September 12, 2007
Indiana Pacers coach Jim O'Brien on the similarities between chess and basketball (via TrueHoop):
In both basketball and chess the middle must be controlled. In our sport, it's the three second paint -- defensively we want to control that by keeping the ball out of the middle and offensively we want to control it by making sure that we get the ball into the middle. I have never won a chess game -- or have not won very many times -- when I didn’t control the middle of the board.I don't know about the rest of the comparisons he makes (this is probably one of those analogies that's meaningless for just not being tight enough), but I've found the old chess maxim always respond to a flank attack with a push in the center very useful in other contexts.
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