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The Big Man Can't Shoot · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Bushkin. The greatest game of basketball anyone has ever played
0:22
Speaker 1: was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, March second, nineteen.
0:25
Speaker 2: Sixty two, and everybody's thinking out on his work.
0:29
Speaker 3: God, I got he's got sixty nine gone at here's
0:31
Speaker 3: the past.
0:32
Speaker 4: He's got another.
0:34
Speaker 1: Cold, rainy night. Just over four thousand people in the stands.
0:38
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Warriors versus.
0:40
Speaker 4: The New York Knicks have a good shot. They're taking it,
0:44
Speaker 4: but mostly they're setting up the big man.
0:47
Speaker 1: The star of the Warriors was a man named Wilt Chamberlain.
0:50
Speaker 1: No doubt you've heard of him, seven foot one, two
0:53
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five pounds. For sheer physical presence, there
0:57
Speaker 1: has probably never been anyone like Willed. There are lots
1:01
Speaker 1: of seven footers who play basketball who are basically on
1:03
Speaker 1: the court purely because they're seven feet tall. They're clumsy
1:07
Speaker 1: and ungainly. Chamberlain, it was not like that. He was
1:11
Speaker 1: as big as an oak tree and as graceful as
1:13
Speaker 1: a ballet dancer. That season nineteen sixty one to nineteen
1:17
Speaker 1: sixty two, he ended up averaging more than fifty points
1:20
Speaker 1: a game. That record will never be broken. So March second,
1:29
Speaker 1: Wilt was hungover. He'd been out all night with a
1:32
Speaker 1: woman he picked up at a bar. That's classic Will too.
1:36
Speaker 1: He would later claim to have slept with twenty thousand
1:39
Speaker 1: women in his life. And when he said that, lots
1:41
Speaker 1: of people did the math and said there was no
1:43
Speaker 1: way that was possible, given the fact that they were
1:45
Speaker 1: only twenty four hours in a day and will only
1:47
Speaker 1: live to the age of sixty three. But even the
1:49
Speaker 1: skeptics were like, well, maybe it's ten thousand or eight thousand.
1:53
Speaker 1: It was an argument over whether it was an unbelievably
1:56
Speaker 1: high number or merely an incredibly high number.
2:06
Speaker 2: The big Man over the Warriors and the big man
2:08
Speaker 2: in the he has ninety two points.
2:11
Speaker 4: Jaron, make sure my.
2:13
Speaker 1: Name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, where
2:17
Speaker 1: every week we re examine the forgotten and the misunderstood.
2:27
Speaker 1: This week's episode is about Wilt Chamberlain's most famous game.
2:32
Speaker 4: Work's got the ball, he's gone up, he shoots, So.
2:39
Speaker 1: Back to the game in question. Chamberlain makes his first
2:43
Speaker 1: five shots and has twenty three points at the end
2:45
Speaker 1: of the first quarter. At halftime, he has forty one points.
2:49
Speaker 1: No one's thinking history just yet. But then by the
2:53
Speaker 1: end of the third quarter, he has sixty nine points,
2:55
Speaker 1: and he keeps going and going and going. He shoots
3:00
Speaker 1: put it out the reason Luck and Bill.
3:02
Speaker 3: K so Rockwick in the chamber.
3:09
Speaker 1: A hundred points, the most anyone has ever scored in
3:13
Speaker 1: a professional basketball game. And here's the most incredible thing
3:17
Speaker 1: about it. He shot brilliantly from the foul liney or
3:24
Speaker 1: thirty two Ye. That's Rick Berry speaking. He was a
3:27
Speaker 1: contemporary of Chamberlain's, also a Hall of Famer, an absolutely
3:32
Speaker 1: unstoppable scorer. I met him at his condo in South
3:35
Speaker 1: Carolina where he lives part of the year, so we
3:37
Speaker 1: can follow his son, Canyon, who plays basketball for the
3:40
Speaker 1: College of Charleston. Barry is seventy two, six foot eight
3:44
Speaker 1: inches tall, barrel chest, legs that looked like he had
3:47
Speaker 1: special extensions put on them, and that thing that great
3:51
Speaker 1: athletes have and never seem to lose, which is that
3:53
Speaker 1: they kind of glide across the floor like they have
3:56
Speaker 1: wheels on. A big part of this episode is about Barry,
4:00
Speaker 1: but other people too, because although this sounds like it's
4:03
Speaker 1: going to be a show about basketball, the truth is
4:06
Speaker 1: it's not. It's a show about good Eyedea. He is
4:09
Speaker 1: and why they have such difficulties spreading. But for the moment,
4:14
Speaker 1: back to Wilt Chamberlain. Chamberlain next, He's made twenty eight
4:20
Speaker 1: out of his thirty two shots from the free throw line,
4:23
Speaker 1: eighty seven point five percent. The reason that's incredible is
4:28
Speaker 1: that when Chamberlain came into the NBA, he was a
4:30
Speaker 1: horrendous free throw shooter. Though worst. Here was a man
4:35
Speaker 1: who could excel at virtually every physical feat under the sun,
4:39
Speaker 1: who could score at will with two and sometimes three
4:42
Speaker 1: defenders draped all over his body, but put him all
4:46
Speaker 1: alone fifteen feet from the basket, and he was hopeless.
4:50
Speaker 1: He was shooting forty percent from the free throw line.
