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About Me
- Chris Bray
- Itinerant historian, former infantry soldier, and the author of "Court-Martial: How Military Justice has Shaped America, from the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond," forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
2 comments:
I have to disagree. The linked article is a huge pile of bull. The only accurate part is the tautology that someone who is heavily outclassed generally needs to be innovative and take risks to win. But time after time the author misleads, bends the truth, or outright lies to try to make his point.
The whole idea that Ranadive took a horribly outclassed team and managed to win by noticing that virtually every coach in the history of basketball is an idiot is simply a lie. First, the article implies that the team was outclassed in personnel. But here's how Ranadive described the team in a different articl, "As I am very competitive, I first got the best players of girls from the 7th and 8th grade. I had four girls in my teams, who are 6- feet tall. I got an assistant coach who was a professional player". Then he used a "very aggressive style" in a development league which is “based on sportsmanship and player development”. Then they "won the national championship" in a league which only plays in six states. And even the losses don't really count because that was just the mean old refs cheating by enforcing the rules.
The example of Fordham as David against UMass as Goliath is an even bigger lie. The "underdog" Fordham, that “team of scrappy kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn”, had several future all-Americans and NBA players on their roster, were coached by a legend, were ranked number 10 in the country, and went 2-1 in the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile the Goliath, UMass, was unranked throughout the season, went to the NIT rather than the NCAA tournament (only their second ever post-season appearance ever) and were blown out by 41 points in the first round.
Lawrence was only an underdog if you ignore the British Empire, Russia, France, etc. When you figure them in, the Ottoman Empire is revealed as the David of the story, and they got their butts kicked. Innovative tactics made a substantial difference in the Arab Revolt portion of the conflict, but pretending that the Arabs fought the Turks in isolation completely distorts the picture. The Ottoman Empire lost 325,000 KIA in that war, of which Lawrence's band accounted for far less than 1%. I'm also a little suspicious of the study as the review on the author's school's website includes the phrase, "allows us to makes sense of how the United States was able to win its war in Afghanistan in a few months".
See, this is what happens when I read about basketball. There may not be anything on the planet I understand any less.
Anyway, that's a great comment -- I'm glad I posted that. I've never paid much attention to Malcolm Gladwell, but I've picked up hints that he has a tendency to clean up the details to make the stories neater. And it works! That story was totally fun to read!
The world would kick so much ass if it worked like that.
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