0:15

Pushkin. The

0:18

greatest game of basketball anyone

0:21

has ever played was in Hershey,

0:23

Pennsylvania, March second,

0:25

nineteen sixty two. That's the big fourth quarter,

0:27

and everybody's thinking about he's

0:29

got sixty nine gone at here's the cold,

0:35

rainy night. Just over four thousand

0:37

people in the stands. Philadelphia

0:39

Warriors versus the New York Knicks one

0:42

cherion hours and have a good shot. They're taking it,

0:44

but mostly they're setting up the big man. The

0:47

star of the Warriors was a man named Wilt Chamberlain.

0:50

No doubt you've heard of him, seven foot

0:52

one, two hundred and seventy five pounds.

0:54

For sheer physical presence, there

0:57

has probably never been anyone like wild.

1:00

There are lots of seven footers who play basketball

1:02

who are basically on the court purely because

1:05

they're seven feet tall. They're clumsy

1:07

and ungainly. Chamberlain was

1:09

not like that. He was as big

1:11

as an oak tree and as graceful as a ballet

1:13

dancer. That season nineteen

1:16

sixty one to nineteen sixty two, he ended

1:18

up averaging more than fifty points a

1:20

game. That record will never

1:23

be broken. So

1:28

March second, Wilt was hungover,

1:31

heaping out all night with a woman he picked up at

1:33

a bar. That's classic Will

1:35

too. He would later claim to have slept

1:37

with twenty thousand women in his life.

1:40

And when he said that, lots of people did the

1:42

math and said there was no way that was possible, given

1:44

the fact that there were only twenty four hours in a day

1:46

and Will only lived to the age of sixty three.

1:49

But even the skeptics were like, well, maybe it's

1:51

ten thousand or eight thousand. It

1:53

was an argument over whether it was an unbelievably

1:56

high number or merely an incredibly

1:59

high number. The

2:06

big Man over the Warriors and the big Man of

2:08

the ninety two points Jars.

2:13

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're

2:15

listening to Revisionist History, where

2:17

every week we re examine the forgotten

2:20

and the misunderstood. This

2:27

week's episode is about Wilt Chamberlain's

2:30

most famous game. Wolf

2:32

got the ball, he's got up, he shoots,

2:39

So back to the game in question. Chamberlain

2:42

makes his first five shots and has twenty

2:44

three points at the end of the first quarter. At

2:46

halftime he has forty one points.

2:49

No one's thinking history just yet, but

2:52

then by the end of the third quarter he has

2:54

sixty nine points and he keeps

2:56

going and going and going. Bill

3:02

so Lui a

3:09

hundred points, the most anyone

3:12

has ever scored in a professional basketball

3:14

game. And here's the most incredible

3:17

thing about it. He shot brilliantly

3:19

from the foul line. That's

3:26

Rick Berry speaking. He was a contemporary

3:28

of Chamberlain's, also a Hall of Famer,

3:31

an absolutely unstoppable scorer.

3:34

I met him at his condo in South Carolina

3:36

where he lives part of the year, so we can follow his son,

3:38

Canyon, who plays basketball for the College

3:40

of Charleston. Barry is seventy

3:43

two, six foot eight inches tall,

3:45

barrel chest, legs that look like

3:47

he had special extensions put on them,

3:50

and that thing that great athletes have and

3:52

never seemed to lose, which is that they kind of

3:54

glide across the floor like they

3:56

have wheels on. A

3:58

big part of this episode is about Barry, but

4:00

other people too, because although this sounds

4:03

like it's going to be a show about basketball,

4:05

the truth is it's not. It's

4:08

a show about good eye he is and why

4:10

they have such difficulties spreading. But

4:13

for the moment, back to Wilt Chamberlain.

4:16

Chamberlain, He's

4:19

made twenty eight out of his thirty two

4:21

shots from the free throw line, eighty

4:24

seven point five percent. The

4:26

reason that's incredible is that when

4:28

Chamberlain came into the NBA, he

4:30

was a horrendous free throw shooter.

4:32

Though worst. Here was a man

4:35

who could excel at virtually every

4:37

physical feat under the sun, who

4:39

could score at will with two

4:41

and sometimes three defenders draped

4:43

all over his body, but put

4:45

him all alone fifteen feet from the basket,

4:48

and he was hopeless. He was

4:50

shooting forty percent from the free

4:52

throw line. That's terrible. But

4:55

this season Chamberlain changes

4:58

tactics. He starts to shoot

5:00

his foul shots underhanded. He

5:02

doesn't release the ball up by his forehead.