4:53
Speaker 1: That's terrible. But this season Chamberlain changes tactics. He starts
5:00
Speaker 1: to shoot his foul shots underhanded. He doesn't release the
5:03
Speaker 1: ball up by his forehead. He holds the ball between
5:06
Speaker 1: his knees and flicks it towards the basket from a
5:10
Speaker 1: slight crouch, and all of a sudden, he's a pretty
5:13
Speaker 1: good free throw shooter. He gets up to more than
5:16
Speaker 1: sixty percent, and that special night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, he's
5:20
Speaker 1: an incredible free.
5:21
Speaker 3: Throw shooter on the line.
5:24
Speaker 1: Pal shot up in the area is eighty four. He
5:27
Speaker 1: makes twenty eight free throws, the most anyone has ever
5:31
Speaker 1: made in NBA history. What Rick Barry will tell you
5:36
Speaker 1: is that shooting underhanded is simply a better way to
5:38
Speaker 1: make foul shots. And he knows that because he was
5:42
Speaker 1: one of the greatest foul shooters of all time, maybe
5:44
Speaker 1: the greatest.
5:45
Speaker 4: I missed ten in one season and nine in another
5:49
Speaker 4: and the whole season.
5:50
Speaker 1: To put that in perspective, Lebron James, the greatest player
5:53
Speaker 1: of the current basketball generation, typically misses about one hundred
5:57
Speaker 1: and fifty free throws a season. Rick Barry would miss
6:00
Speaker 1: nine or ten.
6:01
Speaker 4: I think I shot ninety three five or something in
6:03
Speaker 4: ninety four to seven, something like that.
6:05
Speaker 1: And Rick Berry only shot underhanded.
6:07
Speaker 4: From a physics standpoint, it's a much better way to shoot.
6:12
Speaker 4: Less things that can go wrong, Less things that you
6:14
Speaker 4: have to worry about repeating properly in order for it
6:16
Speaker 4: to be successful. But the other thing is is that
6:19
Speaker 4: who walks around like this hand This is not a
6:22
Speaker 4: natural position when I shoot underhanded free throws. Where are
6:26
Speaker 4: my arms hanging straight down the way they are normally?
6:30
Speaker 4: And so I'm totally completely relaxed. It's not in the
6:33
Speaker 4: situation where I have to worry about my muscles getting
6:35
Speaker 4: tense or tight. And then the shot itself, it's a
6:39
Speaker 4: softer shot. So many of my shots, even if they're
6:42
Speaker 4: a little off, they hit so nice and soft, and
6:43
Speaker 4: they'll still fall in the much softer touch, and so
6:47
Speaker 4: you have a little bit more margin for error. Some
6:50
Speaker 4: of those shots that are a little bit offline have
6:52
Speaker 4: a much better opportunity of going into the basket than
6:55
Speaker 4: when you shoot overhand.
6:57
Speaker 1: So Wilt Chamberlain switches to a better shooting technique. It
7:00
Speaker 1: pays off. In the greatest basketball game ever played. He's
7:04
Speaker 1: playing the way that Rick Berry proved basketball players ought
7:07
Speaker 1: to play. Then something incredible happens. Well, Chamberlain stops shooting underhanded,
7:15
Speaker 1: and he goes back to being a terrible foul shooter.
7:27
Speaker 1: Let's think about what he did for a moment. Chamberlain
7:30
Speaker 1: had a problem, he tested out a possible solution, the
7:34
Speaker 1: solution worked, and all of a sudden, he's fixed his
7:37
Speaker 1: biggest weakness as a player. This is not a trivial matter.
7:41
Speaker 1: If you're a basketball player and you can't hit your
7:44
Speaker 1: free throws, you're an incredible liability to your team, particularly
7:48
Speaker 1: at the end of close games. The other side simply
7:51
Speaker 1: fouls you every time you touch the ball because they
7:53
Speaker 1: know you'll miss your free throw and they'll get the
7:55
Speaker 1: ball back. If you can't hit your foul shots, it
7:58
Speaker 1: means you can't be used in a tight game. You
8:01
Speaker 1: know what Chamberlain's coach said to him, if you were
8:04
Speaker 1: a ninety percent shooter, we might never lose. You got
8:09
Speaker 1: to know him quite well.
8:10
Speaker 4: I got to know him.
8:10
Speaker 3: You don't.
8:11
Speaker 4: I just joked with him. You said your technique was terrible.
8:14
Speaker 4: I mean, but I mean had you stuck with it,
8:17
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no tell him what he would have done.
8:18
Speaker 4: I mean, the numbers he would have put up would
8:20
Speaker 4: have been insane because the only way they defended him
8:22
Speaker 4: was the fallom.
8:24
Speaker 1: Chamberlain had every incentive in the world to keep shooting
8:28
Speaker 1: free throws underhanded, and he didn't. I think we understand
8:33
Speaker 1: cases where people don't do what they ought to do
8:35
Speaker 1: because of ignorance. This is not that this is doing
8:39
Speaker 1: something dumb, even though you are fully aware that you're
8:42
Speaker 1: doing something dumb. By the way, there have been countless
8:46
Speaker 1: players like Chamberlain, players who could have been transcendent, devastating
8:51
Speaker 1: if only they had been open to taking foul shots
8:54
Speaker 1: a different way. Take Shaquille O'Neal up there with Will Chamberlain.
8:58
Speaker 1: Is one of the greatest NBA centers of all time,
9:01
Speaker 1: but an absolutely horrendous free throw shooter. Barry tried to
9:06
Speaker 1: reason with him once.
