Basketball Teachings
I'm currently studying gaming and game design based on a belief that this will be a driving force in consumer engagement moving forward and I came across this gem that for me (with the added perspective of Dave Hickey's Air Guitar essay) captures the whole spirit of collaboration and really provides a basis for a new approach to work.
Call me ignorant but I had no idea how relevant basketball could me to the conversations going on today.
1. There must be a ball: it should be large (This is a prescient expectation of Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving, whose hands would reinvent basketball as profoundly as Jimi Hendrix's bands reinvented rock-and-roll)
2. There will be no running with the ball
(Thus mitigating the privileges of owning portable property. Extended ownership of the ball is a virtue in football. Possession of the ball in basketball is never ownership; it is always temporary and contingent upon doing something else with it.)
3. No man on either team shall be restricted from getting the ball at any time that it is in play
(Thus eliminating the job specialization that exists in football, by whose rules only those players in "skilled positions" may touch the ball. The rest just help. In basketball there are skills peculiar to each position, but everyone must run, jump, catch, shoot, pass and defend.)
4. Both teams are to occupy the same area, yet there is to be no personal contact
(thus no rigorous territoriality, nor any rewards for violently invading your opponent's territory unless you score. The model for football is the drama of adjacent nations at war. The model for basketball is the polyglot choreography of uran sidewalks.)
5. The goal shall be horizontal and elevated
(The most Jeffersonian principle of all: Labor must be matched by aspiration. To score, you must work your way down court, but you must also elevate! Ad astra.)
James Naismith's Guiding Principles of Basketball, 1891 (With commentary by Dave Hickey - Air Guitar - "The Heresy of Zone Defense"
