When Seemingly “Easy” Things Just Don’t Go Right…

Having you ever walked into a situation assuming things would be simple and easy, only to find yourself scrambling when nothing seems to go right? I certainly have.

One memory I have of such an occasion is from my old college intramural basketball playing days. I would like to share this story with you because a) it’s the closest I am going to come to a good, “Glory Days” sports story and b) there are some very useful lessons you can take away from it.

In college I played on an intramural basketball team – I know, you look at me, a 5’8″ stocky Indian guy and instantly think, “basketball star!” But it’s true, I played a lot of basketball and loved it.

(Side note: Our team name was “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy,” which shows you a) what a warped sense of humor we all had and b) how ridiculous college students can be, even – or maybe especially – us hoity toity Ivy League folk…)

During my senior year we had a game against a “friendly rival.” We each knew members of the other team and there was a certain amount of trash talking going on.

Here’s the thing: this other team wasn’t good. At all. And we were good that year – we even made it a few rounds into the playoffs.

So we have this game come up against our rivals, who stink, and we all assume this is going to be a cake walk. Which brings us to lesson #1:

Don’t Take Anything For Granted!

I don’t know what happened, but the game started and we were getting demolished! There was no rhyme or reason to it; it’s not like they had a bunch of ringers or anything. They were just beating the pants off of us. It was as if they could not miss any of their outside shots.

It was getting embarrassing. We were down by almost twenty points in the first half!

Question: Have you ever gone into a situation assuming it would be simple, only to be unfortunately shocked? If so, remember to never take anything for granted and always bring your “A” game – you never know when you’ll need it.

Thankfully, half-time gave us a chance to regroup. We talked it over, and basically said, “this is crazy. We should be killing these guys. Let’s go out and do i

t!”

Which brings us to lesson #2:

“Trying Harder” With a Losing Strategy Accomplishes Nothing!

Yup, our basic big half-time strategic plan was to “do better.” No changes, just, “play harder, do better.” Well that’s just dumb.

We went out and “tried harder,” and guess what? We kept losing! The other team kept hitting their shots, and we stayed just as ineffectual.

Question: Do you ever react to something not working by simply “trying harder”? You do see the futility in that, right? Next time, instead of trying harder, try to actually rethink your strategy.

Now it’s early in the second half, and we are still down by a lot. Then an interesting thing happened. One of my teammates who was not in the game at this time starts yelling from the sidelines, “They can’t dribble! Press them! They can’t dribble!”

Up to this point we had been playing defense the way we always did: a couple feet away, taking away the drive and being able to contest the shot. This is standard defense because it takes away the ball-handler’s ability to drive to the basketball and create all source of defensive switching problems, and it forces the player to make outside shots. As we saw, in this case they were making all of their outside shots. But as my friend pointed out, since they couldn’t dribble, we didn’t need to worry about them driving past as.

After hearing my buddy’s advice I had that, “‘Bruce Leroy suddenly realizes he is the Master’ ah-ha! moment.” I immediately got right up in the ball-handlers face and sure enough, he turned the ball over. Everyone on my team started applying a lot more pressure, and this led to turnover after turnover.

Which brings us to lesson #3:

Sometimes You Need An External Observer!

What’s funny is my friend who called this out was not the biggest basketball fan. He enjoyed playing, but didn’t watch countless hours of basketball, analyzing offenses and defenses. And he never played organized ball. The rest of us who were playing at that moment were much bigger, “students of the game,” if you will. And yet none of us who were playing saw this simple strategic flaw. But as soon as he yelled it out, we all realized that it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Sometimes when you are in the thick of things, you miss obvious fixes and solutions. This is one of the reasons we so often try to apply the “try harder” approach. We are too close to the situation to objectively see any alternatives.

Question: Do you have a (or a few) source of external feedback? Someone who can look at you with a more objective eye and point out some of the obvious things you may be missing? Whether it’s a friend, family member, colleague, or paid professional, I would highly recommend you find some people to give you this kind of help – it can cut massive amounts of time off your learning and advancement.

The game continues, and now, armed with our new defensive strategy, we manage to come back and win the game. I wish I had some heroic story of how it game down to a final shot and my team in-bounded me the ball and I did a beautiful crossover dribble – drive – pull up jumper at the buzzer to win the game. But no, nothing like that happened.

I don’t really remember how the game ended. All I remember is that we almost royally screwed up what should have been an easy win. I learned a lot of lessons that day, and I hope that now you have too.

P.S. If you want some awesome basketball music video motivation, watch this Larry Bird video:

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