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BY ANDREW GREENBLATT

In print | Published April 14, 2011

We came roaring out of driveway hellbent on making it to Philly and back to New York again for a 5:40 flight to Arizona by way of Chicago. It was me and dad. We had no music and no sleep. I had four days’ worth of clothes for a 12 day trip and a backpack full of schoolwork I’d have a hell of a tough time getting done during a 10 day hike into the desolate pits of the Grand Canyon. GO.

It’s been months since I picked up a hitchhiker but I figured why not. He was a taciturn young man and all I was looking for was some deed out of the abstract mush pile of “random acts of kindness” to talk about during the family reunion, God knows I wasn’t looking for conversation. GO.

Each of the above paragraphs are tiny worlds of stories, the type of thing that to an improv comedian can materialize into a rich and funny scene. There’s depth, suspense, conflict, and most importantly, real people. Improv scenes can last a few seconds, a few minutes, or sometimes over a half an hour.

While there’s a considerable amount of skill that goes into improvising and even more guts, at the heart of every improv scene are two elements that if grasped by an athlete could pay major dividends : a concrete set of rules and a whole lot of practice.

In his book “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell looks at our brain’s ability to make snap judgments from a variety of angles, one of which is through the lens of improv and sport, he writes: “Improv is an art form governed by a series of rules and they want to make sure that when they’re up onstage, everyone abides by those rules. ‘We think of what we’re doing as a lot like basketball’ [the improv comedians] said, and that’s an apt analogy. Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice — perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing plays over and over and over again — and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is a critical lesson of improv too.”

Down in Bradenton, Florida, the game on team is smiling. Steve Shenbaum, Blair Bloomston and Chris Friday are holding down the improv fort at IMG Academies, the 400-acre sports megaplex that boasts 56 tennis courts, a 10,000 square foot weight training facility, soccer fields, basketball courts, baseball fields, a vision training center, a cafeteria, a full team of nutritionists, dozens of dorms, “mental conditioning coaches”, an outdoor pool, medical facilities and game on.

IMG is the kind of place, given its location in sleepy Bradenton is sufficiently in the middle of nowhere, that has created an all-encompassing world for itself. From the Under Armor sponsored T-shirts, shorts, shoes, socks, hats and wristbands that every employee is wearing down to the logos on the golf carts used to shuttle the athletes back and forth between their practices IMG rules. It’s like a jocked-out Disneyworld.

game on’s space is nestled in between mental conditioning and some tennis courts (it’s really tennis’ world down there and we’re all just living in it), and among pictures of former clients in the office like Carmelo Anthony and Pete Sampras. The orange walls are adorned by Shenbaum’s cell phone graveyard, a line-up of every cell phone he’s gone through since they were invented, and his award for Sportsmanship and Patience: a golf club he once broke mounted wryly on a wooden plaque by a few of his buddies.

What game on does is to conduct mini improv workshops. Why they’re there is because they’ve figured out improv’s relationship to sports and are experts at teaching it. Each session is a grouping of games where the athletes are challenged to think like an improv comedian, something that most of them aren’t aware that they’re already doing, but more where the real learning occurs is in the actual rules of improv.

The cardinal rule of improv and by extension of sport is an idea called “yes … and.” Acceptance and Addition. The reason that a comedy troupe can create a 30 minute scene from nothing is because improv comedians must accept every idea that their stagemate offers them and then add to it. In an improv scene there is no room for dissention, and no room for push back, it’s all pure flow. To borrow an example from Gladwell look at this improv scene:

A: I’m having trouble with my leg.
B: I’m afraid I’ll have to amputate.
A: You can’t do that, Doctor.
B: Why not?
A: Because I’m rather attached to it.
B: (losing heart) Come on, man.
A: I’ve got this growth on my arm too, Doctor.

While A was able to land a funny joke, (I’m rather attached to it) the scene doesn’t move anywhere because A shrugged off B’s suggestion in order to land his one-liner. He broke the cardinal rule of acceptance. The actors became frustrated and the scene fell apart.

Now consider a parallel situation on the basketball court:

A: Brings the ball up the floor
B: Runs down the floor and establishes post position (on the block with his back to the basket)
A: Sees him but continues to dribble on the perimeter
B: Continues to post up
A: Sees a quick opening and drives towards the baseline, away from the middle
B: Vacates the block to give space
A: Beats his defender but B’s defender helps off to contest the shot, play results in a missed layup.

In this example A is breaking the cardinal rule by looking to make a one-on-one move when the proper play would be to enter the ball into the post. An otherwise good play, driving past his defender turns into a missed shot. B’s defender is in perfect help position because A is trying to drive while the offense is stagnant. The play falls apart.

Like improv, team sports has a flow to it governed by basic principles and understandings that the players must accept, but rather than focusing on making the right basketball, or soccer, or football play, game on is focused on making the right improv play.

In the world of “yes…and” the only wrong play is disrupting the flow: only adjustment and adaptation can survive, it becomes pure reaction. Ever wonder how some players seem to always be in the right place at the right time (i.e. Butler’s Matt Howard with his ever so timely tip-ins this March) or how some people are flat out easy to play with and always seem to win (like Robert Horry who won a total of seven NBA championships with three different teams? Or how some people seem to be able to flat our score, no matter the circumstance. The way some players continue to make the right plays and be in the right spots isn’t a coincidence. It’s the product of accepting every action during the game and reacting instinctively. It’s a product of “yes … and.”

game on is on to something down in Florida: a novel way to teach a priceless intangible. Now take a look at that same improv scene, but this time with agreement (also borrowed from Gladwell):

A: Augh!
B: Whatever is it, man?
A: It’s my leg, Doctor.
B: This looks nasty. I shall
have to amputate.
A: It’s the one you amputat-
ed last time, Doctor.
B: You mean you’ve got a
pain in your wooden leg?
A: Yes, Doctor.
B: You know what this
means.
A: Not wormwood, Doctor!
B: Yes. We’ll have to remove it before it spreads to
the rest of you.
(A’s chair collapses)
B: My god it’s spreading to the furniture!
No dissention, no push back, just acceptance and addition, and look what happens. A and B actually become funny. The humor grows out of how steadfastly the comedians adhere to this rule. It’s something no ordinary person would do, but it’s an opportunity to be an extraordinary teammate.

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