5:05

He holds the ball between his knees and

5:07

flicks it towards the basket from

5:09

a slight crouch, and all

5:11

of a sudden, he's a pretty good free

5:14

throw shooter. He gets up to more

5:16

than sixty percent, and that special

5:18

night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, he's an

5:21

incredible free throw shooter. He

5:27

makes twenty eight free throws, the

5:29

most anyone has ever made in

5:32

NBA history. What

5:34

Rick Barry will tell you is that shooting underhanded

5:37

is simply a better way to make foul shots.

5:40

And he knows that because he was one of the

5:42

greatest foul shooters of all time, maybe

5:44

the greatest. I miss nine ten

5:46

in one season, and nine and another and

5:49

the whole season. To put that in perspective,

5:51

Lebron James, the greatest player of the current

5:54

basketball generation, typically misses

5:56

about one hundred and fifty free throws a season.

5:59

Rick Berry would miss nine or ten. I

6:01

think I shot ninety three five or something in ninety

6:03

four seven, something like that, and Rick Berry

6:06

only shot underhanded. From a physics

6:08

standpoint, it's

6:10

a much better way to shoot. Less things that

6:12

can go wrong, less things that you have to worry

6:15

about repeating properly in order for it to be

6:17

successful. But the other thing is is that who

6:19

walks around like this, Yeah,

6:21

their hands and this is not a natural position.

6:23

Yeah, when I shoot underhanded free throws, where are

6:26

my arms hanging straight down the

6:28

way they are normally? And

6:31

so I'm totally completely relaxed.

6:33

It's not in the situation where I have to worry about

6:35

my muscles getting tenser tight and

6:37

then the shot itself. It's a much softer

6:39

shot. So many in my shots even

6:41

if they're a little off they hit so nice and soft,

6:43

and they'll still fall in the basket much

6:46

softer touch, yea, And so you

6:48

have a little bit more margin for error. Some of those shots

6:50

that are a little bit offline have a

6:53

much better opportunity of going into the basket.

6:55

Then when you shoot overhand, so Will

6:57

Chamberlain switches to a better shooting

6:59

technique. It pays off. In the

7:01

greatest basketball game ever played,

7:04

He's playing the way that Rick Berry proved

7:06

basketball players ought to play.

7:09

Then something incredible happens.

7:12

Wilt Chamberlain stops shooting

7:14

underhanded, and he goes back to

7:16

being a terrible foul shooter. Let's

7:27

think about what he did for a moment. Chamberlain

7:30

had a problem, he tested

7:32

out a possible solution, the solution

7:34

worked, and all of a sudden, he's fixed

7:37

his biggest weakness as a player. This

7:39

is not a trivial matter. If you're a basketball

7:42

player and you can't hitch your free throws,

7:44

you're an incredible liability to your team,

7:47

particularly at the end of close games. The

7:50

other side simply fouls you every time you touch

7:52

the ball because they know you'll miss your free

7:54

throw and they'll get the ball back. If

7:56

you can't hitch your foul shots, it means

7:58

you can't be used in a tight game. You

8:01

know what Chamberlain's coach said to him,

8:04

if you were a ninety percent shooter,

8:06

we might never lose. You

8:09

got to know him quite well. I got to know him. You don't, right,

8:11

I just joked with him, said your

8:13

technique was terrible. I mean, but I mean, had

8:15

you stuck with it, I mean, there's

8:17

no telling what he would have done. I mean, the numbers he would

8:19

have put up would have been insane because the

8:21

only way they defended him was to foul. Chamberlain

8:24

had every incentive in the world

8:27

to keep shooting free throws underhanded,

8:29

and he didn't. I think

8:32

we understand cases where people don't do

8:34

what they ought to do because of ignorance. This

8:37

is not that this is doing

8:39

something dumb, even though you are fully

8:41

aware that you're doing something dumb. By

8:44

the way, there have been countless players

8:46

like Chamberlain, players who could have

8:49

been transcendent, devastating

8:51

if only they had been opened to taking

8:53

foulol shots a different way.

8:56

Take Shaquille O'Neal up there

8:58

with Will Chamberlain is one of the greatest NBA

9:00

centers of all time, but an absolutely

9:03

horrendous free throw shooter. Barry

9:06

tried to reason with him once, Oh, you

9:08

actually talk to you. I tried to get Shack to change.

