虎扑体育网

写在前面：

楼主今年夏天就31周岁了，90年代帮主最巅峰的时候在读小学，虽然当时也对NBA有一点点了解，但是除了帮主之外好像也不认识什么其他人。真正第一次看NBA是在初一的时候，也就是00-01赛季。一眼就迷上了那个180出头的小个子。总决赛的时候即使周边所有人都看好湖人，我还是固执的看好76人。

之后AI离开过，也回来过，直到最后退役了，但是我对76人这支球队的感情慢慢的从一个球星密变成了队密。球星方面其实之后最喜欢的一直是詹姆斯，不过却从来没变成过骑士队密热火队密。玩2K也从来都是主队76人，我还记得2K14玩MC的时候，一开始会多次重新开始游戏，只为了选秀的时候被76人选中。

前几年76人最低谷的时候真的挺难过的，当然好在那几年詹姆斯打的还不错，所以总体也还行。还记得那时候在SHH，76人被各种喷。有很多是不看76人球的人在瞎BB，但是也有很多真的没法反驳，当然我不爱在网上和人各种辩论也是一个原因。这赛季76人起势后，每场打的好的比赛我都在心里喊：敲里吗，让你们看不起我们！哈哈，戏有些足。

回归正题，现在这支76人可以说整体上就是通过辛基的努力而建成的。无论是中国还是美国，辛基在职的几年都被各种喷，但是当他真正离开了之后，人们却发现辛基当时做的多么出色。领先半步是先知，领先一步为先烈。辛基就一不小心“先烈”了。

第一次看到这封辞职信的相关内容，是从之前的美国JRS帖子(https://bbs.hupu.com/21888969.html)看到的（原文在那帖子里有链接）。当时就对这封信的内容充满了好奇。凑巧季后赛即将开始，这支球队也要第一次面对季后赛的挑战，所以就斗胆自己尝试翻译了一下。本人不才，虽然也在澳洲待过5年，雅思也考过7.5，阅读有8分。但是不敢说自己英语很好。特别是翻译要远比自己看一遍难多了，很多时候都知道是什么意思，却发现不知道该如何去翻译出来。所以这篇翻译我只能尽可能的让它读起来通顺，易懂。却无法做到任何美感。如果有哪位英语很好的朋友，觉得原文有问题，可以直接私信我来让我进行修改。

原文一共是13页，前半部分主要讲了辛基自己思考的一些方法，后半部分才会更加细节的分析自己在76人的做的一些事情。

本次贴出来的就是到第7页截至的前半部分：思考方式。后半部分还在翻译中，预计至少到第二轮快结束的时候才能翻译完。

本文一共7726个字，预计阅读时间10-15分钟。

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To the equity partners of Philadelphia 76ers, L.P.:
致费城76人的所有股权合伙人：

   I hope this letter finds you well. I have been serving the Sixers at your pleasure for the past 34 months. Atul Gawande, a Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, remains (from afar) one of my favorite reads. He laughs that reading scientific studies has long been a guilty pleasure. Reading investor letters has long been one of mine.
   我希望你们能够读到这封信。我在过去的34个月中一直为76人队服务。阿图葛文德，波士顿Brigham & Women’s 医院的外科医生，是我长久以来最喜爱的作者之一。他笑称阅读科学研究对他来说已经变成了一种带有负罪感的快感。对我来说，我的负罪感的快感来自于阅读投资者的信。
  

   What I hope to accomplish here is to give you insight into what has transpired behind the scenes in ways you might not have otherwise heard about. Many of you attended our most recent board meeting in New York, where many of these topics were addressed. But for all twelve of you, I hope that this provides a deeper look into what you have at your organization. Accordingly, you should anticipate some mild cheerleading (of others) sprinkled with a healthy dose of self-flagellation about things I’ve done wrong.
   我这里希望能够给你们带来一些关于幕后已经发生过的事情的观点，你们可能从未从其他地方听说过这些东西。你们中很多人都参加了我们最近在纽约召开的股东大会，很多话题在那个会议上已经提到过了。但是我希望这封信能够为你们提供一个对于你们所拥有的组织的更加深入的看法。因此，对于我做错的事情，你们应该预感到一些温和的欢呼以及一些零星的自责。

   There has been much criticism of our approach. There will be more. A competitive league like the NBA necessitates a zig while our competitors comfortably zag. We often chose not to defend ourselvesagainst much of the criticism, largely in an effort to stay true to the ideal of having the longest view in the room. To attempt to convince others that our actions are just will serve to paint us in a different light among some of our competitors as progressives worth emulating, versus adversaries worthy of their disdain. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes the optimal place for your light is hiding directly under a bushel.
   现在有很多针对我们的做法的批评，接下来可能会有更多。在一个充满竞争的联盟内，像NBA，总是需要一些与众不同的做事方法。通常针对这些批评，我们很少为自己进行辩护。大致上来说，为了将工作维持在正确的道路上，需要把眼光放在最长远的地方。为了尝试去说服他人，我们的所作所为显得特别显眼。一些我们的竞争对手可能逐渐觉得我们的行为值得效仿，但另一些会对我们轻视。请尽管叫我为一个老传统，但有时候最佳的处境就是不露锋芒。

