THE BEST COACH YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF

Vivek Ranadivé came to America at the age of 17 with just fifty dollars in his pocket. A few months prior, he had been accepted to MIT at the young age of 16, however in the 1970’s the Indian government did not release foreign currency for students to study abroad. Vivek is not one who accepts losing easily. Refusing to take no for an answer Vivek talked his way into the office of the Reserve Bank of India and managed to get the required foreign currency for the first year’s tuition.

Decades after his graduation from both MIT and later Stanford. Years removed from starting his third successful software company, Vivek was staring down what he saw as one of his most difficult challenges yet. National Junior Basketball, the little league of basketball. Despite having no prior experience his daughter Anjali had decided she wanted to play. To follow suit Vivek, also having no prior experience, decided to coach.

At the first practice Vivek analyzed the situation. Two of his girls were real basketball players. The rest, including his daughter, had never played before. They weren’t tall.  They couldn’t shoot very well, and even dribbling was not easy for them. His girls were not the sort who spent their free time playing pick-up basketball, but many of their opponents did. It was clear to Vivek that his team was severely overmatched. But Vivek, is not the kind of person who tales losing easily. 

Vivek grew up watching soccer. The first time he watched basketball he thought the sport was silly. After a team scored, they immediately retreated to their own end of the court, and patiently waited for the opposition to get close before they even bothered to play defense.  While the court itself is 94 feet long, it seemed as though the entire game was played in the final 20 feet.

To those of us who grew up watching basketball, we think nothing of this. But consider for a moment how unique this really is. In football, the defense does not simply wait at the ten-yard line for the opposing offense to arrive. In a soccer game, the forwards don’t just let up the moment the opposition steals the ball. Basketball is very much different in this regard. And it was in this difference that Vivek saw opportunity.

In the final 20 feet of the court Vivek knew his team stood little chance. Their basketball skills quite simply couldn’t match up with opposing teams who could shoot, pass, and dribble, far better than his. If his team was to have a chance at winning, their best shot would be to prevent the opposition from reaching the final 20 feet.

Vivek taught his girls to run what is known in basketball as a full court press (though Vivek himself didn’t know this term). To him it was simply the optimal strategy to neutralize his opponent’s strength.

The team’s strategy relied heavily on two time limits in basketball. The first, is the five second limit on a team to make an inbounds pass. Generally, this is no problem, as the defenders are all waiting at the other end of the court. But for Vivek’s girls, more often than not the opponent was unable to make the pass, sent the ball out of bounds, or had the pass intercepted by one of

Vivek’s girls. Vivek’s girls were relentless.

The other time limit is the 10 seconds a team has to advance past the mid court line after a successful inbounds pass. If their opponents were able to inbounds the ball, the girls swarmed, trapping the ball handler. A system of double teams and movement prevented forward movement as much as possible. 

Vivek realized that to put this strategy into effect he would need his gurls to be very well conditioned. Not having a lot of experience in that area, he called in an expert to help the girls train. Former 49ers running back Roger Craig helped develop a training program that ensured the girls would be able to stand up to the physical demands of the full court press.

The strategy was built from the ground up to hide the team’s inherent weaknesses. And it worked wonders. That team of girls who had never played basketball made it all the way to the national tournament where they were knocked out by a referee who didn’t believe in enforcing the time limits.

April 18th is Tax Day. If you haven’t done anything to prepare for that yet, congratulations, the IRS has marched all the way down the court uncontested and is about to score on you. In fact, if you have yet to file it is likely you owe a good chunk to them, and you are about to be what basketball fans call “posterized” by the IRS. Sadly, this late in the game, I have no advice I can give you to prevent this from happening.

What you can do is start implementing tax planning strategies for next year. These strategies will be your version of the full court press and can help you play much better defense. These strategies can be things like Roth conversions, tax loss harvesting, deduction lumping, ISO exercises and a whole host of other things.

If you don’t consider yourself a tax expert, follow the example of Vivek. Reach out for help now. Contact a financial planner who specializes in this kind of thing to start putting the plan in motion and coordinating what strategies you can use to the biggest benefit.

If you continuously wait for the IRS to get to the top of the key before you bother to do anything about it, they are going to win the game. Your best opportunity is to use all of the tools available to you, before they ever get there, to try and stop them. Do that correctly, and while they will still score some points, you will win the game.