9:11

When I tried to get him do it, he said, I forget. I'd

9:13

rather shoot zero than shoot underhanded. I'm

9:15

just fascinated by that. I don't understand

9:17

it. Yeah. No, the difference is, if Shack

9:20

was an eighty percent free throw shooter, he becomes

9:22

the go to guy on the court

9:24

as opposed to go to the bench guy.

9:28

You change the dynamic of the game. No

9:31

one shoots underhanded. Not even Barry's

9:33

teammates followed his lead, people

9:35

who saw him shoot that way every day and never

9:37

miss one guy. Only George

9:40

Johnson, my teammate with the Warriors, he was

9:42

I think he was like forty eight fifty percent of something

9:44

like that, and I worked with him for one season. I didn't get

9:46

to stay with him. He didn't get the technique down just as

9:49

much as I'd like it. But I think eventually, a

9:51

season or two later, I think George actually shot

9:53

eighty percent. I can actually look it up. Would be interesting

9:55

to see what he did. I'll get George Johnson's stats

9:57

here anything George

9:59

Johnson's stats.

10:01

Okay, stats

10:04

for George Johnson NBA

10:09

are George Johnson stands from the twenty

10:11

fifteen nf thou season, NFL wrong

10:14

guy, wrong season. Let me get

10:16

anyway, we'll look it up. It's it's interesting, I think.

10:19

But what about on your on your high school

10:21

team, did anyone follow you? Oh? No, nobody. I've

10:24

only had one guy ever come to me. An NBA

10:26

guy came to me. I'm will tell you his name, but he

10:28

came to me. He asked me to work with him. I did it. I

10:30

worked with him. I had him shooting really well, and

10:32

he never had the nerve to go back and

10:35

do it. When he tell his name, I don't want

10:37

it's fair to him. I don't want to

10:39

say his name. It's not fair

10:41

to him, like it's some kind of dark,

10:44

shameful secret. College

10:46

basketball is no different. Out of

10:48

the thousands of college basketball players

10:50

today, there are just two who

10:53

shoot underhanded. One is a Nigerian

10:55

American who plays for Louisville called chinanu

10:58

Onuaku. The other is

11:00

Kenyon Berry, who plays for the College of Charleston

11:03

and who in case he missed this earlier,

11:05

happens to be Rick Barry's son. In

11:07

other words, there are only two conditions

11:10

under which people will try the underhanded free

11:12

throw, one if their family is from

11:14

another continent, and two if

11:16

they're an offspring of Rick Barry. Anyway,

11:21

do you want to just quickly describe where we are

11:23

and what we're doing. That's my producer, Jacob

11:25

Smith. He hung out with some players

11:27

on the Columbia University women's basketball

11:29

team and tried to get them to shoot underhanded.

11:33

Our theory was, maybe this is just

11:35

a dumb man's thing. Maybe women

11:37

are more rational when they're on the court. So

11:39

we are in Columbia's basketball

11:41

gym, and we are going to compare overhand

11:44

shooting to underhand shooting.

11:48

Here. That's Arra Talkov,

11:50

a junior in the team. She missed her

11:53

first try. I feel like you could bend in the knee

11:55

a little more in that. Then

11:59

she makes the next two shots, her first

12:01

two ever shooting underhanded. But

12:04

Jacob couldn't get any of the Columbia players interested

12:06

in switching over. Here's Sarah Meade, senior

12:09

point guard. Ever since we were young, we were

12:11

taught to shoot it overhand, and

12:13

you know, as kids you kind of play around

12:15

with the idea of a granny shot or underhand,

12:18

but yeah, I'm not sure we've ever taken

12:20

it seriously. She calls it

12:22

a granny shot, a shot used

12:24

by one of the greatest players ever to play

12:26

the game. Women are as bad as men.

12:30

We like to think that good ideas will spread

12:32

because they're good, because their advantages

12:35

are obvious. But that's not true. So

12:38

why don't they Or to put

12:40

it another way, what is it about Rick

12:42

Barry that allowed him to shoot this way? And

12:44

what is it about Wilt Chamberlain and all the

12:46

others that stands in their way? Let

12:52

me try out a theory on you. It's

12:54

from a sociologist named Mark Grnovator.

12:57

Grnovator is one of the greatest social theorists

13:00

of his generation. If you're an academic

13:02

groupie like I am, Granovator is like

13:04

James Dean. So Grannovator

13:06

came up with something called the threshold model

13:08

of collective behavior. He

13:11

was trying to answer the question of why people

13:13

do things out of character. Use

13:15

riots as his big example. Why

13:17

do otherwise law abouting citizens suddenly

13:20

throw rocks through windows before

13:23

Granovadda came along. Sociologists

13:26

tried to explain that kind of puzzling behavior

13:28

in terms of beliefs. So

13:31

the thinking went, you and I have a set of

13:33

beliefs, but when you throw the rock

13:35

through the window, something powerful

13:38

must have happened in the moment to change

13:40

your beliefs. Something about the

13:42

crowd transforms the way

13:44

you think. Here's

13:48

Granovetta explaining that idea.

13:50

There was a lot of intellectual tradition

13:52

that said that when people got into a crowd,

13:55

their independent judgment went out the window,

13:57

and they somehow became creatures of the crowd,

14:00

and that there was some kind of measthma

14:03

of irrationality would settle over people and

14:06

they would act in ways that they would never act if they

14:08

were by themselves or they weren't influenced by

14:10

the mob mentality. But

14:12

Grana Better doesn't buy it. He

14:14

doesn't think that being part of the mob casts

14:16

some kind of spell that makes everyone irrational.

14:19

To his mind, it's much more subtle and

14:21

complicated than that. People are pretty

14:24

much who they are. But if the

14:26

situation develops in a certain

14:28

way, then there's a domino

14:30

effect. Some people are activated, and that activates

14:33

other people. That activates other people, and it all happen

14:35

so fast. Grana Better says that

14:37

the issue isn't about people having beliefs

14:39

about what's right and then suddenly

14:41

losing those beliefs because they're in a mob.

14:44

The issue is about thresholds. Now,

14:49

what does Granovetter mean by that word threshold?

14:52

A belief is an internal thing.

14:55

It's a position we've taken in our head or

14:57

in our heart. But unlike beliefs,

14:59

thresholds are external. They're

15:01

about pure pressure. Your threshold

15:04

is the number of people who have to do something

15:07

before you join in. Grenovador

15:09

makes two crucial arguments. The first

15:11

is at thresholds and beliefs sometimes

15:13

overlap, but a lot of the time

15:16

they don't. When your teenage

15:18

son is driving a hundred miles an hour at midnight

15:20

with three of his friends, it's not because

15:22

he believes that driving one hundred miles

15:25

an hour is a good idea. In that moment,

15:27

his beliefs are irrelevant. His

15:29

behavior is guided by his threshold.

15:32

An eighteen year old may be drunk at

15:35

midnight in a car with three of his friends.

15:38

That person has a really low threshold.

15:40

It doesn't take a lot of encouragement to

15:42

get him to do something stupid. Grenovador's

15:46

second point is just as important.

15:49

Everyone's threshold is different.

15:52

There are plenty of radicals and troublemakers who

15:54

might need only slight encouragement to throw

15:56

that rock. Their threshold is

15:59

really low. But think about your

16:01

grandmother. She might well need

16:03

her sister, her grandchildren, her

16:05

neighbors, her friends from church, all

16:07

of them to be throwing rocks before or she would even dream

16:10

of joining in. She's got a high

16:12

threshold. The riot has

16:14

to be going on for a very long time and

16:16

has to involve a whole lot of people

16:19

before Grandma will join in. Grannovator's

16:22

argument goes on in much more detail, all

16:24

of it fascinating, and I encourage you, if you're interested,

16:27

to look it up online and read it, because it's

16:29

beautifully clear. But for the

16:31

moment, I just want to focus on the one

16:34

big implication of Granovator's argument.

16:37

What people believe isn't

16:39

going to help you much. If you want to understand

16:42

why they try or don't try difficult

16:45

or problematic or strange things,

16:47

you have to understand the social context

16:50

in which they're operating. Your

16:52

grandmother's belief is that rioting

16:54

is wrong, but there are times when even grandmother's

16:57

might throw rocks through windows. Granovador's

17:01

theory explained a lot of things that have been puzzling

17:03

to me. So here's a good example.

17:06

It's from an interview I did at the ninety second

17:08

Street in New York with the economist

17:11

Richard Taylor, who's one of the leading

17:13

lights in what's called behavioral economics.

17:16

He had a book coming out called Misbehaving,

17:18

and I really liked it, and we thought it would be

17:20

fun if we did an event together. You

17:23

and I have met before, the

17:25

first timing that was at a hotel bar

17:27

in Rochester, yes, the only

17:29

time I've ever Taylor's

17:31

a kind of guy who's interested in everything,

17:34

including sports, and there was a point in

17:36

our conversation when he started to

17:38

talk about the fact that the owners of

17:40

professional football teams do things

17:43

on occasion that are really stupid

17:45

and inexplicable. Take

17:47

the professional football draft. For

17:50

those of you who are not football fans, let

17:52

me explain. Every year, all

17:54

the draft eligible college football

17:56

players are thrown into a big pool, and

17:59

the thirty two professional football teams

18:01

picked the players they want one by

18:03

one. The first player taken is

18:05

the one that people think will be the best professional

18:07

player that person, it's the biggest salary.

18:10

The second player taken is the one predicted

18:12

to be the second best professional player, and

18:15

so on. And after every

18:17

team has picked one player each, they

18:19

all start again and do another round. Because

18:22

the players selected in the first round

18:24

are considered the most valuable, all

18:26

the teams fight over them. They pay

18:28

enormous sums of money and construct

18:31

elaborate deals to try and acquire

18:33

those high draft picks. The

18:35

interesting thing about that is

18:37

there's a market for picks, so

18:40

you can trade the first pick for

18:44

say half a dozen second round picks.

18:46

That's what the market says. Now,

18:49

that implies that the

18:51

first pick is five times

18:54

more valuable than

18:56

an early pick in the second round. Filer

18:58

in a colleague named Kade Massey decide to analyze

19:01

this assumption. Was it really

19:03

true that a first round pick was worth

19:05

half a dozen second round picks? If

19:07

you compute the surplus a

19:10

player provides to his team,

19:12

meaning how good

19:14

his performance is minus

19:18

how much you have to pay him. What

19:20

we found is these second round

19:22

picks are actually more valuable than

19:25

that first pick. But you could get

19:27

five of those for that pick. It's the biggest

19:29

anomaly I've ever found.

19:33

The implication of Taylor in Massey's work is

19:35

the teams should trade away their first round

19:37

picks. They should stockpile players

19:39

in the second and third rounds who

19:41

can be paid a lot less and are nearly

19:44

as good. This is how

19:46

you build a winning football team. So

19:49

what was the reaction of NFL teams to Taylor's

19:51

idea. Well, not long

19:53

after he and cade Massey did their research,

19:55

they got a call from the Washington Redskins.

19:58

It was early in Dan Snyder's

20:00

tenure as owner, and

20:03

I met him and he

20:05

said, oh, we don't want to know about this, and he

20:08

introduced me. I'm going to send my people

20:10

to see you, and they flew

20:12

out to Chicago. I met with Kate and me

20:14

and we told them what our

20:16

findings were. And we basically have two

20:19

pieces of advice, trade down and

20:23

lend picks this year

20:26

from picks next year. With that

20:28

last sentence, Taylor is referring to

20:30

the second thing he and Massey discovered.

20:33

Owners sometimes trade a pick in this

20:35

year's draft for a pick in some future

20:37

draft. They use a rule of thumb to

20:39

figure out how to value the difference between

20:41

a player you can use this year versus a draft pick

20:44

you can't use until some future year. And

20:46

Taylor and Massey discover that the rule

20:48

of thumb makes no sense. It's completely

20:50

irrational. It massively

20:53

overvalues current picks and undervalues

20:56

future picks. Like a good

20:58

economist, Faylor talks about the value

21:00

of that rule of thumb as an interest rate.

21:03

It's like borrowing money. If you compute

21:05

the real interest rate, it's one hundred and thirty

21:08

seven percent per year. In other words,

21:10

for the privilege of having a player now,

21:12

as opposed to waiting a year, the owners

21:15

pay a huge premium. They

21:17

borrow money at one hundred and thirty seven

21:20

percent interest. These guys did not get

21:22

to be billionaires borrowing at one hundred

21:24

and thirty seven percent per year. But that's

21:26

the rule of thumb they use. So anyway,

21:28

we taught his guys Stands

21:31

guys what to do,

21:33

and then we watched the draft eagerly that

21:35

year, and they trade it up and

21:39

borrowed picked this year

21:41

for one next year. So okay.

21:44

In other words, the Redskins did

21:46

the exact opposite of what they should

21:48

have done if they were rational, and

21:50

they weren't the only ones. Kayler and Massi have

21:53

consulted for three NFL franchises

21:55

now and no one has ever followed

21:57

their advice. It gets worse. There's

21:59

a very respected economist named David

22:02

Rohmer who famously proved that football

22:04

teams would win more games if they didn't punt,

22:07

if they simply use all four days to

22:09

try and gain ten yards as opposed to

22:11

giving the ball away to their opponents. So

22:15

since Romer published his work, our

22:17

NFL teams less likely to punt

22:19

on fourth down? You guessed

22:21

it. No to

22:24

tell you how bigness is if you did this

22:26

right, but we think you

22:28

would win one game a year

22:31

more if you also learned

22:35

to go for it more often on fourth

22:38

down another game and a half. So

22:41

just being smart, we

22:43

win at least two games a year

22:45

on average, two

22:49

extra wins in a sixteen

22:51

game season, just by acting

22:53

a little bit differently. Who wouldn't

22:55

do that? But nobody would? Now?

22:59

Is that because they're stupid, because

23:01

they have irrational beliefs? That

23:03

was my first thought when I was listening to Theater talk

23:05

about his football research, Those

23:07

dumb football owners. But that can't

23:10

be right, You don't get to their level

23:12

by being dumb. Surely

23:14

this is about thresholds. Football

23:17

owners and coaches are a small group

23:19

of people. They all know each other, They've

23:21

all done things a certain way for a long

23:23

time, and doing things that way has

23:25

made them a lot of money. They

23:28

have a high threshold. These

23:30

are a bunch of grandmothers. The

23:32

only way any of them is going to change

23:34

their behavior is if some radical

23:37

goes first. And there are no

23:39

radical owners in the NFL. There's

23:41

just Richard Taylor, a geeky middle

23:43

aged economists from the University of Chicago

23:46

with a bunch of equations that you need a PhD

23:48

to understand. There's

23:51

some geek at every team who's

23:53

read our paper. You know. Think of the

23:55

Jonah Hill character in the movie

23:57

Bunny Ball. Yeah, right, and

24:00

nobody pays attention to that guy. Apparently

24:07

there aren't a lot of radical in basketball

24:10

either, just the Berries and

24:12

Shinano on Nuwaku, the Nigerian

24:14

American who plays for Louisville, and

24:17

as it turns out, Mark Granovada.

24:19

When I was a teenager, and

24:21

this would have been mostly in summer camp because I never

24:23

really played basketball outside

24:26

of summer camp, but I got

24:28

to be very good at underhand

24:30

free throwing. Oh really, yeah, yeah, I

24:33

could make almost every shot. I was wrong.

24:35

There are three conditions under which someone

24:38

will try this shot. One if

24:40

you're an offspring of rick Berry, two

24:42

if your family is from another continent, and

24:45

three if you're a world famous sociologist.

24:52

This, I think gets us a little closer to the puzzle

24:54

of Chamberlain. In his

24:56

autobiography, he has this throwaway

24:59

comment on the subject of shooting underhanded.

25:02

Chamberlain wrote, I felt

25:04

silly like a sissy shooting

25:06

underhanded. I know I was wrong.

25:09

I know some of the best foul shooters in

25:11

history shot that way. Even now,

25:13

the best one in the NBA, Rick Berry, shoots

25:16

underhanded. I just couldn't do it.

25:19

Two key things here. First, he

25:21

writes, I know I was wrong,

25:24

just as Grennovetter would say. It's not Chamberlain's

25:27

beliefs that are getting in the way. He knows

25:29

it's wrong. Then I

25:32

felt silly like a sissy.

25:34

Remember the player for Columbia who describes

25:37

shooting underhanded as a granny shot.

25:39

That's what Chamberlain's talking about. He's

25:42

the one to look foolish. He's a high

25:44

threshold guy. He needs everyone to

25:46

be doing something new before he's willing

25:48

to join in. But Rick Berry

25:51

he's different. Rick

25:54

Berry's dad comes to him when he's a junior in high

25:57

school and says, you really ought to shoot underhanded.

26:00

Rick's a pretty good free throw shooter at that

26:02

point, maybe seventy percent or so, but

26:04

his dad tells him he can do better. And

26:07

your initial reaction is I don't want to do it

26:09

right because it seemed to you like, well,

26:11

I can't do it. Think I mean it, swear the girl I said that. I

26:13

always remember, and I tell you, Dad,

26:15

they're going to make fun of me. That's the way

26:17

the girls shoot. I can't do that, said son.

26:20

And I remember this so clearly, like it was yesterday.

26:22

Son. They can't

26:25

make fun of you if you're making them. And

26:27

the first game I remember where I did it was on

26:30

the road in scotch Plains, New Jersey. I

26:32

shot the free throw guy and stands

26:34

yells out, hey, Barry a big sissy

26:37

shooting like that, and

26:40

the guy next to him and I heard it

26:42

very clearly, he said, what are you making fun of

26:44

him for? He doesn't miss? So

26:47

my dad's prophecy came true,

26:49

and I was cool from that point four, So I didn't

26:51

care anymore what they said. If I'm making

26:53

him, that's all that really matters. What's interesting

26:56

is that Barry actually has the same initial

26:58

reaction as Will Chamberlain. I'm

27:00

going to look like a sissy. But

27:03

he thinks about it and he decides it

27:05

doesn't bother him, or rather, his

27:07

drive to be a better shooter is stronger than

27:09

his worry about what others think of him. That's

27:12

exactly what it means to have a low threshold.

27:15

The same mindset that can lead someone

27:17

to do something bad, like a teenager

27:20

driving drunk with very little encouragement, can

27:22

also lead to brave or innovative

27:24

behavior. If you have

27:26

a threshold of zero, you're someone who

27:29

doesn't need the support, or the approval

27:31

or the company of others to do what you think

27:33

is right. Now here's

27:35

the catch. The person who thinks

27:37

this way is not always easy to be around.

27:40

Barry was never embraced by his fellow

27:43

players. There were a couple of notorious

27:45

articles about him in the nineteen eighties full

27:47

of quotes like this from a former teammate. If

27:50

you'd got to know Rick, you'd realize what a

27:52

good guy he was. But around

27:54

the league they thought of him as the most arrogant

27:56

guy. Ever. Half the players

27:58

disliked Rick, the other half hated

28:00

him. Here's another quote,

28:03

he lacks diplomacy. If they sent

28:05

him to the u N, he'd end up starting World

28:07

War three. Yeah.

28:08

Well, I was about winning.

28:11

I was about giving my best effort, and I had a very

28:13

difficult time accepting

28:15

the fact that I wouldn't accept the fact if a teammate is

28:17

not going to play his hardest. Barry's been

28:20

out of the game for more than thirty years, but just

28:22

talking about basketball made him tense. There

28:25

was a right way to play the game, and

28:27

when people didn't play it the right way,

28:29

it drove him crazy. Watch a game, right,

28:31

guy shoots free throw, misses it, everybody goes up, slaps

28:34

his hand. What where the hell did that come

28:36

from? I want to know who the guy is, the guy that started

28:38

doing that, and who was the genius that said,

28:41

man, that's a great idea. Let's go up and you know, slap

28:43

the guy's hand and let's go up to sturbest concentration.

28:45

When he's supposed to be focusing on shooting his free throws

28:47

and worry about having to slap the hands of his teammates.

28:50

Do you hear what upsets him The social

28:53

part of the game, players paying

28:55

attention to each other's feelings

28:57

as opposed to their own performance, plus the

28:59

fact if he misses it, you should go up and smack him in the

29:01

head from missing the free throw, not slap him on

29:03

the hands and saying it's okay. Because it's not okay.

29:05

You just cost us a point. I mean,

29:08

I go nuts when I watch this kind of stuff and nobody

29:10

even talks about that, And it's something that somebody

29:12

brought up, somebody copied, and now everybody

29:14

does it, and it's stupid.

29:17

I just have a real problem with that. Barry

29:19

wrote an autobiography in nineteen seventy two

29:22

called Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy,

29:24

which I have to say is one of the strangest

29:27

autobiographies I've ever read. There

29:29

are sections of the book Barry gives over

29:31

to various people in his life. They

29:33

each tried a few pages, and he seems

29:36

to care not one iota about

29:38

what these people say about him. So

29:40

here is his mother comparing Barry to

29:43

his older brother Dennis Rick

29:45

has become famous and made a lot of money.