   Lastly, this letter will only speak to the part of the business that I’m today’s steward of: the basketball team and its attendant operations. With Scott O’Neil running our business operations, you are in good hands. I can assure you that when your team is eventually able to compete deep into May, Scott will ably and efficiently separate the good people of the Delaware Valley from their wallets on your behalf. Worry not.
   最后，这封信中的内容只针对我今天所服务的业务部分：球队和它的相关运营人士。你们应该对由斯科特奥尼尔所领导的商业组织感到放心。我能像你们保证，等你们的球队能够在五月更进一步的时候（参加季后赛），斯科特有能力将Delaware Valley地区的人民的口袋掏空。完全不用担心。

   A league with 30 intense competitors requires a culture of finding new, better ways to solve repeating problems. In the short term, investing in that sort of innovation often doesn’t look like much progress, if any. Abraham Lincoln said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
   一个有30支充满竞争力的球队所组成的联赛，需要有一个独特的文化。这种文化要能有效的发现更新的、更好的方法去解决一些重复性问题。短期来看，对创新的投资可能看不出什么效果。亚伯拉罕林肯说过：“让我用6小时去砍一棵树，我会先花4小时去磨斧头。”

   In May of 1969, a 38-year-old Warren Buffett sat down at a typewriter to inform his investors that he was closing his fund (then Buffett Partnership). His reason: market conditions were such that he no longer had the requisite confidence that he could make good decisions on behalf of the investors and deliver on his commitments to them. So he would stop investing on their behalf.
   在1969年5月，38岁的沃伦巴菲特坐在一台打字机前，告知他的投资人他将要关闭自己的基金（当时的巴菲特合伙公司）。他的原因是：市场环境如此，他已经不再有信心继续制定对他的投资人有益的决定，并达成他的之前的承诺。所以他会停止代表他的投资人进行投资。

   For me, that’s today. Given all the changes to our organization, I no longer have the confidence that I can make good decisions on behalf of investors in the Sixers—you. So I should step down. And I have.
   对我来说，那一天就是今天。对我们的组织来说，我已经不再有信心能够继续制定对76人队的投资人，也就是你们，有益的决定。所以我可能需要停下来了，并且我也这么做了。

   In one sense, it pains me that it has come to this and that I would go at the end of a particularly down year in the standings, one that has been painful for all of us. But the fact is—and a young Buffett said it much better than I ever could—“I am not attuned to this environment, and I don’t want to spoil a decent record by trying to play a game I don’t understand just so I can go out a hero.”
   从情感上来说，事情到了这一步让我觉得非常难过：熬过了最低谷的几年，却要在一切即将要好转之前离开。但事实上，就像年轻的巴菲特说的那样：“我不适应这个环境，同时我不会为了逞能而尝试做我不懂的事情，所以我现在能以一个英雄般的姿态离开。”

   Yup.
   是的，就是这样。

Thinking about thinking
思索思索之道

   I admire Seth Klarman a great deal. I am consistently impressed by his conviction and humility, a rare combination. About their approach at Baupost, he says, “it isn’t the only way of thinking, but it’s how we approach it.” Below is some insight into a few things we value and how we’ve approached decision making at the Sixers.
   我非常羡慕赛斯卡拉曼（一位对冲基金经理人）。我持续不断的被他的坚持以及谦卑（一个非常稀有的组合）所折服。对于他们在Baupost（赛斯所在的基金组织）里所使用的方法，他说：“这不是经过深思熟虑后所得到的唯一的方法，但是这就是我们使用的方法。”下面是一些我们评估一些事情的观点，并且展示了我们到底如何在76人身上作出决定。

   First, this list is anything but exhaustive, and hardly mine alone. Whenever possible, I think crosspollinating ideas from other contexts is far, far better than attempting to solve our problems in basketball as if no one has ever faced anything similar. Accordingly, this approach comes from a frequent search into behavioral economics, cognitive science, and a lot of observation and trial and error over my 11 years in the NBA. And mistakes. Lots and lots of mistakes.
   首先，这个列表并不详细，也不只是我自己的看法。在任何时候，我都认为从其他环境中获取想法，要远比只从篮球的角度来解决问题要好，因为从来没有任何人面对过任何相似的情况。因此，这个方法是对行为经济学，认知科学，以及我11年NBA经验中的很多观察、试验以及失误进行频繁搜寻而得到的。当然还有失败，很多很多很多的失败。

   To begin, let’s stand on the shoulders of Charlie Munger, a giant to me. He is a man that’s been thinking about thinking longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s start with him and his approach. His two-part technique is:
   作为开始，我们先站在查理芒格（另一位投资家，巴菲特的伙伴）的肩膀上来看问题。他思考真正的思维之道的时间比我的生命还长。让我们从他和他的方法开始。他的两步式方法是：

   1. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered?
   第一，从理性上来考虑，有哪些掌控相关利益的因素？

   2. Second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically doing these things—which by and large are useful, but which often malfunctions?
   第二，有哪些大脑潜意识层自动完成的潜意识影响——其中哪些是有用的，哪些通常是失灵的？

