Bad apples
I don't know if there are any fans of "This American Life," the National Public Radio show, reading this basketball blog, but this week's episode caught my attention. (The show, by the way, is the most downloaded podcast in America each week, or so they claim.)
The show was titled "Ruining It for the Rest of Us," with stories about bad apples and the effect they can have. As an introduction, host Ira Glass talked with Will Felps, an assistant professor at the Rotterdam School of Management.
Felps has done research into the nature of group dynamics, which I think should interest anybody who is a fan of team sports. Felps did a study involving three types of bad apples - - jerks, slackers and pessimists - - to see the damage they can do.
He organized four-person teams of college students who were given 45 minutes of management tasks to perform. There was a $100 per person prize for the team that did the best, so there was a healthy incentive for everyone involved.
As part of the experiment, Felps had an actor step into a team with another three unsuspecting members at times. The actor was trained - - and I love this - - to be a jerk, a slacker or a pessimist.
The jerk would put everyone else down in the group, saying things like, "Have you ever taken a business course before?" The slacker text messaged throughout and started eating in the middle. The pessimist acted as if his cat had died (seriously).
The thinking was that the group would be able to overcome this one individual. The opposite was true. Even with smart and talented people, the groups that included the bad apple performed 30 to 40 percent worse in completing tasks, according to Felps.
I will admit to finding stuff like this fascinating. Immediately I started to think about all the jerks, slackers and pessimists you can find in NBA locker rooms. How much do they actually succeed in dragging down a team?
Are there a bunch of .500 teams out there with the talent to win 55 games if they only got rid of the one bad apple in their locker room? It's a fascinating question. Felps' groups also didn't have coaches trying to point things in the right direction like NBA teams do.
Talking about the study, Felps said the other individuals in the group would even take on the characteristics of the bad apple, beginning to act like jerks to one another, for example, or joining the pessimist in laying their heads on the table.
Felps also mentioned another study that looked at a range of businesses and industries. It found that the best predictor of success for teams comes not from the person at the top, nor the average person, but the person at the bottom.
As much as we think the Jazz rise and fall based on the play of Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer and Andrei Kirilenko, maybe the contributions of Kyrylo Fesenko and Morris Almond and Ronnie Price actually are the most important.
* * *
Sometimes what we do as writers feels more like a dance of predictability. I ask Jerry Sloan after Saturday's loss if going to double overtime against Detroit and traveling to Chicago the day of the game had any impact. He answers in no uncertain terms that it shouldn't have.
Then we get to practice Monday at Moody Bible and ask Sloan about having this two-day break between games at the end of the trip. Starting his answer, Sloan says, "Some of the things that happened in the game indicated it looked like they might be a little bit tired."
There you go.
* * *
For what it's worth, the Jazz players are absolutely convinced that Milwaukee is the worst stop on the NBA circuit. Maybe they'll change their tune after switching hotels this season, but I don't think so. We're supposed to get hit with another snowstorm beginning Tuesday.
That would make four snowstorms on one trip, which would have to be some kind of record. We drove through the snow from Boston to New Jersey last Tuesday. Then came Friday's storm in Detroit, which probably still has Interstate 75 shut down.
It snowed on the drive to United Center on Saturday in Chicago and is forecast to snow again Tuesday. I'm just disappointed that we couldn't add one more game in Cleveland or Minnesota just to hit all of the NBA's coldest cities at the coldest time of the year.
--Ross Siler
The show was titled "Ruining It for the Rest of Us," with stories about bad apples and the effect they can have. As an introduction, host Ira Glass talked with Will Felps, an assistant professor at the Rotterdam School of Management.
Felps has done research into the nature of group dynamics, which I think should interest anybody who is a fan of team sports. Felps did a study involving three types of bad apples - - jerks, slackers and pessimists - - to see the damage they can do.
He organized four-person teams of college students who were given 45 minutes of management tasks to perform. There was a $100 per person prize for the team that did the best, so there was a healthy incentive for everyone involved.
As part of the experiment, Felps had an actor step into a team with another three unsuspecting members at times. The actor was trained - - and I love this - - to be a jerk, a slacker or a pessimist.
The jerk would put everyone else down in the group, saying things like, "Have you ever taken a business course before?" The slacker text messaged throughout and started eating in the middle. The pessimist acted as if his cat had died (seriously).
The thinking was that the group would be able to overcome this one individual. The opposite was true. Even with smart and talented people, the groups that included the bad apple performed 30 to 40 percent worse in completing tasks, according to Felps.
I will admit to finding stuff like this fascinating. Immediately I started to think about all the jerks, slackers and pessimists you can find in NBA locker rooms. How much do they actually succeed in dragging down a team?
Are there a bunch of .500 teams out there with the talent to win 55 games if they only got rid of the one bad apple in their locker room? It's a fascinating question. Felps' groups also didn't have coaches trying to point things in the right direction like NBA teams do.
Talking about the study, Felps said the other individuals in the group would even take on the characteristics of the bad apple, beginning to act like jerks to one another, for example, or joining the pessimist in laying their heads on the table.
Felps also mentioned another study that looked at a range of businesses and industries. It found that the best predictor of success for teams comes not from the person at the top, nor the average person, but the person at the bottom.
As much as we think the Jazz rise and fall based on the play of Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer and Andrei Kirilenko, maybe the contributions of Kyrylo Fesenko and Morris Almond and Ronnie Price actually are the most important.
* * *
Sometimes what we do as writers feels more like a dance of predictability. I ask Jerry Sloan after Saturday's loss if going to double overtime against Detroit and traveling to Chicago the day of the game had any impact. He answers in no uncertain terms that it shouldn't have.
Then we get to practice Monday at Moody Bible and ask Sloan about having this two-day break between games at the end of the trip. Starting his answer, Sloan says, "Some of the things that happened in the game indicated it looked like they might be a little bit tired."
There you go.
* * *
For what it's worth, the Jazz players are absolutely convinced that Milwaukee is the worst stop on the NBA circuit. Maybe they'll change their tune after switching hotels this season, but I don't think so. We're supposed to get hit with another snowstorm beginning Tuesday.
That would make four snowstorms on one trip, which would have to be some kind of record. We drove through the snow from Boston to New Jersey last Tuesday. Then came Friday's storm in Detroit, which probably still has Interstate 75 shut down.
It snowed on the drive to United Center on Saturday in Chicago and is forecast to snow again Tuesday. I'm just disappointed that we couldn't add one more game in Cleveland or Minnesota just to hit all of the NBA's coldest cities at the coldest time of the year.
--Ross Siler
5:43 PM
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1 Comments:
I think that last year's Jazz is a fine example of where getting rid of a bad apple can get you.
I think we were 16-16 when we made the trade to get Korver in exchange for the Gira.
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