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“So if we want to think like a scientist more often in life, those are the three key objectives—to be
humbler about what we know, more confident about what’s possible, and less afraid of things that don’t matter.” That’s from Tim Urban, who will soon be recognized as one of tomorrow’s polymaths (like many of you, he lives in New York—I’d recommend meeting him for coffee sometime).
For the Sixers, this has meant efforts like tracking every shot in every gym where we shoot, making predictions in writing about what we think will happen with a player or a team, and generally asking more questions about the game than some are comfortable to have said aloud.
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A healthy respect for tradition
While contrarian views are absolutely necessary to truly deliver, conventional wisdom is still wise. It is generally accepted as the conventional view because it is considered the best we have. Get back on defense. Share the ball. Box out. Run the lanes. Contest a shot. These things are real and have been measured, precisely or not, by thousands of men over decades of trial and error. Hank Iba. Dean Smith. Red Auerbach. Gregg Popovich. The single best place to start is often wherever they left off.
There are plenty of caricatures of our approach on your behalf, the most common of which is that
folks here don’t even watch the games. That instead there is some mystical way by which we make decisions that doesn’t have anything to do with building a basketball team. That’s simply untrue.
Maybe someday the information teams have at their disposal won’t require scouring the globe
watching talented players and teams. That day has not arrived, and my Marriott Rewards points prove it from all the Courtyards I sleep in from November to March. There is so much about projecting players that we still capture best by seeing it in person and sharing (and debating) those observations with our colleagues. What kind of teammate is he? How does he play under pressure? How broken is his shot? Can he fight over a screen? Does he respond to coaching? How hard will he work to improve? And maybe the key one: will he sacrifice—his minutes, his touches, his shots, his energy, his body—for the ultimate team game that rewards sacrifice? That information, as imperfect and subjective as it may be, comes to light most readily in gyms and
by watching an absolute torrent of video.
Some tradition awaits us everyday at the office. I inherited Marlene Barnes as my executive assistant, a widowed lifelong Philadelphian that joined the Sixers in the fall of 1977. I was born in the winter of 1977. Marlene has worked for 11 different GMs and 5 head coaches at the Sixers. The names evoke many memories for you lifelong Sixers fans and students of history like me: Pat Williams, John Nash, Gene Shue, Jim Lynam, John Lucas, Brad Greenberg, Larry Brown, Billy King, Ed Stefanski, Rod Thorn. With us, she was immediately thrown into a new, more entrepreneurial work environment with a boss full of quirks different than any she had ever encountered. She adapted wonderfully, and now is a regular Slack wizard along with much of our staff, has seamlessly plugged into one productivity hack after another, and has ordered more books from Amazon than she ever thought possible. Her presence served as an everyday reminder to me of the impermanence of my leadership. I told her within a few weeks of working together that when I see her in the mornings I’m reminded that I am a steward—today’s steward—of her Sixers.
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