This:
“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence -- the slingshot part -- is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.
Made me think of this:
“Again, we’ve got a genius on the bench next to me, the architect, Matt Matheny, who again doctored up our pressure just a little bit. We actually almost got a 10-second violation once. But he had Andrew bang back and forth between the two guards rather than just initially trap the first guard. And by trapping that second guard, it forced Landry to bring the ball up the court. Now Landry is starting to swing offense. Landry maybe gets tempted to drive it all the way to the basket. All of a sudden the rhythm of their offense is broken.”
2 comments:
I can't put my hands on it right now, but once I read an article about how in the days of combat with swords, the side that charged first, and with conviction, would always win. Even hardened soldiers have a terror of the sword, so if a seemingly fearless enemy charges with swords forward, and no apparent willingness to back down, the opponent often turns tail. The interesting question is how does one become that irresistable force. (Side note: in the field of direct combat, note that Buster Douglas defeated Mike Tyson simply because he was the first minimally talented person to face the task with the fearless conviction that he could do it.) The Davidson basketball team in those tournament games had that irresistable fearlessness.
It's irresistible, isn't it? Does this thing not have an edit option?
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