   To do this requires you to divorce process from outcome. You can be right for the wrong reasons. In our business, you’re often lionized for it. You can be wrong for the right reasons. This may well prove to be Joel Embiid. There is signal everywhere that Joel is unique, from the practice gyms in Lawrence, Kansas to Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania to Doha, Qatar where he does something awe inspiring far too regularly. We remain hopeful (and optimistic) about his long-term playing career, but we don’t yet know exactly how it will turn out. The decision to draft Joel third, though, still looks to me to be the correct one in hindsight given the underlying reasoning. But to call something that could be wrong (“failed draft pick”) right (“good decision”) makes all of our heads hurt, mine included.
   为了完成这两步骤，你需要先把过程从结果中剥离出来。你可能会为了一个错误的原因得到了一个正确的结果。在我们的行业中，你通常会因为这种瞎猫碰上死耗子的行为被吹嘘。但是你也可能为了正确的原因而得到了错误的结果。乔尔恩比德就很好的证实了这点（译者注：辛基辞职的时候恩比德还未打过一场比赛）。到处能看到能证明乔尔是多么独特的信号。从堪萨斯大学的训练馆，到宾夕法尼亚的Bala Cynwyd，再到卡塔尔多哈，他能把一些令人敬畏令人兴奋的事情以一种常规操作的方式做出来。我们对他的长期职业生涯保持希望（并且充满乐观），但是我们至今仍然不知道这将如何实现。在第三顺位选中乔尔的决定，在事后进行深层推理之后，我依然认为是一件正确的事情。但是如果仅是从结论上来说，把一些可能错误的事情（失败的选秀）叫成正确的（好的决定），仍然会让我们所有的决策层受伤，包括我。

   So we have to look deeper at process. Here’s a go at it:
   那么我们不得不更加深入的观察过程，下面是一个思路方法：

The importance of intellectual humility
智识上的谦逊的重要性

   Lifelong learning is where it’s at. To walk down that path requires a deep-seated humility about a) what’s knowable, and b) what each of us know. We hire for this aggressively. We celebrate this internally. And we’ve been known to punish when we find it woefully lacking.
   终身学习是异常重要的。为了做到这一点，需要非常深层次的谦逊：a)世上有哪些可知的，b)我们每个人都已经知道了解了什么。我们为此积极的雇人。我们为此在内部庆祝。当我们发现我们很可悲的缺乏谦逊的时候，我们又以获得惩罚而被世人熟知。

   We talk a great deal about being curious, not critical. About asking the question until you understand something truly. About not being afraid to ask the obvious question that everyone else seems to know the answer to. And about the willingness to say three simple words, “I don’t know.”
   我们大量的讨论了保持好奇心，而不是对他人挑剔；讨论了直到真正的了解事物之前，不断的提问题；讨论了不怕提出一些周围其他人看上去已经知道的显而易见的问题；讨论了要愿意说出那简单的四个字“我不知道”。

   Tesla’s Elon Musk describes his everyday stance as, “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.” The physicist James Clerk Maxwell described it as a “thoroughly conscious ignorance—the prelude to every real advance in science.” Bill James of the Boston Red Sox (and, I might add, a Kansas basketball expert) added a little flair when asked whether the learnings available via examining evidence were exhausted: “we’ve only taken a bucket of knowledge from a sea of ignorance.”
   特斯拉的埃隆马斯克描述了他的日常姿态，“你应该采用你犯错了的方法。你的目标就是越来越少的犯错。”物理学家詹姆斯.克拉克.麦克斯韦说过“完全自醒的无知是每一次科学进步的前奏”。当被问到通过数据分析可获得的学识是否已经被耗尽的时候，波士顿红袜的比尔詹姆斯（同时也是堪萨斯篮球专家）说：“我们只是从海一样的无知中获得了篮子大小的知识。”

   A way to prop up this kind of humility is to keep score. Use a decision journal. Write in your own words what you think will happen and why before a decision. Refer back to it later. See if you were right, and for the right reasons (think Bill Belichick’s famous 4th down decision against Indianapolis in 2009 which summarizes to: good decision, didn’t work). Reading your own past reasoning in your own words in your own handwriting time after time causes the tides of humility to gather at your feet. I’m often in waist-deep water here.
   一种坚持如此谦卑的方式就是保持对自己评分。制作一本决策日志，在做决策之前用你自己的语言写下你认为会发生的事情以及理由。之后再回头看看，看看你是否做对了，是否有正确的决策理由。当一次又一次的读你自己手写的，用你自己的话总结的过去行事的原因时，会让谦逊如同潮汐中的水一样慢慢的聚集在你的脚边。就我而言，我通常站在腰深的水中。

   The other reason to keep track yourself is you’re often the only one to see the most insidious type of errors, the ones the narrative generating parts of our lizard brains storytell their way around—errors of omission. You don’t have a wobbly understanding of just the things you got wrong, but the things you got right but not right enough. Listen to Charlie Munger talk about how he and Berkshire Hathaway should be measured not by their success, but by how much more successful they would have been if they bought more of something: “We should have bought more Coke.”
   另一个保持监测你自己的原因是，你通常是唯一一个能够看到如此多潜在错误的人。但是我们的大脑有他自己的记录的方式：忽略发生的错误。你对你做错的事情很难有一个完整的认识。但是你所做对的事情，其实也往往不一定足够正确。查理芒格说过，评价他和伯克希尔哈撒韦的时候，不应该以他们现在的成功为标准，而应该以他们错过了让他们更加成功的东西为标准，“我们应该买更多可口可乐的股份”。

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The necessity of innovation
创新的必要性

   Investing in disruptive innovation doesn’t ferment misunderstanding, it necessitates it. Jeff Bezos says it this way: “There are a few prerequisites to inventing…You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to think long-term. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
   对颠覆性创新的投资并不会酝酿误解，而是需要误解。杰夫贝佐斯这么说过：“发明有一些前提条件…你必须乐于接受失败。你必须乐于进行长远的考虑。你必须乐于在很长的一段时间内被误解。”

   A yearning for innovation requires real exploration. It requires a persistent search to try (and fail) to move your understanding forward with a new tool, a new technique, a new insight. Sadly, the first innovation often isn’t even all that helpful, but may well provide a path to ones that are. This is an idea that Steven Johnson of Where Good Ideas Come From popularized called the “adjacent possible.” Where finding your way through a labyrinth of ignorance requires you to first open a door into a room of understanding, one that by its very existence has new doors to new rooms with deeper insights lurking behind them.
   对创新的渴求需要真正的探索。它需要一个持续性的尝试（和失败），以通过新的工具、新的技术、新的领悟把你的理解不断地向前推进。遗憾的是，最初的创新尝试通常都没有什么实际用，但是它能够指出迈向成功的路径的方向。这是史蒂文约翰逊在《灵感从哪里来》中叫做“相邻可能”的观点。想要找到走出无知的迷宫的道路，首先需要先开启一扇走进知识的房间的门。在这个知识的房间，能找到藏在其中的到往其他更深层次领悟的门。

   In most endeavors, it’s fine to be content to woodshed until you get something near perfect. You want that to be you. Grit matters. But it won’t be long until some innovation makes all that effort newly obsolete. You want that to be you, too.
   在绝大多数的尝试中，在真正接近完美之前，对现状感到满足也不是不能接受。每一粒沙都很重要。但是这些满足并不应该维持很久，因为不久之后一些创新就会使现在所有的努力都过时。

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The longest view in the room
把眼光放在最长远的地方

   It is critical to be cycle aware in a talent-driven league. In a situation like yours at the Sixers, where a variety of circumstances left you near a trough in the cycle (and falling), amplifying this cycle became crucial. Today’s outcomes for every team are heavily impacted by decisions past (who to draft, sign, trade, hire, etc.). Jeff Bezos says that if Amazon has a good quarter it’s because of work they did 3, 4, 5 years ago—not because they did a good job that quarter. Today’s league-leading Golden State Warriors acquired Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut, and Klay Thompson almost 4 years ago, nearly 4 years ago exactly, and almost 5 years ago. In this league, the long view picks at the lock of mediocrity.
   在一个天赋驱动型的联盟中，保持周期性的意识是非常重要的。当各种情况将你们置于周期底部的情况下（并且继续下降），就像76人现在这样，放大这个周期变得非常重要。对于任何一支球队来说，当前的成就都是取决于过去的决定（选谁，签谁，交易谁，雇佣谁，等等）。杰夫贝佐斯说过，如果亚马逊有一个季度的业绩很好，那是因为他们过去3,4,5年之前的工作导致的，而不是因为他们在这个季度工作完成的很好。如今联盟领袖金州勇士在大约四年前就引入了追梦格林、安德鲁博古特和克莱汤普森，准确的说已经超过四年，接近五年前。在这个联盟里，长远的眼光才能避免平庸。

   While some organizations (like ours) have this as part of their ethos, for others it is the ethos. Checkout the 10,000 Year Clock. It is no mere thought experiment, but an actual clock being designed to beplaced inside a mountain in West Texas, wound, and left to tick and chime for ten thousand years. Why?Because to design something that lasts that long makes us all consider what the world will look like betwee nnow and then. In return, we might be inspired to do something about it.
   当一些组织（例如我们）只是把这条作为自己理念的一部分的时候，有一些组织完全照着这条理念去操作。看一下万年钟吧，这不只是纸上谈兵的试验，而是一座在西德克萨斯的山中被设计被制造的真实的钟。这是一座被设计成可以运行并报时一万年的钟。为什么要设计这座钟？因为当我们设计一些可以保持运作如此长远时间的事物的时候，我们需要去思考从现在到遥远的未来，整个世界会如何看待我们。因此，我们更会为此而感到兴奋。

   More practically, to take the long view has an unintuitive advantage built in—fewer competitors. Here’s Warren Buffett in the late 80s on this topic: “In any sort of a contest—financial, mental, or physical—it’s an enormous advantage to have opponents who have been taught that it's useless to even try.”Ask who wants to trade for an in-his-prime Kevin Garnett and 30 hands will go up. Ask who planned for itthree or four years in advance and Danny Ainge is nearly alone. Same for Daryl Morey in Houston trading for James Harden. San Antonio’s Peter Holt said after signing LaMarcus Aldridge this summer, “R.C. came to us with this plan three years ago, four years ago—seriously. And we’ve worked at it ever since.”
   更实际的，把眼光放长远些还有一个不直观的优势：更少的竞争对手。沃伦巴菲特在80年代末期关于这个话题的看法：“在任何一种竞争里，无论财务上的、精神上的、还是身体上的，当你的对手为‘有些事情尝试都是浪费时间’这种观念买单的时候，这都是一个巨大的优势。”在联盟里打听下，谁愿意通过交易获得巅峰的凯文加内特的时候，大概30支球队都愿意。问一下谁会提前3到4年来为这笔交易做准备的时候，大概只剩丹尼安吉了。火箭队的达里尔莫雷交易得到詹姆斯哈登的时候也是一样。圣安东尼奥的老板皮特霍尔特在今年夏天与拉马库斯阿尔德里奇签约之后说道，“R.C.布福德（马刺总经理）大约三四年前就把这个方案给我们看过了，真的！我们从那时候起就开始为此而运作。”

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A contrarian mindset
保持与众不同的观念

   This one is tricky, and getting more so in a league as healthy and popular as the NBA that is covered by beat writers, columnists, bloggers, commentators, and fans minute-to-minute. If you want to have real success you have to very often be willing to do something different from the herd.
   这一点非常复杂，并且越来越重要。一个健康并且流行的联盟，就像NBA，时时刻刻都被随队记者、专栏写手、博客作家、评论员和粉丝关注着。如果你想要真正的获得成功，你必须有做与他人不同的事情的意愿度。

   A few examples might help. Step away from basketball and imagine for a moment this is investment management, and your job is to take your client’s money and make it grow. It’s January 1, 2015 and the S&P 500 is $171.60, exactly the same price it has been since January 1, 1985. No fluctuation up or down. Flat every single day. And your job for every day of the past 30 years is to make money for your clients by investing. What would you do?
   有一些简单地例子可能会帮到你们。我们先远离篮球，并且假设你是一个投资机构，你的工作就是赚取客户的佣金，并且帮助他成长。现在是2015年1月1日，标普500指数是$171.60，并且从1985年1月1日起就保持在这个位置上，没有任何的波动，指标图每天都是平的。并且你过去30年的日常工作就是帮助客户通过投资去赚钱。你会怎么做？

   In the NBA, that’s wins. The same 82 games are up for grabs every year for every team. Just like in 1985 (or before). To get more wins, you’re going to have to take them from someone else. Wins are a zerogrowth industry (how many of you regularly choose to invest in those?), and the only way up is to steal share from your competitors. You will have to do something different. You will have to be contrarian.
   在NBA里，“赚钱”就是赢球。对所有球队来说，每年都是82场比赛，1985年（或者更早）也是。为了获得更多的胜利，你不得不把这些胜利从别人手上抢过来。整个联盟的胜场数是零增长的（你们中有多少人平时会在零增长的行业投资的？），唯一能提高自己胜场数的方法就是从竞争对手手中偷取“份额”。你必须做一些与众不同的事情，你必须做一个叛逆的人。

   Howard Marks describes this as a necessary condition of great performance: you have to be nonconsensus and right. Both. That means you have to find some way to have a differentiated viewpoint from the masses. And it needs to be right. Anything less won’t work.
   霍华德马克斯（橡树资本创始人）口中，达成超强业绩的必要条件是这样的：你必须与众不同并且确保正确。两者都必须做到。这意味着你必须找到一些方法来拥有一个与大众不同的视角。并且这些方法必须是正确的。少了任何一点都不行。

   But this is difficult, emotionally and intellectually. Seth Klarman talks about the comfort of consensus. It’s much more comfortable to have people generally agreeing with you. By definition, those opportunities in a constrained environment winnow away with each person that agrees with you, though. It reminds me of when we first moved to Palo Alto. Within about a week of living there a voice kept telling me, “This is great. Great weather, 30 minutes to the ocean, 3 hours to ski, a vibrant city 30 miles away, and one of the world’s best research universities within walking distance. People should really move here.” Then I looked at real estate prices. I was right, yes, but this view was decidedly not a non-consensus view. My viewpoint as a Silicon Valley real estate dilettante, which took a whole week to form, had been priced in. Shocker.
   但这非常难做到，无论是感性方面还是理性方面。塞斯克拉曼谈到过随大流是多么令人舒适。能够处在一个有很多同意你的观点的人的环境里，会比保持特立独行令人愉悦的多的多。受限环境中蕴含的机会与每个人都认同你的环境中的机会完全不一样。我记得当我们刚刚搬到帕罗奥图（加州城市）的时候，在第一周里我心里一直有一个声音在和我说：“这地方很棒，气候很棒，只需30分钟就能到达海边，3小时到滑雪场，30英里远有一个充满生机的城市，还有一个世界上最好的研究型大学走路即可到达。人们真的应该搬到这里来。”然后我看了一下房地产价格，这也证明了我是对的。但是这种看法显然不是一种“与众不同的观点”。我的观点只是一个只花了一周来观察的硅谷房非专业地产人员的观点，也早已被市场价格所认同了。

   To develop truly contrarian views will require a never-ending thirst for better, more diverse inputs. What player do you think is most undervalued? Get him for your team. What basketball axiom is most likely to be untrue? Take it on and do the opposite. What is the biggest, least valuable time sink for the organization? Stop doing it. Otherwise, it’s a big game of pitty pat, and you’re stuck just hoping for good things to happen, rather than developing a strategy for how to make them happen.
   发展出真正的与众不同的观点，需要对变得更好保持饥渴，以及保持更多样化的投入。哪个球员在你看来是最受低估的？把他带到你的球队。有什么篮球公理看起来最不真实？仔细研究并且按它的反面来执行。组织内部花费了最多时间，却最没有效果的事情是什么？赶紧停掉。否则，这就是一场大型Pitty Pad（一种卡牌游戏，看了下介绍有点类似十三水）游戏。你会被困住，并且只能被动的期待有一些好事情发生，而不是开发出一套完整的策略来主动让好事情发生。

   There has to be a willingness to tolerate counterarguments, hopefully in such a way that you can truly understand and summarize the other side’s arguments at least as well as they can. And then, after all that, still have the conviction to separate yourself from the herd.
   一定要有意愿去容忍抗辩，希望这样做能够帮助你完全理解并且总结另一种观点的论据，至少能做到和对方理解程度相同。然后，在做到这一切后，仍然要保持对把自己与人群区分开的信念。

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A tolerance of uncertainty
对不确定的事物保持宽容

   This one can be really difficult, especially when the stakes are high. But it’s critical to making rational decisions over the long term. We are all so tempted to simplify when something is hard to think about, simply to get it out of our mind by treating it as impossible.
   这一点可能非常难做到，特别是当相关利益非常巨大的时候。但这对于能否做出长期理性决定来说又至关重要。当一些事情很难找到解决之道的时候，我们总想着去简化它：简单地把它认为是不可能完成的事情，并且不再去思考它。

   This goes from academic sounding to life altering in basketball team building, though. Looking at a player with an estimated 10% or 20% chance of being a star over the next three or four years can’t be written to zero—that’s about as high as those odds ever get. That’s surely a very, very high number for any player that is ever available to you to be added to your team. Once you accept that, it becomes clear that shrinking the confidence interval around that estimate (and the estimates of the downside risk at the other end of the spectrum) becomes pretty darn important.
   从学术探究到篮球队组建，这种情况都会发生。如果一名球员有大约10%或者20%的几率能够在3-4年内变成一位明星球员，这个几率不应该被简单地写为0，虽然事实上这件事情在真实情况中可能性的确接近于0。这样一来，有非常非常多的球员都可以被带到你的球队中。一旦你能接受这个观点，缩小预估的置信区间（以及范围另一边的预估值的下行风险）的重要性就变得显而易见了。

   But our well worn thinking patterns often let us down here. Phil Tetlock, from just down the street at Penn, addresses this well in his most recent remarkable book Superforecasting where he quotes the great Amos Tversky saying, “In dealing with probabilities…most people only have three settings: “gonna happen,” “not gonna happen,” and “maybe”.” Jeff Van Gundy sums it up succinctly on our telecasts, “it’s a make or miss league.” He’s right.
   但是我们的思维模式经常让我们在这里掉坑里。菲尔特洛克在他最新的书《超级预测》中提到过这点。他引用了伟大的阿莫斯特沃斯基的话：“当处理概率的时候，大多数人只有三种方案，‘会发生’，‘不会发生’，以及‘可能吧’。”杰夫范甘迪在电视广播中简要的总结过：“这就是一个发生或者错过的联盟。”他是对的。

   In some decisions, the uncertainties are savage. You have to find a way to get comfortable with that range of outcomes. If you can’t, you’re forced to live with many fewer options to choose amongst which leads over the long term to lesser and lesser outcomes.
   在一些决定中，不确定性是可怕的。你必须找到一些方法来让自己对结果的可能性范围感到舒适。如果你不能，你会不得不面对一个只有非常少的选项可供选择的环境。这样会导致长期产出越来越少。

   The illusion of control is an opiate, though. Nonetheless, it is annoyingly necessary to get comfortable with many grades of maybe. Sixers fans come up to me to say hello and many of them say the same thing (almost instinctively) as we part, “Good luck.” My standard reply: “Thanks. We’ll need it.”
   虽然控制幻觉*是一种精神麻痹物，但是这也是让自己能够对各种可能性都感到舒适的一个必不可少的东西。当76人球迷来和我打招呼时，在我们分开时，他们中大多都会说同一句话：“祝好运。”我的标准回复是：“谢谢，我们真的需要好运。”

* 控制幻觉是指在完全不可控和部分不可控的情境下，个体由于不合理的高估自己对环境和事件结果的控制力而产生的一种判断偏差。摘抄自百度百科。

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Be long science
保持长期科学性

   Science is about predictions. Understanding the world until you can make a prediction about what will happen next. If you’re not sure, test it. Measure it. Do it again. See if it repeats.
   科学主要是为了预测。努力去理解这个世界，直到你能对未来发生的东西做出预测。如果你对一件事情不确定，那就先做测试。然后做评估，并再次尝试。看看事情的结果是否会重复。

