They Don’t Know Ball
One of the things I read recently that made me laugh out loud was this Wall Street Journal article about day drinking at Epcot Center (my rule is that if an article is in The Wall Street Journal, I’m justified in reading it at work). The reason it made me laugh out loud is because for some reason I find it funny (in an endearing way) when people really think through how they might accomplish otherwise inconsequential achievements. And the story of Willy Donnellon and Rusty Featherstone finishing the “Drinking Around the World” challenge is squarely in that genre.
Among the idiosyncratic strategies that got them over the finish line was starting in Canada and finishing in Mexico. “Some people will tell you that’s backwards,” Donnellon pointed out, “but those people just don’t know ball.”
That non-consensus take reminded me of another recent Wall Street Journal article that I probably wasn’t justified in reading at work about San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama and his “shot diet.”
If you don’t know Wembanyama, he’s the 7’4” French wunderkind who can pretty much do everything someone can do on a basketball court. After winning the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award and continuing to improve on his numbers, he’s now also got his team – losers in the last two seasons – among the best in the league. One reason for this is a significant increase in efficiency i.e., he’s scoring more on fewer shots and taking more free throws.
As the article explains, the reason for this is that Wembanyama has changed his “shot diet.” In other words, he’s attempting fewer threes and dunking the ball more.
If you’re unfamiliar with modern hoops, you may be wondering what a 7’4” wunderkind was doing launching so many threes anyway. Well, about 15 years ago, someone somewhere realized that three is worth more than two, and that shooting a decent percentage from three beats shooting a better percentage from two. For most NBA players, that math checks out.
Unless you happen to be a 7’4” French wunderkind named Victor Wembanyama.
Because while he’s a respectable three-point shooter, he can pretty much dunk and get fouled every time he takes the ball to the basket. So in his case, it doesn’t matter that three is more than two. He’s so elite at a particular skill that he can buck conventional wisdom and have outsized success – not unlike Donnellon and Featherstone day drinking at Epcot.
The point is that there are usually lots of ways to do something, and most of the time it makes sense to do things the way other people do them because they’re usually done that way for a reason. But if you have a skill, ability, or structure that makes you different, you should lean into that. Because different is where exceptional comes from.
– Tim
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