29:48

But what is that? I think maybe

29:50

Dennis leads the better life. Or

29:52

here's his dad defending him. There

29:55

was an incidant in Miami, for example, that was

29:57

blown out of proportion. I have it on good

29:59

authority that the player's jaw was broken when he hit

30:02

the floor, not from Rick's punch. And

30:05

this is his wife describing how they

30:07

first met. He awful

30:09

to me. He was always shoving me

30:11

in the pool, and I hated him for it. Oh,

30:14

I could take it, but there's always someone who goes

30:16

too far, who does it more than the others,

30:18

beyond endurance, and for me, that

30:21

was Rick. I would

30:23

not let my parents and my wife

30:25

say these things about me in my own

30:27

autobiography. Yeah, I'd let people say

30:29

what they wanted. I didn't ask for editorial rights

30:32

to be able to go through and see what they said and see

30:34

although I don't want that in the air, I don't say

30:36

what they wanted to say. He doesn't

30:38

care. The kind of person who would

30:40

let bad things be said about him in his

30:42

own autobiography is

30:44

the kind of person who would shoot a free throw

30:47

that other people think looks ridiculous.

30:55

I spent an afternoon Mcbury at his conduct,

30:58

and I'd read all that stuff about him. Half the

31:00

players disliked him, the other half

31:02

hated him. And I kind of braced

31:04

myself before I met him. But I

31:06

liked him, Or maybe it makes

31:08

more sense to say that I really admired

31:11

him because I finally understood

31:13

what someone like Rick Barry stands

31:15

for. It's perfectionism.

31:19

And what is a perfectionist? Someone

31:21

who puts the responsibility of mastering

31:24

the task at hand ahead of

31:26

all social considerations.

31:28

Who would rather be right than liked?

31:32

And how can you be good at something complex?

31:34

How can you reach your potential if

31:36

you don't have a little bit of that inside you.

31:41

I know we've really only been talking about basketball,

31:44

which is just a game in the end, But

31:46

the lesson here is much bigger than that. It

31:49

takes courage to be good social

31:52

courage to be honest with yourself,

31:54

to do things the right way.

31:59

Berry made me lunch, a perfectly

32:01

delicious homemade vegetable soup with

32:03

an avocado salad, simple, nutritious.

32:07

When we finished, he cleaned up meticulously.

32:10

He needed a ride into Charleston, so he got

32:12

into my rental car. He turned off the

32:14

heating, which had been on high because the weather

32:17

had warmed up. He carefully took my

32:19

rental agreement and tucked it into the sun

32:21

visor. And then when there

32:23

was a sudden slowing of the traffic ahead,

32:25

and I breaked a moment too late, I

32:27

saw his foot come down in the passenger footwell,

32:30

as if he were breaking from me, Only he

32:33

breaked just a fraction of a second

32:35

before me. Because he's Rick Barry

32:37

and he does things better than everyone else.

32:40

And all the while he told stories from his basketball

32:43

days, recalling shots and scores

32:45

and things people said as if it were

32:47

yesterday. I

32:50

think he understands the price he's paid for being

32:52

the way he is. He kept coming up,

32:55

everybody should have me as a friend. I'm

32:57

a good friend. I'm a loyal friend.

33:00

I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm gonna be

33:02

there if you need me. I mean, I'm a good friend. I'm

33:04

a good person. I was brought up the right way. I'm

33:07

a good person. Yet a lot of people don't think

33:10

he's not describing an easy life, but think

33:12

of what he gained. Rick Berry was

33:15

the best basketball player he could possibly

33:17

have been, and Wilt Chamberlain

33:20

could never say that he's

33:22

got it. He's trying to get up. It's

33:25

almost incomprehensible to me that

33:28

someone can have that attitude to

33:30

sacrifice their success

33:33

over worrying about

33:36

how somebody feels about you. Where it says about

33:38

you. That's that's sad.

33:40

Really, you've

33:53

been listening to Revisionist History.

33:55

Sometimes the past deserves a second

33:57

chance. If

34:09

you like what you've heard, we'd love it. If you

34:11

rate us on iTunes, it helps a lot.

34:14

You can find more information about this

34:16

and other episodes at Revisionist

34:18

history dot com or on your

34:20

favorite podcast app. Our

34:23

show is produced by Meilabal Roxand

34:25

Scott and Jacob Smith. Our

34:27

editor is Julia Barton. Music

34:30

is composed by Luis Guerra and Taka

34:32

Yazoo Zawa. Flawan Williams

34:35

is our engineer. Fact checker Michelle

34:37

Seracca. Thanks to the Penalty

34:40

Management team Laura Mayor,

34:42

Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg.

34:44

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, so

34:53

I used to joke with wealth and God rest his

34:55

soul. I got to know him well later in my life

34:57

and said, you should have come to me with the un

34:59

You had horrible technique you know what. I'm

35:01

going to help you, but