I didn’t start out thinking in terms of sports strategy. I started like most people do—watching outcomes and reacting to them. Wins felt smart. Losses felt foolish. Over time, I realized that this way of thinking taught me very little. Strategy, I learned, lives underneath results, not inside them.
What follows is my personal walk through the core principles of sports strategy, told as lessons I had to earn the slow way. I still use these ideas every time I try to make sense of a game, a season, or a decision that didn’t go as planned.