Fake a Pass to Make a Pass
The best basketball teams almost always are so because they have at least one guy with eyes in the back of his head. One guy who sees not just what is happening but any number of things that could be happening next. One guy who makes everybody else look like a million dollars because of where he puts the ball.
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Basketball is a passer’s game. Elite passing requires vision and timing and an others-focused mindset-- things that are tough to teach and even harder to learn. But it also hinges on a concrete skill set, a polished mode of delivery diverse enough to survive the antics of defenders whose job is to prevent the ball from moving as it needs to. Unfortunately, lots of players—even those with a sophisticated skills set-- get hung up on the guy who is in the way. The great ones, however, use the defender to their advantage. Instead of trying to cut through the clutter, they move it out of the way--by faking a pass to make the pass they wanted all along.
Every parent knows exactly what that means. The fake is part of our repertoire. We don’t enroll our children in piano so that they can perform at Carnegie Hall, we enroll them in piano so that they can learn discipline, work ethic, and how to do their best in front of others even when they’re scared. We don’t sign our children up for t-ball so that they can make the big leagues, we put them on rosters with adorable matching uniforms so that they can learn how to win and lose and be a part of something bigger than themselves.
We make up songs to teach our kids the states and all their capitals and create scavenger hunts to get them to immerse themselves in a museum. Just like we hide the pills in applesauce for aging parents or pour bacon grease over the food our dog refuses to eat.
We do this so they will be able to do all other kinds of that.
The fake is quintessential for anyone charged with helping others get better. Parents, coaches, teachers, and leaders at every level from c-suite to nursery school have a responsibility to find a way. Our job is to impart, and yet, something, it seems, is always standing in the way. That’s where the fake comes in—it makes a road where there is none. It creates a brand new path.
I had that physically demonstrated for me as a player during a collegiate basketball practice one day. Thirty years later it’s still burned into my brain. Our team was preparing for an opponent who ran a stifling half court zone, the kind that wigs you out and makes you forget where the basket is, and I kept getting my passes deflected. My coach, growing more frustrated with my every turnover, finally stopped everything. Then she calmly asked my teammate who was playing defense to please hold out her arm. Coach then proceeded to pass the ball off my teammate’s outstretched limb over and over and over, as if her arm were a toss back and the result of the pass might change. Except it didn’t of course. Every single time, the ball died at the point of contact and squirted across the floor. “Leather doesn’t penetrate flesh,” coach said, “Better find another way.”
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That’s the day the pass fake and I formed an impenetrable bond.
Robert Frost once said, “The best way out is always through.” Ehhhh…that sometimes is and sometimes isn’t true. Just ask my former teammate, the one with the still-red arm. But it’s so tempting. Hammering away is so admirable. It feels so…tough and steadfast. That’s how we get the stone to break, right? Except when the handle of the hammer falls off or your back goes out.
Sometimes a better strategy is to go at it another way.
That’s where the pass fake comes in handy. It creates options. If you want to deliver high, you get the defender’s hands to go low. If you want to deliver low, you get the defender’s hands to go high. The fake is a way of creating an entry point so that what could happen next can. A bit of purposeful misdirection can sometimes open a hole you could drive a tractor through.
Not all problems can be solved by bulling your way through. Sometimes we have to get a little creative to find a path we can go down. Most basketball coaches would trade their left leg for a player who is an adept and willing passer. It’s hard to put a premium on guys who can find a way.
I memorized my multiplication tables in two days because my third-grade teacher made a game of it, and I was determined to win. And I learned a bit about chess simply because I got caught up in the storyline of the Queens Gambit on TV. Little is better than learning without knowing that you are. That’s the beauty of the fake. It brings the lessons in the side door.