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Zen Jeweler: When Basketball Was Really Played With a Basket

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Published

15 years ago

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Parables by Jeff McCandlessThere’s no basket in basketball … but there once was.  
 
In 1892, when James Naismith nailed a peach basket to the wall of a gym, basketball was born. 
 
It took the game’s first proponents a year however to figure out the game would be a whole lot more fun if they didn’t have to use a ladder to recover the ball every time a basket was made. So they replaced it with one that had a hinged bottom.  
 
But the real story is that it took another 10 years until they realized it would be OK to remove that hinged bottom, so the ball would just go through the basket every time. That was a total of 11 years and two innovations to get to the point where it was easy to retrieve the ball in a basketball game. 
 
More than 100 years later, we can’t imagine having a basketball hoop with a bottom, and we can’t imagine it took 11 years to come up with those two simple changes. Seems like a no-brainer, right? 
 
THE TAKEAWAY: Listen to the innovators on your staff. They are holding a net in their hands right now.

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Wilkerson: “They Feel Like Family”

Newton’s Jewelers in Fort Smith, Ark., was a true institution. But after being at the helm for most of his life, owner (and descendent of the original founder) Kelly Newton decided it was time to retire. He chose Wilkerson to handle the sale. “I’ve known the owners of Wilkerson for a long, long time. I felt at home with them,” he says. The final retirement sale was just a “blast” and the Wilkerson sales team made it so very simple and straightforward, says Newton. Would he recommend Wilkerson to others? Absolutely. “They’ve done incredible work,” says Newton. “They feel like family.”

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Zen Jeweler: When Basketball Was Really Played With a Basket

mm

Published

15 years ago

on

Parables by Jeff McCandlessThere’s no basket in basketball … but there once was.  
 
In 1892, when James Naismith nailed a peach basket to the wall of a gym, basketball was born. 
 
It took the game’s first proponents a year however to figure out the game would be a whole lot more fun if they didn’t have to use a ladder to recover the ball every time a basket was made. So they replaced it with one that had a hinged bottom.  
 
But the real story is that it took another 10 years until they realized it would be OK to remove that hinged bottom, so the ball would just go through the basket every time. That was a total of 11 years and two innovations to get to the point where it was easy to retrieve the ball in a basketball game. 
 
More than 100 years later, we can’t imagine having a basketball hoop with a bottom, and we can’t imagine it took 11 years to come up with those two simple changes. Seems like a no-brainer, right? 
 
THE TAKEAWAY: Listen to the innovators on your staff. They are holding a net in their hands right now.

Related Topics:

click to Comment(Comment)
Advertisement

SPONSORED VIDEO

Wilkerson Testimonials

Wilkerson: “They Feel Like Family”

Newton’s Jewelers in Fort Smith, Ark., was a true institution. But after being at the helm for most of his life, owner (and descendent of the original founder) Kelly Newton decided it was time to retire. He chose Wilkerson to handle the sale. “I’ve known the owners of Wilkerson for a long, long time. I felt at home with them,” he says. The final retirement sale was just a “blast” and the Wilkerson sales team made it so very simple and straightforward, says Newton. Would he recommend Wilkerson to others? Absolutely. “They’ve done incredible work,” says Newton. “They feel like family.”

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Most Popular