Today's blog was written by Trenton Templetom. Trenton is a senior accounting major and theology minor at the University of Notre Dame and a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching course taught by Play Like a Champion's Professor Clark Power and Kristin Sheehan.
When someone who is not familiar with the
sport of basketball sees a game, on the surface, there might not be a ton of
science that goes into it. One might see Steph Curry just running around
attempting to get open so that he can shoot the ball and hope it goes in, as it
often does. However, new research from the University of Las Palmas de GranCanaria (Spain) recognized quite a bit of science when they observed more than
6,000 NBA games, and their findings are quite intriguing. Researchers found
that basketball games resemble different activities that arise in nature.
There is a hypothesis in science called the Red Queen Evolutionary Hypothesis. It contemplates how species must
continuously improve in order to simply maintain their status within the
environment where they co-evolve alongside other living things. This same
hypothesis, when applied to basketball, is highlighted and researchers found
that basketball teams can be considered self-organized systems. In other words,
basketball teams tend to manage game flow and adapt when new obstacles are
presented to them. Teams repeat certain strategies if they continue to work--such
as keeping a high offensive tempo, and stop any activities that do not appear
to work such as fouling the opposing team’s big man. Faced with a problem, each
team can propose several valid solutions. For example, rather than attacking
the basket, a team decides to shoot outside jump shots. Many different actions
can happen, and sometimes simultaneously. The game play is dictated by each
teams’ creativity.
A closer resemblance to nature can be seen
at the end of games during the final minute where teams really intensify in
hopes of a victory. De Saa Guerra, the head researcher on this topic,
highlights the similarities of nature and basketball in the final minute, “In a
predator-prey system, for instance, or in a natural changing environment with
limited resources, species evolve in their arms race by adapting. They
continuously fight and give it their all just to survive, not to ensure their
triumph. In such cases, a small adaptive advantage can go a long way. Likewise,
basketball teams must fight extremely hard simply to make it to that last
minute, and any advantage -as small as it may seem- can be critical at that moment."
Whatever happened leading up to that final moment no longer matters, and any
mistake, head start or slip-up can determine the outcome of the game.
Just like in nature, the team that is
better able to adapt to the changing environment wins the competition. The
resemblance is eye opening because most people, even researchers, look at
basketball as a random sport dictated by probabilities. However, a closer look
reveals that the flow of basketball is quite similar to what we observe in
nature. Maybe that is why we love basketball so much: because it highlights the
primitive nature in us.
