Chess and Basketball?

I learned to play Chess as a boy but never had much of a chance to play until I retired ten years ago. Since then I have been an avid, if average, player, playing every Wednesday with a group of similar players at our local Senior center. Despite the common perception, I have come to believe that chess is a team sport.

We all have the image of the solitary chess master hovering over the board and lost in thought while contemplating the next move. But to my mind the chess player is the coach and the real players are the pieces on the board. It doesn’t take much experience to realize that if these pieces don’t work together, they will not win.

It is the coach’s job first to get his players into the game. In other words, they must be placed out in the field of play as quickly as possible. In chess it is called development. The major pieces (knights, bishops, rooks) are more powerful than pawns and constitute the starting team. Not only must the coach put them into play quickly, he must place them properly so that they cooperate and defend one another. If they can’t work together, the game is inevitably lost. 

Even the Queen, the most powerful piece on the board, cannot capture the opponent’ s King by herself. She needs the support of at least one other piece to checkmate. Only the opponent’s Queen can confront her power alone, but she can be neutralized and sometimes captured by being double or even tripled teamed by less powerful pieces working together.

Team work is the key to success in most sports. Basketball, with only five players on the court, is no exception. March is the month when the basketball season reaches its apex. The NBA regular season, where most games are little more than exhibitions, is coming to an end. The Pros will soon start to get serious in the playoffs.

Despite the magnitude of the stars in the NBA, it is still a team game. Some think that Cleveland’s LeBron James is the best player to ever play the game, but Cleveland still had to make some trades in mid-season to bolster its chances for a title. The continued success of the Golden State Warriors is due to the way in which they have integrated super-stars Kevin Durant and Steph Curry into their team concept. On the other hand, the New York Knicks struggled through years of mediocrity because they could not induce superstar Carmelo Anthony to embrace the team concept.

The NCAA collegiate championship series has just begun. It is usually called March Madness but insanity might be a better description. All over the country millions of people are filling out their brackets trying not only to predict the eventual champion but also the winner of every game in the 68 team tournament.

Interestingly, the most successful college team in the past decade has been the University of Connecticut’s Women’s team. It is true that the success of the team has enabled UCONN Coach Geno Auriemma to continually recruit all-star high school athletes from all over the country. The team is loaded with talent and their average margin of victory must exceed 30 points per game.

Nevertheless, Auriemma’s stature as a coach has enabled him to get his extremely talented athletes to play together as a team. I just read about a local high school men’s coach who urged his young studs to emulate the way the UCONN women play defense.  In other words, Auriemma has been able to get the UCONN stars to not just think of individual stats but to play defense as well as offense. Recently, one of the UCONN women remarked that Auriemma would find it difficult to coach men because they are so thick-headed when it comes to team play.

Even on the high school level it takes a strong coach to get young men to play together as a team. The natural desire of athletes to show their stuff is magnified these days by pressure to get college scholarships. Also, sports reporters often become star-struck and concentrate all their attention on the high scoring players and their stats.

It has often been said that legendary players like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were able to bring out the best in their teammates. In doing so, they also won numerous championships. This is true not just in chess and basketball but in business, politics, and practically every aspect of life. It is certainly true in family life where mothers and fathers give themselves to bring out the best in their children.

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