Confidence is real
Today: John Saward, a writer based in Chicago.
Issue No. 274
Detroit Pistons, Momentum, Belief
John Saward
Detroit Pistons, Momentum, Belief
by John Saward
In late February, the Detroit Pistons beat the Boston Celtics 117-97. The Celtics, a kind of perverse, analytics-defiled basketball project joylessly hunting 3-pointers with the cold determination of a hedge fund manager, have scored under 100 points in just six games this year. It was Detroit’s eighth win in a row and a night of beautiful mayhem: 13 steals and 14 offensive rebounds, shooting just 59% from the foul line and taking 16 fewer threes than Boston. A three-minute stretch of absolutely sweltering, honestly almost deranged defense to start the 4th quarter that seemed to set bouncing screensavers autoplaying in the eyes of everyone on the Celtics bench as the deficit hit 19. It was the kind of game that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, a sequence of chaos wiping Immaculate Efficiency out of the stadium.
After the game, a reporter asked Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff if he believes in momentum, the hard-to-quantify, near-spiritual weather pattern in sports of every kind, but one that has been dismissed as old-timey superstition by all the pedants and MBA zombies now kicking their feet up in front offices. To them, what plays to you on television and what feels in your gut like the cresting wave of something beautiful and absurd is just you making myth and romance out of noise in the data.
Coach, are we finding out that momentum is real?
Keep us breathing fire!
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