Success and Failure in Basketball and Foreign Policy

The process matters. But in a lot of areas, the outcome matters too.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

One of the conceptual confusions novice foreign policy analysts make is conflating policy process with policy outcomes. It’s human nature to assume that if the outcome was bad, the policy outputs formulated in that area — and the decision-making process that let to those outputs — must also be bad. But the world is so complex that sometimes the best process still leads to a bad outcome — and sometimes a crazy process leads to a favorable outcome.

This brings me, naturally, to the NBA playoffs and what it means to succeed and fail.

On Wednesday night, the #8 seed Miami Heat defeated the #1 seed Milwaukee Bucks 128-126 in overtime in what might have been the biggest playoff upset in NBA history. The Heat struggled during the regular season, lost to the Atlanta Hawks in the first play-in game and then barely beat the Chicago Bulls to advance into the playoffs. The Bucks had the best regular-season record in the NBA this year and one of the deepest, most talented rosters in the entire Association. Former MVP and current All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo was injured early in Game One and didn’t play in the next two games, but he played his normal minutes in Games Four and Five. Despite the Bucks leading in both games for most of the first three quarters, Miami closed out the series due in no small part to some Jimmy Butler magic.

This was obviously a tough loss for the Bucks. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World always admires the professionalism of athletes who have to take questions from sports media following a tough loss like that. So it was interesting to see how Antetokounmpo responded when The Athletic’s Eric Nehm asked him whether he viewed this season as a failure. I think it is safe to say that Giannis went deep with his response:

Do you get a promotion every year? In your job? No, right? So every year your work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal — which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal — it’s not a failure. It’s steps to success. I don’t want to make it personal. There’s always steps to it. Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? That’s what you’re telling me. I’m asking you a question, yes or no? Exactly. So why you ask me that question? It’s the wrong question.

There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, so days you are able to be successful — some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win — so other people are going to win, simple as that. We’re going to come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits , try to play better. Not having 10 days straight of playing bad basketball, and hopefully we can win a championship. So 50 years from 1970-2021 that we didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No, it was not. It was steps to it. We were able to win one, hopefully we’re able to win another one.

Now maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Ted Lasso for three seasons now, but a part of me loved that answer. It jibes with the complaints Portland Trail Blazer Damian Lillard lodged back in March about the state of the NBA when he told J.J. Reddick: “while I understand we play to win championships, we all want to win the championship, we can’t keep acting like nothing matters, like the rest of the stuff, the journey doesn’t matter.” Giannis’ comments provoked a surprisingly wide-ranging discussion among the Inside the NBA crew about what it meant to be a success or a failure in basketball and life.

Antetokounmpo’s answer cannot be disputed on a couple of grounds. Success is in part a process as well as an outcome. A failure in the present can pave the way for success in the future.

In foreign policy, sometimes the reverse is true as well. For example, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was an immediate success in ejecting the Taliban and Al Qaeda from the country. What followed was a twenty-year counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaign that would be hard to categorize as a success. The 2021 looks like a failure, and in many ways it probably is — but it also enabled a reallocation of foreign policy energy and resources towards more important priorities.

As much as I love Ted Lasso, however, I appreciate those moments sprinkled into the show when Coach Beard reminds Ted that the goal in professional sports is to win. And not everyone in the sports world bought was Giannis was pitching. The day after Antetokounmpo’s comments, ESPN commentator Kendrick Perkins wasn’t having it:

Having watched the Bucks-Heat series, Perkins has a valid point. The Bucks had the best record in the NBA this year, and an awful lot of folks had them going all the way. Their team was healthy going into the series. Even though Giannis got hurt, the Heat suffered two more devastating player injuries during this series. The Bucks could have won both Game Four and Game Five with a little better poise and toughness.¹ At another moment in that press conference, Giannis acknowledged that they had failed to adjust in guarding Jimmy Butler. As SBNation's Ricky O'Donnell wrote after the Game Five loss:

In reality, Milwaukee choked their season away in the biggest moments.

The Bucks had an 11-point lead entering the fourth quarter of Game 4, but blew the game because they couldn’t stop Jimmy Butler, who scored 56 points in an all-time playoff performance. Milwaukee had a 16-point lead entering the fourth quarter of Game 5, and what happened next was one of the most excruciating collapses you will ever see from an NBA title favorite.

The Bucks shot 3-of-19 from the field in the fourth quarter. They shot 62 percent from the foul line on the night, with Giannis going 10-for-23. They completely abandoned the offensive flow they showcased earlier in the game, and settled for tough looks against a set defense. There were moments of mind-numbing carelessness with the ball….

This should have been a championship year for the Bucks. Instead, it will go down as one of the worst NBA playoff exits ever.

So yeah, right now, I think the 2022-23 Bucks season does have to be qualified as a failure. Compared to expectations going into the playoffs, the Bucks radically underperformed.

But that failure has to be written in pencil. I am old enough to remember the 2003 Boston Red Sox, who lost to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series in the most excruciating way imaginable. It looked like an other season of failure that defined the Red Sox as a franchise since 1918. In retrospect, however, that season paved the way for the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox and one of the greatest successes in sports history.

Maybe the Bucks will bounce back next year — in which case, we will need to revise the provisional assessment of this season. Even if the Bucks falter in the future, however, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s answer to that question still qualifies as a success. At one of his lowest professional moments, Giannis said something that made a lot of people think a lot harder than they normally do. In my business, at least, that is an unqualified win.

1. Calling a timeout every once in a while so the Bucks could reset might have been a good idea as well.