Michael Broukhim

1 note &

Malcolm Gladwell writes that basketball teams with inferior talent should run full court presses. The full court press is a high risk defensive strategy: it raises the likelihood that a defensive team gets a steal and an easy basket, but it also raised the likelihood that the opponent will get an easy basket. It is a higher variance strategy than a standard defensive strategy. Such a strategy makes sense for a team with little talent. Such a team wants to raise the variance of outcomes, because it is the only way it can win. If an inferior team pursues a variance minimizing strategy, it will always lose, because its mean outcomes are lower than those of superior teams.