9:07
Speaker 4: Oh, you actually talked to shit. I tried to get
9:09
Speaker 4: Shack to change, and I try to get him done.
9:12
Speaker 4: He said, forget, I'd rather shoot zero than shoot underhanded.
9:15
Speaker 1: And I'm just fascinated by that.
9:17
Speaker 4: I don't understand it.
9:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
9:18
Speaker 4: No, The difference is if Shaq was an eighty percent
9:20
Speaker 4: free throw shooter, he becomes the go to guy on
9:24
Speaker 4: the court as opposed to go to the bench guy.
9:28
Speaker 4: You change the dynamic of the game.
9:31
Speaker 1: No one shoots underhanded. Not even Barry's teammates followed his lead,
9:35
Speaker 1: people who saw him shoot that way every day and
9:37
Speaker 1: never miss one.
9:38
Speaker 3: Guy.
9:39
Speaker 4: Only George Johnson, my teammate with the Warriors, he was
9:42
Speaker 4: I think he was like forty eight fifty percent something
9:44
Speaker 4: like that, and I worked with him for one season.
9:46
Speaker 4: I didn't get to stay with him. He didn't get
9:47
Speaker 4: the technique down as much as I'd like it, But
9:50
Speaker 4: I think eventually, a season or two later, I think
9:52
Speaker 4: George actually shot eighty percent. I can actually look it
9:54
Speaker 4: up and be interesting to see what he did. I'll
9:56
Speaker 4: get George Johnson's stats here everything George Johnson's stats. Okay,
10:03
Speaker 4: stats for George Johnson NBA are George.
10:09
Speaker 1: Johnson's stats from the twenty fifteen NFL season.
10:13
Speaker 4: NFL wrong guy, wrong season, I mean, but anyway, we'll
10:17
Speaker 4: look it up. It's interesting, I think.
10:19
Speaker 1: But what about your on your high school team?
10:21
Speaker 5: Did anyone follow Oh?
10:22
Speaker 4: No, nobody. I've only had one guy ever come to me.
10:25
Speaker 4: An NBA guy came to me. I'm will tell you
10:27
Speaker 4: his name, but he came to me. He asked me
10:29
Speaker 4: to work with him. I did it. I worked with him.
10:31
Speaker 4: I had him shooting really well, and he never had
10:33
Speaker 4: the nerve to go back and do it. You want
10:36
Speaker 4: to talk his name, it's not it's fair to him.
10:39
Speaker 1: I don't want to say his name. It's not fair
10:41
Speaker 1: to him, like it's some kind of dark, shameful secret.
10:46
Speaker 1: College basketball is no different. Out of the thousands of
10:49
Speaker 1: college basketball players today, there are just two who shoot underhanded.
10:54
Speaker 1: One is a Nigerian American who plays for Louisville called
10:57
Speaker 1: Chinanu Anuaku. The other is Kenyon Barry, who plays for
11:01
Speaker 1: the College of Charleston, and who, in case he missed
11:04
Speaker 1: this earlier, happens to be Rick Barry's son. In other words,
11:08
Speaker 1: there are only two conditions under which people will try
11:11
Speaker 1: the underhanded free throw, one if their family is from
11:14
Speaker 1: another continent, and two if they're an offspring of Rick Berry.
11:20
Speaker 3: Anyway, do you want to just quickly describe where we
11:22
Speaker 3: are and what we're doing.
11:23
Speaker 1: That's my producer, Jacob Smith. He hung out with some
11:27
Speaker 1: players on the Columbia University women's basketball team and tried
11:30
Speaker 1: to get them to shoot underhanded. Our theory was, maybe
11:34
Speaker 1: this is just a dumb man's thing. Maybe women are
11:37
Speaker 1: more rational when they're on the court.
11:39
Speaker 3: So we are in Columbia's basketball gym and we are
11:42
Speaker 3: going to compare overhand shooting to underhand shooting. Hey, here
11:49
Speaker 3: he goes.
11:49
Speaker 1: That's er Talkov, a junior in the team. She missed
11:52
Speaker 1: her first try.
11:54
Speaker 2: I feel like you could bend in the kne a
11:55
Speaker 2: little more on that that.
11:58
Speaker 1: Then she makes the next two shots, her first two
12:01
Speaker 1: ever shooting underhanded. But Jacob couldn't get any of the
12:05
Speaker 1: Columbia players interested in switching over. Here's Sarah Mead, senior
12:09
Speaker 1: point guard.
12:09
Speaker 3: Ever since we were young, we were taught to shoot
12:12
Speaker 3: it overhand, and you know, as kids, you kind of
12:15
Speaker 3: play around with the idea of a granny shot or underhand.
12:18
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm not sure we've ever taken it seriously.
12:21
Speaker 1: She calls it a granny shot, a shot used by
12:24
Speaker 1: one of the greatest players ever to play the game.
12:27
Speaker 1: Women are as bad as men. We like to think
12:31
Speaker 1: that good ideas will spread because they're good, because their
12:34
Speaker 1: advantages are obvious. But that's not true. So why don't
12:38
Speaker 1: they Or to put it another way, what is it
12:41
Speaker 1: about Rick Berry that allowed him to shoot this way?
12:44
Speaker 1: And what is it about Wilt Chamberlain and all the
12:46
Speaker 1: others that stands in their way? Let me try out
12:53
Speaker 1: a theory on you. It's from a sociologist named Mark Granovetter.
12:57
Speaker 1: Granavetter is one of the greatest social theorists of his generation.
13:01
Speaker 1: If you're an academic groupie like I am, Granavetter is
13:04
Speaker 1: like James Dean. So Granoveter came up with something called
13:07
Speaker 1: the threshold model of collective behavior. He was trying to
13:11
Speaker 1: answer the question of why people do things out of character.
13:15
Speaker 1: Use riots as his big example, why do otherwise law
13:18
Speaker 1: abiding citizens suddenly throw rocks through windows? Before Granavetter came along,
13:25
Speaker 1: sociologists tried to explain that kind of puzzling behavior in
13:29
Speaker 1: terms of beliefs. So the thinking went, you and I
13:33
Speaker 1: have a set of beliefs, but when you throw the
13:35
Speaker 1: rock through the window, something powerful must have happened in
13:39
Speaker 1: the moment to change your beliefs. Something about the crowd
13:43
Speaker 1: transforms the way you think. Here's Granavetter explaining that idea.
13:50
Speaker 5: There was a lot of intellectual tradition that said that
13:53
Speaker 5: when people got into a crowd, their independent judgment went
13:56
Speaker 5: out the window, and that they somehow became creatures of
13:59
Speaker 5: the crowd, and that there was some kind of I
14:02
Speaker 5: don't know, miasma of irrationality would settle over people and
14:06
Speaker 5: they would act in ways that they would never act
14:07
Speaker 5: if they were by themselves or they weren't influenced by
14:10
Speaker 5: the mob mentality.
14:12
Speaker 1: But Granna Better doesn't buy it. He doesn't think that
14:15
Speaker 1: being part of the mob casts some kind of spell
14:17
Speaker 1: that makes everyone irrational. To his mind, it's much more
14:21
Speaker 1: subtle and complicated.
14:22
Speaker 3: Than that.
14:23
Speaker 5: People are pretty much who they are, But if the
14:26
Speaker 5: situation develops in a certain way, then there's a domino effect.
14:31
Speaker 5: Some people are activated and that activates other people in
14:33
Speaker 5: that activates other people, and it all happens so fast.
14:36
Speaker 1: Granaveetter says that the issue isn't about people having beliefs
14:39
Speaker 1: about what's right and then suddenly losing those beliefs because
14:43
Speaker 1: they're in a mob. The issue is about thresholds. Now,
14:49
Speaker 1: what does Granaveetter mean by that word threshold? A belief
14:53
Speaker 1: is an internal thing. It's a position we've taken in
14:56
Speaker 1: our head or in our heart. But unlike beliefs, thresholds
15:00
Speaker 1: are external. They're about pure pressure. Your threshold is the
15:04
Speaker 1: number of people who have to do something before you
15:07
Speaker 1: join in. Granavedterer makes two crucial arguments. The first is
15:11
Speaker 1: that thresholds and beliefs sometimes overlap, but a lot of
15:15
Speaker 1: the time they don't. When your teenage son is driving
15:19
Speaker 1: one hundred miles an hour at midnight with three of
15:21
Speaker 1: his friends, it's not because he believes that driving one
15:24
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour is a good idea. In that moment,
15:27
Speaker 1: his beliefs are irrelevant. His behavior is guided by his threshold.
15:33
Speaker 1: An eighteen year old may be drunk at midnight in
15:35
Speaker 1: a car with three of his friends. That person has
15:39
Speaker 1: a really low threshold. It doesn't take a lot of
15:42
Speaker 1: encouragement to get him to do something stupid. Granavetter's second
15:47
Speaker 1: point is just as important. Everyone's threshold is different. There
15:52
Speaker 1: are plenty of radicals and troublemakers who might need only
15:55
Speaker 1: slight encouragement to throw that rock. Their threshold is really low.
16:00
Speaker 1: But think about your grandmother. She might well need her sister,
16:04
Speaker 1: her grandchildren, her neighbors, or friends from church, all of
16:07
Speaker 1: them to be throwing rocks before or she would even
16:09
Speaker 1: dream of joining in. She's got a high threshold. The
16:13
Speaker 1: riot has to be going on for a very long
16:16
Speaker 1: time and has to involve a whole lot of people
16:19
Speaker 1: before Grandma will join in. Granavetter's argument goes on in
16:23
Speaker 1: much more detail, all of it fascinating, and I encourage you,
16:26
Speaker 1: if you're interested, to look it up online and read
16:28
Speaker 1: it because it's beautifully clear. But for the moment, I
16:32
Speaker 1: just want to focus on the one big implication of
16:35
Speaker 1: Grandavetter's argument. What people believe isn't going to help you much.
16:40
Speaker 1: If you want to understand why they try or don't
16:43
Speaker 1: try difficult or problematic or strange things. You have to
16:48
Speaker 1: understand the social context in which they're operating. Your grandmother's
16:53
Speaker 1: belief is that rioting is wrong, but there are times
16:56
Speaker 1: when even grandmothers might throw rocks through windows. Granavetter's theory
17:01
Speaker 1: explained a lot of things that have been puzzling to me.
