Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Paint

What Would Machiavelli Do?

WHAT WOULD MACHIAVELLI DO? Regan Lance Reitsma I’M A LITTLE embarrassed to admit that I vividly recall several “strategic ticky-tackers” my college friends and I encountered in pickup basketball games—eleven years ago. A strategic ticky-tacker is a species of cheat. A “ticky-tacker” is a person who routinely calls nonexistent fouls; a “strategic ” ticky-tacker is someone who does this intentionally, to gain a competitive advantage. It’s not my habit to keep a moral ledger of past transgressions against me. But the thing is, cheats are infuriating. With little effort I can resurrect the personal contempt, righteous indignation, and helpless frustration I felt when confronted with such unscrupulous scheming. I’m going to bring up a few old stories about cheats, but it’s not that I plan to hunt down old perpetrators to exact vengeance. (Surely the statute of limitations for punishing moral violations in pickup basketball expires within a decade.) My intentions are more forward looking and philosophical. For future confrontations, is there a good strategy to beat the cheat? No strategy will be foolproof, of course. However clever we are, the cheat’s shots might be falling, and ours not. But perhaps a little hard thinking will point the way to methods that neutralize, or at least minimize, the benefits the cheater gains from his machinations. Since pickup basketball, like international relations, is an arena that lacks neutral and authoritative rule-enforcers—no third-party referees or (moralistic) league commissioners—why not seek out practical advice from that master of realpolitik, Niccoló Machiavelli? Machiavelli (1469– 1527) is well known for his frank and unvarnished advice to would-be princes seeking political power. Maybe Machiavelli also has something to Confronting the Strategic Cheater in Pickup Basketball 58 Regan Lance Reitsma say to would-be kings of the basketball court. If a cheater stands in your way, how best to defeat him? What would Machiavelli say, and is he right? Two Types of Ticky-Tacker in Pickup Basketball Ticky-tacky (or ticky-tack) refers to “a cheap facsimile,” something “of inferior quality, made to appear as of greater quality.” The term is a putdown , and it comes from the home-construction business. Say Chuff wants desperately to own a grand, beautiful house but can’t afford it. If Chuff simply won’t do without, he might build a cheaper facsimile of the house he covets by skimping on both construction materials and labor costs. Such a house is constructed by “ticking” (hitting lightly) “tacks” (a poor man’s nails). Chuff is trying to pass off a flimsy reproduction as the real thing. When snobby Margaret—unfooled, her aesthetic sense offended —calls Chuff’s house “ticky-tacky,” she means to say not only that it’s not the real thing but also that it’s done in poor taste. As in home construction, so in pickup basketball. In pickup, players call their own fouls, and to accuse a player of “ticky-tacking” is to say he is attempting to pass off a cheap facsimile of a foul as the real thing. The accusation is also a put-down; to call someone a ticky-tacker is to say he habitually, and annoyingly, makes these lousy calls. As I see it, in pickup basketball, there are two types of ticky-tacker: honest and strategic. Neither type is admirable, but only the strategic ticky-tacker is a contemptible cheat. In college intramurals, we regularly played a team that had both sorts. One player, Arjen, was a muscular, hairy-chested seminarian from the Netherlands. If Arjen had the ball in the lane, our players invariably bodied him up, and he invariably called a foul. Arjen took seriously the claim that basketball is not a contact sport. This idea doesn’t make much sense. Try to teach blocking out or setting a pick without saying anything about making contact with a player from the other team. Anyway, Arjen’s foul-calling was ridiculously ticky-tacky, and, given how frequently players come into contact during the flow of a game, his foul-calling rate was ridiculously prodigious. We strongly disagreed with Arjen’s calls. (And we noted—sometimes publicly—the discrepancy between Arjen’s burly physique and his acute 59 What Would Machiavelli Do? sensitivity to the slightest bump.) But we tended to think Arjen came by his ticky-tacking honestly. He didn’t grow up watching or...