David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

seventy feet. Occasionally teams played
a full-court press—that is, they contested
their opponent’s attempt to advance the
ball up the court. But they did it for only
a few minutes at a time. It was as if there
were a kind of conspiracy in the
basketball world about the way the game
ought to be played, Ranadivé thought,
and that conspiracy had the effect of
widening the gap between good teams
and weak teams. Good teams, after all,
had players who were tall and could
dribble and shoot well; they could
crisply execute their carefully prepared
plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then,
did weak teams play in a way that made
it easy for good teams to do the very