   “So if we want to think like a scientist more often in life, those are the three key objectives—to be humbler about what we know, more confident about what’s possible, and less afraid of things that don’t matter.” That’s from Tim Urban, who will soon be recognized as one of tomorrow’s polymaths (like many of you, he lives in New York—I’d recommend meeting him for coffee sometime).
   “如果我们在我们的一生中，想要更多的像科学家一样进行思考，那有三个主要的目标——对我们所知的事情保持谦逊；对可能发生的事情保持信心；不要为无关紧要的事情而担心。”这是蒂姆厄班，一位被公认的明日博学者所说的（与你们中许多人一样，他也住在纽约。我推荐你们能够有时间找他喝杯咖啡）。

   For the Sixers, this has meant efforts like tracking every shot in every gym where we shoot, making predictions in writing about what we think will happen with a player or a team, and generally asking more questions about the game than some are comfortable to have said aloud.
   对76人来说，这意味着我们要追踪每一个球馆里的每一次投篮，把我们针对任何一位球员或者球队内可能发生的事情所做的预测记录下来，并且大量的询问关于比赛的问题——比一些人愿意接受的问题数量还要多的问题。

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A healthy respect for tradition
对传统给与合理的尊重

   While contrarian views are absolutely necessary to truly deliver, conventional wisdom is still wise. It is generally accepted as the conventional view because it is considered the best we have. Get back on defense. Share the ball. Box out. Run the lanes. Contest a shot. These things are real and have been measured, precisely or not, by thousands of men over decades of trial and error. Hank Iba. Dean Smith. Red Auerbach. Gregg Popovich. The single best place to start is often wherever they left off.
   反向观点是成功必不可少的一部分，但是传统的智慧依然是非常重要的。这些观点被大量广泛的接受，也是因为这些观点已经被认为是我们拥有的最好的观点。回归防守，分享球，卡位，力拼每一球。这些都是实实在在的，并且通过几十年内被成千上万的人的试验和错误评估过的，无论精确的还是不精确的。汉克伊巴，迪恩史密斯，红衣主教奥尔巴赫，格雷格波波维奇。最简单最好的起点往往就是前人留下的经验。

   There are plenty of caricatures of our approach on your behalf, the most common of which is that folks here don’t even watch the games. That instead there is some mystical way by which we make decisions that doesn’t have anything to do with building a basketball team. That’s simply untrue.
   现在有大量针对我们的球队管理方法进行讽刺的漫画。最通常的内容就是本地市民都不来看我们的比赛。还有一些人说，我们做的所有决定都无法为建立一个篮球队给与任何帮助。这些都是不对的。

   Maybe someday the information teams have at their disposal won’t require scouring the globe watching talented players and teams. That day has not arrived, and my Marriott Rewards points prove it from all the Courtyards I sleep in from November to March. There is so much about projecting players that we still capture best by seeing it in person and sharing (and debating) those observations with our colleagues. What kind of teammate is he? How does he play under pressure? How broken is his shot? Can he fight over a screen? Does he respond to coaching? How hard will he work to improve? And maybe the key one: will he sacrifice—his minutes, his touches, his shots, his energy, his body—for the ultimate team game that rewards sacrifice? That information, as imperfect and subjective as it may be, comes to light most readily in gyms and by watching an absolute torrent of video.
   可能有一天，信息团队不再需要在全球范围寻觅具有天赋的球员和球队，但是这一天还没来到。我的万豪积分卡内的积分可以证明这一点。了解突出的球员的最好的方法，仍然是通过自己亲自观看，以及与同事之间对观察所得进行分享（或者讨论）。他是什么了类型的队友？他在压力下打得怎么样？他的投射能不能打破防守？他能不能越过障碍？他听从教练的指示吗？他为了进步愿意付出多少努力？还有最重要的问题：他是否愿意做出牺牲——对于他的上场时间，他的触球数，他的出手数，他的体力，他的身材——为了团队的终极胜利而牺牲自己的报酬？这些信息，可能是不完美并主观的。但是当不断观测球场内的状况，以及大量的观看录像之后，这些信息会越来越清晰。

