David Hollander - How Basketball Can Save the World: 13 Guiding Principles for Reimagining Whats Possible

Its like this.

I walk by a basketball court, any court, I stop. Full stop. If theyre playing, Ill hang out for a whilejust to watch, to hear basketball sounds. Lose myself. Forget time.

Merely seeing the word basketballanywhere, in any formatheightens my senses and raises my level of engagement.

With the object in my hands, Im like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. I am transformed. I am someone else, somewhere else. And in that space, the space of basketball, life is somehow more and I am better.

You think this is all a bit much? Let me go further. I dont see basketball simply as part of my identity. I see it as an existential matter, as if without it Im not really even here.

So many understand this. Yet it takes one to know one. And when we meet, it only takes a moment before one of us asks the other: Do you still play? This is our handshake. This is our measure. It is our check against whether and how, and how much, we really are still here. We ask because we know the value of playing. We know whats at stake when you stop playing. And now, as old as I am, I know Im getting closer to not playing. And that possibility brings fundamentally important things into sharp focus: basketball, my life. Whether and how I remain cosmic. Whether I am still free.

Basketball is an ever since thing for me. Ever since my dad put a twelve-by-twelve-foot blacktop in the backyard before I was born. Ever since I spent thousands of dusks on that blacktop practicing, which always ended with the same plea: Just one more shot, Mom! Ever since CYO and Summer League championships. Ever since varsity, coaching, and countless public courts from Alphabet City to Shanghai, Nashua to the Negev, Toronto to Las Terrenas. From wherever I could find some decent run. Later, off the court, as a person in the world, celebrating the game in classrooms, boardrooms, and back rooms with league commissioners, power brokers, producers, present and future Hall of Famers, sneaker executives, playground legends, and cultural tastemakers. All this time, basketball and I have never let go of each other.

Basketball stays with me. Its what I return to. Its where I feel my whole self integrated, where I find balance. Where the world makes sense, where my relationship with other people gets right. It is my sanctuary. My truth. It is a lifetime pass to a universally shared space and consciousness, bonding me with all who know, have known, and will know what I know. And I know Im not alone.

Many, including Franklin Foer in his excellent How Soccer Explains the World, have used sport as a lens to view culture, conflict, and social conditions. But what if basketball could actually save the world by helping us think differently about solving world problems?

On an intuitive level, I feel that it can. But on a deeper level, I also know that it can. Basketball is just so different from other sports. Its basic playing space, fifty feet by ninety feet, is much smaller than a soccer or football field, which can be up to four times as long. Basketball players, like people in the world at large, must navigate shared space. In so doing, they must closely observe and successfully understand each other. With no equipment and playing basically in undergarments, they are exposed to one anotherteammate to teammate, teammate to opponent, and participant to spectatorup close and clearly. And in basketball, all participants do all things. No one is prohibited from going to any particular place on the court, or doing more or less than anyone else. Not so in football, where player positions and functions are strictly defined, specialized, and differentiated. Baseball is ultrapositional, particularly when it comes to the pitcher. Even in soccer or hockey, where the principles of movement somewhat approximate basketball, defensive players typically dont spend much time in the offensive area, and the uniquely positioned goalie has radically different powers than the other players. In basketball, players switch between offense and defense in an instant; theres no separate unit to do one or the other.

In life, as in basketball, we often must change our positionfluidly and without warningto meet changing circumstances. In other large field and court sports, its possible that over the course of the game, certain players may never even come near one another. Thats not possible in basketball. In basketball, everyone on the court is intimatelyin a relational and spatial sensetied to everyone else.

Im not saying other sports dont teach us wonderful things. Im saying this sport is particularly good at showing us how to be in this world with each other and make it better. Im making an objective observation: The game is more human in size, interaction, structure, and participatory experience. As a result, applying basketball as a worldview would be a lot more apt to solving the problems of humanity.

In 2019, I finally got the opportunity to test the idea of basketball as a philosophy with a course I began teaching at New York University called How Basketball Can Save the World.

The genesis of the class took the form of a question: Isnt it time to look to new systems of thinking, leadership, problem solving, efficiency, fairness, and equality? For thousands of years, the world has been led by the same kinds of leadersmonarchs, generals, clergy, politicians, economists, lawyers, and captains of industry. Those leaders and thinkers created societal practices and schools of thought