How David Beats Goliath

[oblong]

Malcolm Gladwell's latest looks at what happened when an Indian-born technology executive coached his daughter's basketball team and tries to draw some lessons for warfare. It's interesting, if not totally convincing.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...urrentPage=all

I did find this statement from Rick Pitino especially interesting:

“I have so many coaches come in every year to learn the press,” Pitino said. Louisville was the Mecca for all those Davids trying to learn how to beat Goliaths. “Then they e-mail me. They tell me they can’t do it. They don’t know if they have the bench. They don’t know if the players can last.” Pitino shook his head. “We practice every day for two hours straight,” he went on. “The players are moving almost ninety-eight per cent of the practice. We spend very little time talking. When we make our corrections”—that is, when Pitino and his coaches stop play to give instruction—“they are seven-second corrections, so that our heart rate never rests. We are always working.” Seven seconds! The coaches who came to Louisville sat in the stands and watched that ceaseless activity and despaired. The prospect of playing by David’s rules was too daunting. They would rather lose.

[goesh]

- good analogy, I recall reading not too long ago somewhere in this forum, a passing reference as I recall, of some grunts succumbing to heat exhaustion in Afghan because of all the weight they were humping. Over extending with a short bench is risky business in basketball, hard practice increases odds of injury that's for sure - the short bench being in the extended analogy here the combat load as a factor in Public tolerance of WIAs and KIAs and no way am I implying or even suggesting a willingness to lose.