Malcolm Gladwell on basketball: not so much

[Update: Deadspin has its usual irreverent take. Malcolm Gladwell Sucks is an Internet meme now.]

The Thing To Check Out today for any self-respecting basketball fan is this Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker, a magazine to which I subscribe and enjoy. Gladwell argues that if less-talented basketball teams used the full-court press more often against good teams, they’d give themselves a better shot at winning.

It’s a typical Gladwell article. It’s provocative, it’s mellifluous, and it takes its fair share of oblique twists and turns, with long passages on how Davids can take out Goliaths in war as well as roundball.

But it also falls into my wheelhouse, so for once, I can talk intelligently about a common criticism of Gladwell’s work: The dude cherry-picks his points like a mofo.