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

the guy out of the building. I was afraid.
I think he couldn’t stand it because here
were all these blond-haired girls who
were clearly inferior players, and we
were killing them.”
All the qualities that distinguish the
ideal basketball player are acts of skill
and finely calibrated execution. When
the game becomes about effort over
ability, it becomes unrecognizable: a
shocking mixture of broken plays and
flailing limbs and usually competent
players panicking and throwing the ball
out-of-bounds. You have to be outside
the establishment—a foreigner new to
the game or a skinny kid from New York
at the end of the bench—to have the
audacity to play it that way.