17:04
Speaker 1: So here's a good example. It's from an interview I
17:07
Speaker 1: did at the ninety second Street Wall in New York
17:10
Speaker 1: with the economist Richard Thaylor, who's one of the leading
17:13
Speaker 1: lights in what's called behavioral economics. He had a book
17:16
Speaker 1: coming out called Misbehaving, and I really liked it, and
17:19
Speaker 1: we thought it would be fun if we did an
17:21
Speaker 1: event together. You and I have met before. The first
17:25
Speaker 1: time we met was at a hotel bar in Rochester, Yes,
17:29
Speaker 1: the only time I've ever Faylor is the kind of
17:32
Speaker 1: guy who's interested in everything, including sports, and there was
17:35
Speaker 1: a point in our conversation when he started to talk
17:38
Speaker 1: about the fact that the owners of professional football teams
17:42
Speaker 1: do things on occasion that are really stupid and inexplicable.
17:47
Speaker 1: Take the professional football draft. For those of you who
17:51
Speaker 1: are not football fans. Let me explain. Every year, all
17:54
Speaker 1: the draft eligible college football players are thrown into a
17:57
Speaker 1: big pool, and the thirty two professional football teams pick
18:01
Speaker 1: the players they want one by one. The first player
18:05
Speaker 1: taken as the one that people think will be the
18:06
Speaker 1: best professional player. That person gets it's the biggest salary.
18:10
Speaker 1: The second player taken is the one predicted to be
18:13
Speaker 1: the second best professional player, and so on. And after
18:16
Speaker 1: every team has picked one player each, they all start
18:19
Speaker 1: again and do another round. Because the players selected in
18:23
Speaker 1: the first round are considered the most valuable, all the
18:26
Speaker 1: teams fight over them. They pay enormous sums of money
18:30
Speaker 1: and construct elaborate deals to try and acquire those high
18:33
Speaker 1: draft picks.
18:34
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about that is there's a market for picks,
18:39
Speaker 2: so you can trade the first pick for say, half
18:44
Speaker 2: a dozen second round picks. That's what the market says. Now,
18:49
Speaker 2: that implies that the first pick is five times more
18:54
Speaker 2: valuable than an early pick in the second round.
18:58
Speaker 1: Filer in a colleague named Kade Massey decide to analyze
19:01
Speaker 1: this assumption. Was it really true that a first round
19:04
Speaker 1: pick was worth half a dozen second round.
19:07
Speaker 2: Picks if you compute the surplus a player provides to
19:11
Speaker 2: his team, meaning how good his performance is minus how
19:18
Speaker 2: much you have to pay him. What we found is
19:21
Speaker 2: these second round picks are actually more valuable than that
19:25
Speaker 2: first pick, but you could get five of those for
19:28
Speaker 2: that pick. It's the biggest anomaly I've ever found.
19:33
Speaker 1: The implication of Taylor in Massey's work is that teams
19:35
Speaker 1: should trade away their first round picks. They should stockpile
19:39
Speaker 1: players in the second and third rounds who can be
19:42
Speaker 1: paid a lot less and are nearly as good. This
19:46
Speaker 1: is how you build a winning football team. So what
19:49
Speaker 1: was the reaction of NFL teams to Taylor's idea. Well,
19:53
Speaker 1: not long after he and Kate Massey did their research,
19:56
Speaker 1: they got a call from the Washington Redskins.
19:58
Speaker 2: It was early in Dan Snyder's tenure as owner, and
20:03
Speaker 2: I met him and he said, oh, we don't want
20:06
Speaker 2: to know about this, and he introduced me. I'm going
20:09
Speaker 2: to send my people to see you, and they flew
20:12
Speaker 2: out to Chicago. I met with Gad and me and
20:14
Speaker 2: we told them what our findings were. And we basically
20:18
Speaker 2: have two pieces of advice, trade down and lend picks
20:25
Speaker 2: this year for picks next year.
20:27
Speaker 1: With that last sentence, Taylor is referring to the second
20:30
Speaker 1: thing he and Massy discovered. Owners sometimes trade a pick
20:34
Speaker 1: in this year's draft for a pick in some future draft.
20:38
Speaker 1: They use a rule of thumb to figure out how
20:40
Speaker 1: to value the difference between a player you can use
20:42
Speaker 1: this year versus a draft pick you can't use until
20:44
Speaker 1: some future year. And Taylor and Massy discover that the
20:48
Speaker 1: rule of thumb makes no sense. It's completely irrational. It
20:52
Speaker 1: massively overvalues current picks and undervalues future picks. Like a
20:58
Speaker 1: good economist, Taylor talks about the value of that rule
21:01
Speaker 1: of thumb as an interest rate. It's like borrowing money.
21:04
Speaker 2: If you compute the real interest rate, it's one hundred
21:07
Speaker 2: and thirty seven percent per year.
21:09
Speaker 1: In other words, for the privilege of having a player now,
21:12
Speaker 1: as opposed to waiting a year, the owners pay a
21:16
Speaker 1: huge premium. They borrow money at one hundred and thirty
21:19
Speaker 1: seven percent interest.
21:21
Speaker 2: These guys did not get to be billionaires borrowing at
21:23
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty seven percent per year, But that's
21:26
Speaker 2: the rule of thumb they use. So anyway, we taught
21:29
Speaker 2: his guys Stans guys what to do, and then we
21:34
Speaker 2: watched the draft eagerly that year, and they traded up
21:38
Speaker 2: and borrowed a picked this year for one next year.
21:42
Speaker 2: So okay.
