Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Paint

The Breaks of the Game

THE BREAKS OF THE GAME Scott A. Davison Luck and Skill IN BASKETBALL, AS in everyday life, luck plays a role in the outcome of things. In fact, sometimes luck appears to play such a pivotal role in a game that we are tempted to think that the outcome wasn’t fair. Should we ever draw that conclusion? How are luck and fairness related? First, let’s consider the connection between luck and skill. Daniel Dennett, a contemporary American philosopher, describes it this way. Over time, luck tends to average out in sports, because it is randomly distributed. As gamblers routinely discover, there’s no reliable way to be lucky. There are no true lucky charms or habits, for example, although believing in them may have positive psychological effects. By contrast, skill leads to predictable results. As Dennett says, “The better you are, the less luck you need, and the less your successes count as merely lucky. Why? Because the better you are, the more control you have over your performance.”1 Since control is always a matter of degree, so too is luckiness. Consider someone who makes a half-court shot, for example. If this person is a randomly chosen fan who makes the shot during a halftime contest and wins a million dollars, then we would say that it was a very lucky shot indeed. If the shot is made by an NBA player at the end of a quarter, then we would say that the shot was a little bit lucky, but not as lucky as the fan’s shot, since the NBA player has more control over his shot than the fan does. As Dennett says, for star athletes, “the threshold for what counts as luck is considerably higher.”2 Finally, if the half-court shot hapLuck and Fairness in Basketball 84 Scott A. Davison pens to be a hook shot made by Meadowlark Lemon, the former Harlem Globetrotters great, then we wouldn’t say it was a lucky shot at all, since he made that shot all the time. (His contemporary heir apparent is Matt “Showbiz” Jackson, who regularly makes an unbelievable behind-theback half-court shot.) So the more skill a person has, the less luck is involved. Since skills are relative to persons, as we can see from the examples just discussed, it follows that luck is relative to persons and their abilities. What counts as lucky for one person might not count as lucky for another. Many of Michael Jordan’s improvised layup shots (after being fouled in the lane) seemed to be lucky, but he made so many of them that it seems unlikely that they always were. The very same shots, if made by Kurt Rambis, would certainly have been lucky. (Sorry, Kurt.) Luck is also relative to times, since what is lucky for someone at one time might not be lucky at another time. For example, the first half-court hook shot that Meadowlark Lemon made was certainly a very lucky shot, but the five-hundredth one certainly wasn’t so lucky. So luck is a matter of degree, it is relative to persons and their abilities , and it is relative to times. The more skilled a person is, the more reliably and predictably he or she can accomplish something, and the less luck is involved. Luck is not a special kind of force in the world that can be reliably exploited, like gravity or solar radiation; instead, we use the word “luck” as a convenient way to refer to those good and bad things that happen in people’s lives that are beyond their intentional control. Luck and Fairness Now that we’ve explored the connection between luck and skill, we should consider the relationship between luck and fairness. There are two conceptions of fairness that are worth considering here: one is the conception of fairness in terms of equality, and the other is the concept of fairness in terms of desert. Let’s consider each of these in turn. One common conception of fairness is the idea of equality: a game is fair to the extent that all things are equal. Fans sometimes object to what they perceive as bad officiating by saying, “Call it both ways, ref!” This indicates a desire for things to be equal, so that each team faces the same 85 The Breaks of the Game challenges and opportunities, without...