admit that I couldn’t understand how tennis is scored. (It is not intuitive!)
But hours and hours watching the Golden State Warriors shoot hoops has helped me understand how Team Sport has something to offer Team Work.
Many people have written about the extraordinary leadership of Warriors Coach Steve Kerr. He seems to bring out the best in players — especially underrated ones — by affirming their strengths and keeping them in the game even when they’re struggling. For an appreciation of a classic Steve Kerr moment, click here. On the sidelines during a game, and at press conferences after both wins and losses, he unfailingly praises opponents and team members. Build ‘em up, don’t tear ‘em down. There’s a solid leadership lesson.
It’s not all sunshine and light, though. Kerr knows when to rage against injustice, too. He reserves outbursts for rare situations in which the referees seem to be making unfair calls. At those times, here’s a risk that the players are going to erupt and someone’s going to get charged with a foul or, worse, sent to the locker room. Strategically, Kerr channels the anger — occasionally to the point of being tossed from the game himself— so that the guys on the court know he’s got their backs. He gets hot so they can keep their cool. This is just one of the leadership tactics that’s been credited for bringing the Warriors into competitive range for many championships.
Basketball isn’t won by temperament alone, though; it’s won by teams working in synchrony on offense and defense to put their points on the scoreboard and keep opponents in check. Enter the metric of the plus-minus.
For those who are sort of dumb about sports, like me, the plus-minus is, per Wikipedia, a “statistic used to measure a player's impact on the game, represented by the difference between their team's total scoring versus their opponent's when the player is in the game." You get a high plus-minus if the team does well when you’re on the court, and a low one if things go in the other direction. A plus-minus can be calculated for an individual player over a game or a series, and for pairs, trios, or other combinations of players.
Far more interesting (and important) than narrow measures like points scored, the plus-minus captures players’ effects on the whole team, the whole dynamic of competition. If you’re good at keeping the other team from scoring, that contributes to your plus-minus; if you get the ball to the shooter, it’s likely to be good for your plus-minus; if you add a little chaos or a little organization to the court in just the right way, that’ll be reflected in your plus-minus. It’s not about your star-power; it’s about your effect on the team’s performance.
This is a fine concept. The idea of measuring (and rewarding) the range of skills and behaviors that contribute to a successful team is incredibly appealing. In teams outside of the context of basketball, hockey, and other point-centric sports, there are no easy-to-calculate metrics like the plus-minus, but it’s a reminder of the myriad ways people can add to the whole. It’s a reminder to look beyond the most obvious contributors to understand who’s making those contributions possible.
If you care about the ways in which the collection and use of data reinforces or challenges (failing) systems, take a few minutes to provide feedback to the Data Values Project on their white paper. A valuable enterprise, and they make it pretty easy to offer your views. Deadline is May 20.
Excellent podcast about how Black high school and college debaters challenged a traditionally “White space”: Debateable, on RadioLab.
Even if you don’t like Friday the 13th, and certainly if you don’t like teamwork, take a few minutes this evening to celebrate National Blame Someone Else Day.
Have a good weekend,
-Ruth