21:44
Speaker 1: In other words, the Redskins did the exact opposite of
21:47
Speaker 1: what they should have done if they were rational, and
21:50
Speaker 1: they weren't the only ones. Dyla and Massi have consulted
21:53
Speaker 1: for three NFL franchises now and no one has ever
21:57
Speaker 1: followed their advice. It gets worse. There's a very respected
22:00
Speaker 1: economist named David Romer who famously proved that football teams
22:04
Speaker 1: would win more games if they didn't punt, if they
22:07
Speaker 1: simply use all four dens to try and gain ten
22:10
Speaker 1: yards as opposed to giving the ball away to their opponents.
22:14
Speaker 1: So since Romer published his work, are NFL teams less
22:18
Speaker 1: likely to punt on fourth down? You guessed it?
22:22
Speaker 2: No to tell you how big this is if you
22:26
Speaker 2: did this right, But we think you would win one
22:30
Speaker 2: game a year more if you also learned to go
22:36
Speaker 2: for it more often on fourth down another game and
22:39
Speaker 2: a half. So, just being smart, we win at least
22:44
Speaker 2: two games a year on average.
22:48
Speaker 1: Two extra wins in a sixteen game season, just by
22:53
Speaker 1: acting a little bit differently. Who wouldn't do that? But
22:56
Speaker 1: nobody would? Now is that because they're stupid, because they
23:01
Speaker 1: have irrational beliefs. That was my first thought when I
23:04
Speaker 1: was listening to Theodore talk about his football research. Those
23:07
Speaker 1: dumb football owners. But that can't be right. You don't
23:11
Speaker 1: get to their level by being dumb. Surely this is
23:14
Speaker 1: about thresholds. Football owners and coaches are a small group
23:19
Speaker 1: of people. They all know each other, They've all done
23:22
Speaker 1: things a certain way for a long time, and doing
23:25
Speaker 1: things that way has made them a lot of money.
23:27
Speaker 1: They have a high threshold. These are a bunch of grandmothers.
23:32
Speaker 1: The only way any of them is going to change
23:34
Speaker 1: their behavior is if some radical goes first. And there
23:38
Speaker 1: are no radical owners in the NFL. There's just Richard Taylor,
23:42
Speaker 1: a geeky, middle aged economist from the University of Chicago
23:46
Speaker 1: with a bunch of equations that you need a PhD
23:48
Speaker 1: to understand.
23:50
Speaker 2: There's some geek at every team who's read our paper.
23:54
Speaker 3: You know.
23:54
Speaker 2: Think of the Jonah Hill character in the movie Bunny Ball. Yeah, right,
24:00
Speaker 2: and nobody pays attention to that guy.
24:07
Speaker 1: Apparently there aren't a lot of radical in basketball either,
24:10
Speaker 1: just the Berries and Shinano Ouaku, the Nigerian American who
24:15
Speaker 1: plays for Louisville, And as it turns out, Mark granavetter.
24:19
Speaker 5: When I was a teenager, and this would have been
24:22
Speaker 5: mostly in summer camp, because I never really played basketball
24:25
Speaker 5: outside of summer camp. But I got to be very
24:28
Speaker 5: good at underhand frees throwing. Oh really, yeah, yeah, I
24:33
Speaker 5: could make almost every shot.
24:34
Speaker 1: I was wrong. There are three conditions under which someone
24:38
Speaker 1: will try this shot. One if you're an offspring of
24:41
Speaker 1: Rick Berry, two if your family is from another continent,
24:45
Speaker 1: and three if you're a world famous sociologist. This, I
24:52
Speaker 1: think gets us a little closer to the puzzle of Chamberlain.
24:56
Speaker 1: In his autobiography, he has this throwaway comment on the
24:59
Speaker 1: subject of shooting underhanded. Chamberlain wrote, I felt silly like
25:05
Speaker 1: a sissy shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I
25:09
Speaker 1: know some of the best foul shooters in history shot
25:12
Speaker 1: that way. Even now, the best one in the NBA,
25:15
Speaker 1: Rick Berry, shoots underhanded. I just couldn't do it. Two
25:20
Speaker 1: key things here. First, he writes, I know I was wrong,
25:25
Speaker 1: just as Granavetta would say, it's not Chamberlain's beliefs that
25:28
Speaker 1: are getting in the way. He knows it's wrong. Then
25:32
Speaker 1: I felt silly like a sissy. Remember the player for
25:35
Speaker 1: Columbia who described shooting underhanded as a granny shot. That's
25:39
Speaker 1: what Chamberlain's talking about. He is the one who look foolish.
25:43
Speaker 1: He's a high threshold guy. He needs everyone to be
25:46
Speaker 1: doing something new before he's willing to join in. But
25:50
Speaker 1: Rick Berry, he's different. Rick Barry's dad comes to him
25:56
Speaker 1: when he's a junior in high school and says, you
25:58
Speaker 1: really ought to shoot underhanded. Rick's a pretty good free
26:01
Speaker 1: throw shooter at that point, maybe seventy percent or so,
26:04
Speaker 1: but his dad tells him he can do better. And
26:07
Speaker 1: your initial reaction is I don't want to do it
26:09
Speaker 1: right because it seemed to you like.
26:10
Speaker 4: A well, I can't do it. I mean, it's with
26:12
Speaker 4: the girl. I said that. I always remember it, and
26:14
Speaker 4: I tell you, Dad, they're going to make fun of me.
