A few years ago I read about a study which concerned young
children and patience. The subjects, all
very young children, were offered the choice of receiving one cookie
immediately or waiting for 15 minutes or so and receiving two. Follow up studies determined that the
children who had opted to wait for the extra cookie were more likely to make
smart decisions in managing their money and were generally more successful at
life than their hungrier peers.
I had a
somewhat irrational annoyance at this study, perhaps because I feared that in
that situation I would have opted for the one cookie, exposing myself as a
fraud who had lucked into some small success in life and who would inevitably
fail. I am indeed, often pretty bad at
organizing my day-to-day existence.
I was
reminded of this study recently when thinking about Carmelo Anthony and his
recent decision to remain with the New York Knicks. For him , it essentially came down to a
choice between joining a title-ready team in Chicago or staying in New York and
trusting NBA legend Phil Jackson to build a contender around him. Like the cookies, this was a choice between
instant gratification and long term reward.
But there is one key difference between the study and Carmelo's
decision: there is no guarantee of the long term reward for Carmelo. I bet those smart-ass kids would've had to
think twice if the testers told them they would "try" to bring them
two cookies after a short wait.
And
don't think one championship is as good as another. Not for Carmelo. In New York(where he was born, it should be
noted) he would be the star of the first title team in more than three decades,
the first building block upon which that team was built. In Chicago he would simply fill a hole; he
would be a plug-in superstar whose legacy would remain in the shadow of the
greatest basketball player ever, whose memory is still fresh for Bulls fans. New York represents the greater risk and the
greater reward.
But
while Carmelo was the only one making a tangible choice, fans of the New York
Knicks like myself had a similar choice to make concerning what outcome we
actually wanted. We may not all have
ended up like those two-cookie taking future hedge fund managers, but sports
fans these days have gotten pretty savvy about alternatives to immediate
success. The strategy of "tanking,"
deliberately fielding a bad team to leverage a higher draft pick, is far more
viable now that fan bases have the understanding necessary to tolerate short
term losing for the promise of long term success.
The
Knicks are no doubt better immediately with Carmelo. And after some of the bad contracts are
cleared off the team's books in the next two years or so, building a contender
is entirely possible. But after years
and years of mismanagement wherein opportunities were missed and assets were
squandered, I do feel some desire for a completely clean slate from which to
start. However good Carmelo has been in
New York doesn't change the fact that the trade that got him here was one of
those bad decisions. We could have had the chance to build up a younger team from scratch using the draft and maybe nabbing a
youngish free agent a few years down the line.
With Carmelo resigned, we're pinning our hopes on the 3-5 more years of
top level basketball that he has left, plus the services of a potential big
free agent signing.
With
the draft being such a crapshoot, Carmelo is the sure thing. But is that sure thing going to take us where
we really want to go? Neither we fans
nor Carmelo will know for years whether his resigning was the right
decision. We're left to wonder: did we
make the smart decision and wait for the cookies down the road or did we just
snatch up the one because we were hungry?
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