为什么越不该输的时候越会输(4)

Previous studies on sports performance under pressure have tended to look at individual athletes—golfers, soccer and hockey players, baseball batters, biathletes. Galily and Morgulev wanted to understand how a team as a whole responds to added pressure. To build a database, they chose the N.B.A.’s best-of-seven playoff series, because it presents numerous occasions in which one team, but not the other, must win or be eliminated: when down three games to two, three to one, or three to none. They looked at thirty-three seasons, from 1984 to 2016—more than nineteen hundred best-of-seven playoff games, four hundred and thirty-seven of which were critical for either the home or the away team. Must-win was more likely to translate into a loss, the researchers found. If a team had, say, a sixty-five per cent chance of winning at home in the playoffs, its odds fell to fifty-five per cent if the game was a must-win for them but not for the visitors. Likewise, if the game was must-win for the visitors but not the home team, the visitors’ chance of winning fell to just twenty-six per cent. Galily said that they were closely watching the fourth and, ultimately, final game of the the Cleveland-Golden State series “to see if our results held up.” They did.

[原文来自：www.11jj.com]

While some pressure can be a good thing, Galily said, “The question is, how much is too much?” His study didn’t address that, but his results offer a cautionary lesson not only for coaches but for office managers and military commanders: don’t try to improve everyone’s performance by adding to the pressure that they already knows exists.

“You prepare for the mission just as you would for a regular mission,” Galily said. He mentioned Macri’s comments to the Argentinian team: “Oh yeah, ‘We’re gonna love you anyway. Just play your best.’ I think that’s the better route. Of course, it depends on how he said it.” Here, Macri may have sent the team, and Messi in particular, a bit of a mixed message. Back in January, he was quoted as saying, “The most important thing is to compete well and then God and Messi will decide if we can win the World Cup.” God will decide, or Messi. No pressure, Leo. No pressure at all.

LAB + New Yorker