Looking at Outliers

I did a brief review of Outliers: the Story of Success for an NGO. That gave me a chance to reread and do research on the book.

A lot of critics poked at a lot of items in the book. Today, I'll look at one concept: the 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell says that once you reach a certain threshold of ability, practice and hard work will help make you more successful. Practice for 10,000 hours and you become exceptional. That sounds pretty obvious to me. Strangely, some people still took a jab.

One spoke of one of the NBA greats 6'10" tall Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon. Hakeem did not play basketball until the age of 15. His debut was with the University of Huston at age 18 and from there made his way to the top. There was no way he could have clocked 10 thousand hours prior to this. The critic notes that height trumps experience with this man. This should serve as an example of how a Gladwellian anecdote explains little. Intrigued by this, I decided to go look up Hakeem the Dream on Wikipedia and the NBA [remember I prefer to use easily available stuff from the internet]:

NBA article on Hakeem Olajuwon

Wikipedia Entry for Hakeem Olajuwon

Apparently Hakeem is known for Blocking. As per the Wiki he made 3,830 career blocks—641 swats more than his closest competitor, Kareem abdul Jabbar. To what does he attribute this amazing skill? Soccer. He played soccer as a boy prior to discovering basketball. His position? Goalie:

"As a goalkeeper in soccer, your main objective is to defend the goal,” says Olajuwon of his soccer upbringing. “So that experience was of great benefit to me..."

What else is he known for? The Dream Shake, an aptly named maneuver that lets him slip past opponents. The origin of this maneuver:

Hakeem himself reveals “the dream shake Is one of my soccer moves which I translated to basketball”

Hakeem probably clocked a lot more hours as a "blocker and dodger" than as a "football player" or "basketball player". In his case two distinct sports gave him enough practice for the things that he became famous for. Different game similar skill sets. And note that he had a signature soccer move at a very young age. He was aware of his abilities and knew the best way to use them. Even then, Hakeem may not prove the 10k rule. We don't know when he started soccer, thus we don't know how much practice he got. However, it did prove that you can look deeper and see something more.