The Jordan Rules

There is a connection between "The Jordan Rules" written by Sam Smith and thoroughbred horse racing, though you might dismiss this due to the menacing cover which looks like anything but Michael Jordan, the basketball player. If I could enlarge this cover you'd see the red sticker in the lower right that reads: "three straight months on the NYT best seller list", giving a clue that it's a good book.

But, it's basketball, right, so what do we care? This book came out in 1992 when I was developing my "controlling the variables thing", and, I realized immediately that the author Sam Smith, and myself might be thinking along the same lines.

The Chicago Bulls professional basketball team had won an astounding four straight NBA titles in the late '80s, early '90s.. "The Jordan Rules" follows the team from training camp through the NBA finals for, I believe it was, 1990, and so, if you're wondering how this sort of thing happens, for that season it's all right there in the book.

You may be familiar with the great basketball player Michael Jordan, who was on that team, but the book deals with the whole team, Scottie Pippen, Will Purdue etc., the rotund, non-athletic GM Jerry Krause, and Hall of Fame Coach Phil Jackson. I bought the book thinking I might learn something about how Phil Jackson coaches basketball, and what it takes to win on the basketball court.

In reading the book Sam Smith the author quickly focuses on Jordan, and we come to see the iron will of this player at the time who simply refused to lose games. Never mind that he had some talent. Lot's of players have talent. It was practice, hours and hours in the weight room, total mental concentration and either inspiring or dragging along his teammates. There was in short a method and a madness to all this success, and it is called "The Jordan Rules".

Perhaps you can see the connection as I was considering "controlling the variables". How about some RR Rules? I used my real name of course as RR was to come along a lot later, but within a week of that day at the side of the Woodlands were I was pondering this stuff, there was a complete set of RR Rules which really were methods or techniques that I thought necessary on the race track to prevent racehorse injuries.

I'll get into the RR Rules next post.

Training: my word. Forgot the description I gave the weather yesterday, though I did get out there an put a saddle on a horse. It's rained another 1/2 inch since yesterday. Unbelievable mess at the farm.