Check out the exceptional article by Michael Lewis on Shane Battier and his life in basketball in the New York Times Magazine. Basketball is a complicated mix of individual exceptionalism and team sacrifice to achieve success. Battier's story mixes the personal, analytic, and cultural complexities to show how we often miss the real story when we only pay attention to the things that are easy to count. Battier is the perfect definition of the guy who you hate playing against, but love to have on your team.
On the individual's conflicts in basketball:
"It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them."
On selecting a college to attend:
"When the Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, who had just won a national championship, tried to call Battier outside his assigned time, Battier simply removed Kentucky from his list. 'What 17-year-old has the stones to do that?' Wetzel asks. 'To just cut off Rick Pitino because he calls outside his window?'"
On the racial subtext of hoops:
"For instance, is it a coincidence that many of the things a player does in white basketball to prove his character — take a charge, scramble for a loose ball — are more pleasantly done on a polished wooden floor than they are on inner-city asphalt? Is it easier to “play for the team” when that team is part of some larger institution?"