26:17
Speaker 4: That's the way the girls shoot. I can't do that,
26:19
Speaker 4: said son. And I remember this so clearly, like it
26:21
Speaker 4: was yesterday. Son. They can't make fun of you if
26:26
Speaker 4: you're making them. And the first game I remember where
26:29
Speaker 4: I did it was on the road in scotch Plains,
26:31
Speaker 4: New Jersey. I shot the free throw guy in the
26:34
Speaker 4: stands yells out, Hey, Barry a big sissy shooting like that,
26:40
Speaker 4: and the guy next to him and I heard it
26:42
Speaker 4: very clearly, he said, what are you making fun of
26:44
Speaker 4: him for? He doesn't miss? So my dad's prophecy came
26:48
Speaker 4: true and I was cool from that point forward, So
26:51
Speaker 4: I didn't care anymore what they said. If I'm making
26:53
Speaker 4: him that's all it really matters.
26:55
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that Barry actually has the same initial
26:58
Speaker 1: reaction as Wilt Chamberlain. I'm going to look like a sissy.
27:03
Speaker 1: But he thinks about it and he decides it doesn't
27:05
Speaker 1: bother him, or rather, his drive to be a better
27:08
Speaker 1: shooter is stronger than his worry about what others think
27:11
Speaker 1: of him. That's exactly what it means to have a
27:14
Speaker 1: low threshold. The same mindset that can lead someone to
27:17
Speaker 1: do something bad, like a teenager driving drunk with very
27:21
Speaker 1: little encouragement, can also lead to brave or innovative behavior.
27:26
Speaker 1: If you have a threshold of zero, you're someone who
27:29
Speaker 1: doesn't need the support, or the approval or the company
27:32
Speaker 1: of otters to do what you think is right. Now
27:35
Speaker 1: here's the catch. The person who thinks this way is
27:38
Speaker 1: not always easy to be around. Barry was never embraced
27:42
Speaker 1: by his fellow players. There were a couple of notorious
27:45
Speaker 1: articles about him in the nineteen eighties, full of quotes
27:48
Speaker 1: like this from a former teammate. If you'd got to
27:50
Speaker 1: know Rick, you'd realize what a good guy he was.
27:53
Speaker 1: But around the league they thought of him as the
27:55
Speaker 1: most arrogant guy.
27:56
Speaker 4: Ever.
27:57
Speaker 1: Half the players disliked Rick, the other half hated him.
28:02
Speaker 1: Here's another quote. He lacks diplomacy. If they sent him
28:05
Speaker 1: to the UN he'd ended up starting World War III.
28:08
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was about winning. I was about giving my
28:12
Speaker 4: best effort, and I had a very difficult time accepting
28:15
Speaker 4: the fact. I wouldn't accept the fact if a teammate
28:17
Speaker 4: is not going to play his hardest.
28:19
Speaker 1: Barry's been out of the game for more than thirty years,
28:21
Speaker 1: but just talking about basketball made him tense. There was
28:25
Speaker 1: a right way to play the game, and when people
28:28
Speaker 1: didn't play it the right way, it drove him crazy.
28:31
Speaker 4: Watch a game, right, guy shoots free throw, misses it,
28:33
Speaker 4: everybody goes up, slaps his hand. Where the hell did
28:36
Speaker 4: that come from? I want to know who the guy is,
28:37
Speaker 4: the guy that started doing that, and who was the
28:40
Speaker 4: genius that said, man, that's a great idea, let's go
28:42
Speaker 4: up and you know, slap the guy's hand and let's
28:43
Speaker 4: go up, disturb his concentration when he's supposed to be
28:46
Speaker 4: focusing on shooting his free throws, and worry about having
28:48
Speaker 4: to slap the hands of his teammates.
28:50
Speaker 1: Do you hear what upsets him? The social part of
28:53
Speaker 1: the game, players paying attention to each other's feelings as
28:57
Speaker 1: opposed to their own performance.
28:59
Speaker 4: Plus the fact if he misses it, you should go
29:00
Speaker 4: up and smack him in the head for missing the
29:02
Speaker 4: free throw, not slap him on the hands and saying
29:04
Speaker 4: it's okay. Because it's not okay. You just cost us
29:06
Speaker 4: a point. I mean, I go nuts when I watch
29:09
Speaker 4: this kind of stuff and nobody even talks about that,
29:11
Speaker 4: and it's something that somebody brought up, somebody copied, and
29:14
Speaker 4: now everybody does it, and it's stupid. I just have
29:18
Speaker 4: a real problem with that.
29:19
Speaker 1: Barry wrote an autobiography in nineteen seventy two called Confessions
29:23
Speaker 1: of a Basketball Gypsy, which I have to say is
29:26
Speaker 1: one of the strangest autobiographies I've ever read. There are
29:30
Speaker 1: sections of the book Barry gives over to various people
29:32
Speaker 1: in his life. They each write a few pages, and
29:35
Speaker 1: he seems to care not one iota about what these
29:38
Speaker 1: people say about him. So here is his mother comparing
29:42
Speaker 1: Barry to his older brother Dennis. Rick has become famous
29:46
Speaker 1: and made a lot of money. But what is that?
