I notice, however, that neither JVL nor Sailer disputes the accuracy of Gladwell’s take on the junior girls team coached by Mr. Ranadive (the emphasis of my post). Perhaps it’s impossible to challenge that story, because only Gladwell has reported it.

Alternately, perhaps the full-court press really is an unorthodox strategy that can turn beginners into champions in junior girls basketball, regardless of whether it works in the NCAA or NBA.

If so, I think it illustrates an even broader point than the one you make: that a well-planned surprise is an underdog’s best chance for upset. Rather, approaching the (unspoken) rules of any game from a fresh perspective may allow an underdog to exploit the assumptions made by veteran players. That is Gladwell’s point.

Gladwell’s discussion of naval war games — brushed aside by Steve Sailer — makes the same point. A computer that was totally ignorant of war game conventions beat a whole host of experts.

One of the most overused phrased in the consultant’s dictionary is “thinking outside the box”. But Gladwell’s stories effectively illustrate what this really means. The danger of thinking outside the box is you push your conclusions too far and become trapped in a different box — which Gladwell apparently did, by deriving universal basketball strategies from what works for 12-year-old girls.

http://galleyslaves.blogspot.com/2009/05/sailer-puts-press-on-gladwell.html

The Sailer piece he links to is also instructive.

I don’t disagree with the general thrust of Gladwell’s point (that a well-planned surprise is a massive underdog’s best chance of winning), but using the full court press in basketball is a terrible way to get that point across. It says more about the lack of quality in little girl’s basketball leagues than the brilliance of the strategy that it worked for that one team…