- June 19, 2018 -

"Wilt the Stilt."

"Goliath."

Nicknames carried over from Wilt Chamberlain's high school basketball days.

Names he hated.

He preferred "The Big Dipper" - a name his friends came up with because of his need to dip his head when walking through door ways.

Arguably one of the greatest players who ever lived.

But Chamberlain was a lousy foul shooter when he came into the NBA.

The worst.

Here was a man who could excel at virtually every physical feet under the sun.

He could literally score at will with two, and sometimes three, defenders draped all over his body.

But put him all alone at the free throw line?

Put him fifteen feet from the basket...and he was hopeless.

And then...in the 1961-62 season everything changed for the 25-year-old giant who hailed from my own Philly stomping grounds.

Big as an oak tree and graceful as a ballet dancer....that season, he ended up averaging more than 50 points a game.

He ended up shooting a career-best 61% from the foul line.

Including the night he sank 28 of 32 free throws in his epic 100-point game...an astounding 87% accuracy rate.

A record that has never been broken in NBA history.

...all with "Granny style" shooting.

That season, Chamberlain changed tactics.

He started to throw his foul shots underhanded...holding the ball between his knees and flicking it up towards the basket from a slight crouch.

Totally relaxed.

Not worrying about muscles tensing up or getting tight.

The shots hit nice and soft and fell right in the basket.

All of a sudden...he went from being a terrible free throw shooter to a phenomenal free throw shooter, culminating in the greatest basketball game ever played.

No longer a potential liability to his team at the end of close games.

Where the other side simply fouls you every time you touch the ball because they know you’ll miss your free throw and they’ll get the ball back.

Because if you can’t hit your foul shots, you can’t be used in a tight game.

You know what Chamberlain’s coach said to him? “If you were a 90% shooter, we might never lose.”

All because of a simple change in technique.

A tactical tweak.

Then something incredible happens.

The next season Wilt Chamberlain STOPS shooting underhanded and goes right back to being a terrible foul shooter.

With a form somewhere between a drunk throwing a dart and a lumbering over-sized kid hurling a rock.

He tried everything to get better, even visiting a psychiatrist for a month.

“After I came out of it,” Chamberlain later joked, “the psychiatrist was a better free throw shooter than I was.”

So why reject what was working...and go back to what wasn't?

"I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. I just couldn’t do it."

The power of peer pressure got to him.

He did something dumb even though he was fully aware that he was doing something dumb.

Chamberlain had every incentive in the world to keep shooting free throws underhanded.

And he chose not to.

Had he stuck to what was working, who knows what he could have accomplished in his career!

I get it, folks. Change is hard.

I avoid it like the plague.

I get complacent.

And complacency is the enemy of greatness.

It's why I surround myself with a partner, a business coach, and a team who are smarter than I am in a lot of things.

People who push me out of my comfort zone professionally and personally -- sometimes silently kicking and screaming -- and on to the next stage of growth.

What if you were open to doing things a different way in your business?

What if you had a team supporting you in a way that removed the pressure to run your marketing the same way everyone else is...and failing at it?

Try a new approach.
 
Later!

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