Basketball Diaries
I’ve had the pleasure to live in many wonderful places, and experience a variety of cultures, but there’s a part of me that will always be a native New Yorker. People who know me know of my love for basketball, and that I’m a lifelong New York Knicks fan. This has not been easy as the team has not won a championship since the glory days of 1969-1973. That’s 50 years ago!!
As of this writing the Knicks are still in this year’s playoffs, and for Knick fans hope springs eternal. Unlike many years past, this year’s Knicks team has been a pleasure to watch. They display a combination of passion, physical and mental toughness, gracefulness and skill. They play the game the way it was meant to be played, with ball movement, rebounding, total team commitment, tough defense, and a degree of grit and relentlessness that lets everyone know they can’t be counted out.
In my recently published book, “Can’t Tame a Mongoose”, I included the following passage about basketball in a chapter that took place when I was working at Applied Biosystems in the mid 1990s and living in Half Moon Bay, California:
I joined a men’s basketball league that played night games at the local high school. Basketball had been a passion of mine ever since growing up in Greenburgh, and I tried to find places to play everywhere I lived. As a young boy I played for hours every day, rain or shine, often until it got too dark to see the rim—or until I could hear my mom calling for me to come home for dinner. I’m not talking about sanctioned games now, but pickup games, out in the street, anywhere I could find a hoop.
If you showed up at a court and a game was going on, you’d have to call “Next” and wait for the first two teams to finish before your chance to play. Once your team took the court, you could only continue to play so long as you won. Competition was brutal, even as a ten-year-old. If you couldn’t play well enough to contribute to a team win, then you wouldn’t be picked to play with whoever called “Next,” and you might never get to play again that day. Even worse, you might get a reputation as a loser and be ostracized by the other kids. Fear of failure can be a powerful motivator. The fear of missing out on fun can be too.
Basketball reinforced the lessons my parents had taught me about judging people based on their skills and the way they treated others and nothing else. It didn’t matter what they looked like, how they dressed, how they spoke, or where they came from. Were they skilled? Were they team players? Were they people you could trust with “Next” on the line? Just as importantly, through my love of basketball I found a vehicle to meet new people and develop new relationships, many of which would never otherwise have formed.
This excerpt may not seem to be about business or the life sciences, but many of the values, skills and approaches discussed are the same as those that leaders – especially those in early stage companies – need to rely on when confronting life’s inevitable unexpected events. These are moments of truth when a business may be doomed to fail if you can’t figure out a way to overcome a challenge, or leverage an opportunity.
A few examples of elements of an ongoinig “practice” that can help one be best prepared to navigate unexpected events include:
Building strong teams of people from diverse backgrounds who bring complementary skills, respect one another, and are committed to a common vision.
Approaching your mission with a combination of focus, persistence, creativity, open-mindedness and resilience.
Continually building new relationships, and not necessarily in any directed manner. You never know in advance what skill or network you may need to tap into when something completely unanticipated arises in the future.
These are just a few examples, with more illustrated through real life stories from the emerging field of DNA and genome analysis, in “Can’t Tame a Mongoose.”
NOTE: The ebook version of "Can't Tame a Mongoose" is available now through May 1 at a promotional price of $0.99 wherever books are sold online:
