How to be a bad loser - take your unfair referee story to the New Yorker

Some people don't know how to lose.  They just keep trying to find new ways to expunge the bad emotions that come from not quite being good enough. 

Referees take a lot of heat for getting things wrong - but they do from time to time as they did recently when the Denver Nuggets were able to beat the Dallas Mavericks because the refs didn't make an obvious, intentional call.  We can listen to whiners from now until the end of time claiming how they were ripped off.  And from all this whining will we learn anything about succeeding?

Succeeding as underdogs supposedly was the point of Malcolm Gladwell's recent ridiculous piece in the New Yorker.  He talks about a girls basketball team coached by Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive and how they were ripped off by a referee who either was playing favorites or didn't know the game - or both.

For Ranadive - As the CEO of a company and given the chance to talk to the New Yorker, is this what you choose to talk about?  - Complaining about a ref that you can never get even with?  Get over it and get back to running your business.

For Gladwell - Have you not heard enough losers crying in their beers over the years to know that it's not even the least bit interesting.  I don't know about anybody else, but I don't have much patience for whining and I wish you wouldn't have piled on by giving it exposure in your magazine.

Both of you get the wagging finger of shame for wasting everybody's time with this petty personal vendetta.

Comments

[Bill]

Oh, for a minute I thought this blog title had something to do with a new update on the EMC/Donatelli/HP situation.

;)

[marc farley]

No, no. It was just a weekend wild hair blog. Two things the world could do without: Malcolm Gladwell writing about anything that he doesn't know anything about - such as basketball - and people complaining about referees in youth sports. Another thing, youth athletics should be about competing and not necessarily about winning. Running up scores because you can is disrespectful and is frowned upon by almost everybody involved.

[Jase]

Marc

It's dissappointing that that tiny bit of the article is what you focused on. It suggests you really have missed the point.

I would have thought you would have related more to the David vs Goliath theme of the article, especially the posit from Ivan Arreguín-Toft that where the underdog competes on its own terms it is more than a match for Goliath.

I found the article a very interesting one in the context that it shows that understanding the battlefield (the market) and playing to your strengths (product differentiators) can enable the smaller combatant to humble the giant.

Ignore for a moment your distaste at the basketball commentary and focus on the tactical observations. You might get a different insight into the article.

[marc farley]

Jase,

There is so much wrong with Gladwell's article that it is hard to know where to start. The biggest problem is his writing about this girls team as underdogs. They had an ex Duke basketball player as a coach, they once ran up a 25 to 0 score on an opponent. Are we to believe they were underdogs by the color of their hair? (Blondes). If this isn't a racial stereotype I don't know what is.

This team was not an underdog - it was probably about as talented as most other teams it played against - except it had a "winning is the greatest good" approach.

The notion that there was a national tournament was used to create a context for the underdog. As far as I can tell, the National Junior Basketball league does not exist any more as there is not a lot of information on the web. I was looking for the philosophy of the league and what it's goals were. Most youth leagues promote fair competition and emphasize creating a safe environment where kids can learn to compete and play as a part of a team. I would be shocked of the leagues motto was "just win baby." Gladwell thinks that using a full court press was thinking outside the box and doing something different in order to win. But if the league is trying to provide positive experiences for kids, then at some point pressing relentlessly against a team that does not have the talent or experience to deal with it is cruel. And that's what makes it surprising - that a team would continue to punish an opponent simply because they can. There are a lot of places kids can learn THAT lesson besides their youth basketball league. The out of the box analogy Gladwell chooses to heap praises on is offensive and the way he tries to support his wayward writing is offensive too.

So what is Gladwell saying here? He says if you are an underdog you have to change the game. That is trite. He says that if you try an approach that your competition does not use that you will improve your odds, because slow-witted competitors won't know how to respond. He essentially says that incumbent, established competitors tend to be stupid and can be taken advantage of by shocking strategies. I'd argue that the fastest path to failure is to underestimate the intelligence of your competitor. They probably did not get to be successful by being stupid and they will likely adopt their competitors advantages and use them themselves. Finding a sustainable advantage for an underdog is much more than simply thinking outside the box.