Sports and Politics
This article discusses the strategy of protecting the lead in sports, mainly basketball. The strategy of “protecting the lead” refers to the idea of a team trying to run down the time in a game while they are ahead. For basketball, the leading team would try to maintain possession of the ball until the very last second to shoot; this would give their opponent less time to run their strategies and would put pressure on them to score as many points as they can in the limited time window that they have. This strategy, however, is not perfect. The article mentions how stalling for time to be over can lead to changes in morale for the non-leading team and how the fans attending the game would start turning against their team due to a mundane playstyle.
I thought it was interesting how the article connected this strategy in the world of sports to politics. The article references how, back in the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign imposed this strategy and it backfired on them. It was clear that the Clinton campaign was in the lead for the polls for a majority of the time; by employing this strategy, the Clinton campaign became complacent and became more conservative in their campaigning efforts. I thought that the article made a very interesting analogy between the world of sports and the world of politics when mentioned how the Clinton campaign won the popular vote, “but that’s the equivalent of having the crowd on your side in a game, but scoring fewer points than your opponent.”
This article connects to topics covered in class in that it addresses strategies in game theory. Since the “protecting the lead” strategy comes with both benefits and drawbacks, it is safe to say that this strategy is not a dominant strategy in every situation. For example, if the fans start to become unsatisfied about their team’s playstyle even though they are in the lead, the coach might be pressured to switch to a flashier playstyle. In this case, the “protecting the lead” strategy is one of many mixed strategies in the game of basketball and in sports in general. In addition, as mentioned in lecture, sports strategies need to be randomized; it makes sense too because if you use the same strategy over and over again, your opponent will constantly use their dominant strategy to counter yours.