29:49
Speaker 1: I think maybe Dennis leads the better life. Or here's
29:53
Speaker 1: his dad defending him. There was an incident in Miami,
29:56
Speaker 1: for example, that was blown out of proportion. I have
29:59
Speaker 1: it on good authority that the player's jaw was broken
30:01
Speaker 1: when he hit the floor, not from Rick's punch. And
30:05
Speaker 1: this is his wife describing how they first met. He
30:08
Speaker 1: was awful to me. He was always shoving me in
30:11
Speaker 1: the pool, and I hated him for it. Oh, I
30:14
Speaker 1: could take it. But there's always someone who goes too far,
30:17
Speaker 1: who does it more than the others, beyond endurance, and
30:20
Speaker 1: for me, that was Rick. I would not let my
30:24
Speaker 1: parents and my wife say these things about me in
30:27
Speaker 1: my own autobiography.
30:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd let people say what they wanted to I
30:30
Speaker 4: didn't ask for editorial rights to be able to go
30:32
Speaker 4: through and see what they said and see, oh no,
30:34
Speaker 4: I don't want that in there. I let him say
30:36
Speaker 4: what they wanted to say.
30:38
Speaker 1: He doesn't care the kind of person who would let
30:40
Speaker 1: bad things be said about him in his own autobiography.
30:44
Speaker 1: Is the kind of person who would shoot a free
30:46
Speaker 1: throw that other people think looks ridiculous. I spent an
30:56
Speaker 1: afternoon with Burry at his condo, and I'd read all
30:58
Speaker 1: that stuff about him. Half the players disliked him, the
31:01
Speaker 1: other half hated him. And I kind of braced myself
31:04
Speaker 1: before I met him. But I liked him, Or maybe
31:08
Speaker 1: it makes more sense to say that I really admired
31:11
Speaker 1: him because I finally understood what someone like Rick Berry
31:15
Speaker 1: stands for. It's perfectionism. And what is a perfectionist? Someone
31:21
Speaker 1: who puts the responsibility of mastering the task at hand
31:25
Speaker 1: ahead of all social considerations. Who would rather be right
31:30
Speaker 1: than liked? And how can you be good at something complex?
31:34
Speaker 1: How can you reach your potential if you don't have
31:37
Speaker 1: a little bit of that inside you. I know, we've
31:42
Speaker 1: really only been talking about basketball, which is just a
31:45
Speaker 1: game in the end, But the lesson here is much
31:47
Speaker 1: bigger than that. It takes courage to be good social
31:52
Speaker 1: courage to be honest with yourself, to do things the
31:56
Speaker 1: right way. Berry made me lunch, a perfectly delicious homemade
32:02
Speaker 1: vegetable soup with an avocado salad, simple, nutritious. When we finished,
32:08
Speaker 1: he cleaned up meticulously. He needed a ride into Charleston,
32:12
Speaker 1: so he got into my rental car. He turned off
32:14
Speaker 1: the heating, which had been on high because the weather
32:17
Speaker 1: had warmed up. He carefully took my rental agreement and
32:20
Speaker 1: tucked it into the sun visor. And then when there
32:23
Speaker 1: was a sudden slowing of the traffic ahead, and I
32:26
Speaker 1: breaked a moment too late. I saw his foot come
32:28
Speaker 1: down in the passenger foot well, as if he were
32:31
Speaker 1: breaking from me. Only he breaked just a fraction of
32:34
Speaker 1: a second before me, because he's Rick Barry, and he
32:38
Speaker 1: does things better than everyone else. And all the while
32:41
Speaker 1: he told stories from his basketball days, recalling shots and
32:44
Speaker 1: scores and things people said as if it were yesterday.
32:50
Speaker 1: I think he understands the price he's paid for being
32:52
Speaker 1: the way he is. It kept coming up.
32:55
Speaker 4: Everybody should have me as a friend. I'm a good friend.
32:59
Speaker 4: I'm a loyal friend. I'm gonna be honest with you.
33:01
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be there if you need me. I mean,
33:03
Speaker 4: i'm a good friend. I'm a good person. I was
33:05
Speaker 4: brought up the right way. I'm a good person. Yet
33:08
Speaker 4: a lot of people don't think.
33:10
Speaker 1: He's not describing an easy life, but think of what
33:13
Speaker 1: he gained. Rick Berry was the best basketball player he
33:16
Speaker 1: could possibly have been, and Wilt Chamberlain could never.
33:20
Speaker 4: Say that he's gone.
33:22
Speaker 2: He's trying to get up.
33:25
Speaker 4: It's almost incomprehensible to me that someone could have that
33:29
Speaker 4: attitude to sacrifice their success over worrying about how somebody
33:36
Speaker 4: feels about you, what it says about you. That's that's sad.
33:40
Speaker 1: Really, you've been listening to revisionist history. Sometimes the past
33:56
Speaker 1: deserves a second chance. If you like what you've heard,
34:10
Speaker 1: we'd love it. If you rate us on iTunes, it
34:13
Speaker 1: helps a lot. You can find more information about this
34:16
Speaker 1: and other episodes at revisionistphistory dot com or on your
34:20
Speaker 1: favorite podcast app. Our show is produced by Neo La Belle,
34:25
Speaker 1: Roxanne Scott and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton.
34:29
Speaker 1: Music is composed by Luis Gara and Taka Yazuzawa. Flon
34:34
Speaker 1: Williams is our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka. Thanks to
34:39
Speaker 1: the Penalty Management team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg.
34:44
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
34:53
Speaker 4: So I used to joke with Welt and God rest
34:55
Speaker 4: his soul. I got to know him well later in
34:57
Speaker 4: my life and said, you should have come to meet
34:59
Speaker 4: with the one. You had horrible technique. You know, I
35:01
Speaker 4: gotta help you