   Some tradition awaits us everyday at the office. I inherited Marlene Barnes as my executive assistant, a widowed lifelong Philadelphian that joined the Sixers in the fall of 1977. I was born in the winter of 1977. Marlene has worked for 11 different GMs and 5 head coaches at the Sixers. The names evoke many memories for you lifelong Sixers fans and students of history like me: Pat Williams, John Nash, Gene Shue, Jim Lynam, John Lucas, Brad Greenberg, Larry Brown, Billy King, Ed Stefanski, Rod Thorn. With us, she was immediately thrown into a new, more entrepreneurial work environment with a boss full of quirks different than any she had ever encountered. She adapted wonderfully, and now is a regular Slack wizard along with much of our staff, has seamlessly plugged into one productivity hack after another, and has ordered more books from Amazon than she ever thought possible. Her presence served as an everyday reminder to me of the impermanence of my leadership. I told her within a few weeks of working together that when I see her in the mornings I’m reminded that I am a steward—today’s steward—of her Sixers.
   一些“传统”每天都在办公室里等着我们。玛琳巴尼斯是我在76人获得的行政助理，她是一个1977年秋季就加入76人的费城本地人。而我在1977年冬天才出生。玛琳在76人服务过11位不同的总经理，以及5任主教练。这些名字会唤起你们这些忠诚的76人球迷以及像我这样的历史的学徒许多回忆：帕特威廉姆斯，约翰纳什，吉恩舒，吉姆莱纳姆，约翰卢卡斯，布拉德格林伯格，拉里布朗，比利金，埃德斯蒂芬斯基，罗德索恩。作为她的新老板，我和她之前合作过的任何一任老板都不一样。与我们一起，她迅速的进入了一种新的，更像企业的工作环境。她适应的非常好，她现在与我们许多其他同事一样精通Slack（一个类似钉钉的软件），能够无间隙的在一项工作结束后进入下一项工作，同时她现在在亚马逊上购买的书籍远比她之前所能想象的还要多的多。她的存在对我来说就像一个日常提醒，让我认识到我的领导方式是多么无常。在与她一起工作了几周之后，我告诉她，每当我在早上看到她的时候，我都会意识到我只是她的76人的一位乘务员。

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A reverence for disruption
对破坏充满敬畏

   So often a new management regime looks at an organization and decides that the primary goal is to professionalize the operation. For you, I hope that doesn’t happen next. As I described to you in our first ever board meeting, we were fundamentally aiming for something different—disruption. We should concentrate our efforts in a few key areas in ways others had proven unwilling. We should attempt to gain a competitive advantage that had a chance to be lasting, hopefully one unforeseen enough by our competition to leapfrog them from a seemingly disadvantaged position. A goal that lofty is anything but certain. And it sure doesn’t come from those that are content to color within the lines.
   通常一个新的管理层会把所谓的专业化的运营看作为球队最首要的事，然而对于你的76人而言，我不希望这是接下来会发生的情况。就像我在我们第一次董事会上向你们描述的一样，我们本质上的目标就是做一些与众不同的东西——破坏。我们应该把我们的努力以一些其他人不愿尝试的方式，集中在一些重要的地方。我们应该努力尝试去获得持久的竞争优势。希望我们的优势能出乎竞争对手的意料，让我们从一个看上去比较劣势的位置超越他们。一个崇高的目标绝非固定不变的。并且很明显，这不是那些满足于循规蹈矩做事情的人能获得的目标。

   This is true everywhere, as the balance in any market or any ecosystem ebbs and flows until something mostly unexpected lurches ahead. We see it in spades—past, present, and future.
   在任何地方这都是真理，任何市场或者经济体系都存在各种各样的平衡，直到一些不被预计到事物突然打破这个平衡，并占据了领先地位。我们都目睹过这种情况，无论是在过去，现在，还是未来。

   • New Zealand’s flightless bird the moa (measuring in at 10 ft, 400 lbs.) had the life tramping around the South Island for a great long run; then the first Māori explorers washed ashore in canoes, and that was that.
   • 恐鸟是新西兰的一种不能飞的鸟类（3米高，400磅重）。他们一生都处于围绕新西兰南岛的长途旅行中。然后初期的毛利探险家终于通过木筏在成功新西兰登录，然后就没有然后了。

   • I still miss Blackberry’s keyboard, but the 2007 iPhone debut rendered it nearly obsolete to all but a few of us curmudgeons
   • 我依然很怀念黑莓手机的键盘，但是在2007年iPhone初次放弃了键盘之后，实体键盘几乎就被所有人都放弃了。

   • Watch what’s happening with the collaboration between IBM’s Watson and M.D. Anderson or Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo. It won’t be just an ancient board game that’s disrupted. It’s also anything but a game to Lee Sedol.
   • 看看IBM的Watson（IBM的AI系统）与M.D. Anderson癌症中心的合作。或者看看谷歌DeepMind的AlphaGo（阿尔法狗）。这不止关乎于一种被它打乱格局的古老棋盘游戏。对于李世石来说，这也不只是一场普通的比赛。

   Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Planck got right to it: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.” That sounds harsh, more harsh than anything I would ever say. But think about it in your context as an equity partner in the Sixers. Every April you will watch 16 of the 30 teams—the last time that exact configuration of players and coaches will ever be together—“die” as their season ends. Within a few weeks, another seven go fishing. By early June, 29 of the 30 opponents are forced to see the light of the competition’s greatness as only one raises the Larry O’Brien trophy.
   诺贝尔物理学奖获得者马克思普朗克说过：“新的科学真理的胜利不是因为说服了它的对手们，使他们看到了光芒，而是因为它的对手们终于死掉了。”这听起来很残酷，比我说过的任何事情都残酷。把他代入你们所处的环境里仔细想一下，作为76人股东合伙人的环境里。每年四月你们都会看着30只球队中的16只因为他们的赛季结束而“死亡”，这是这支球队中所有球员以及教练在一起工作的最后时光。几周之内，另外有7只球队回家钓鱼。在六月初，30只球队中的29只被迫看着竞争对手散发出伟大的光芒，因为只有一只球队能够举起奥布莱恩奖杯。（译者：仔细看了下这里应该是辛基数字弄错了，事实上四月是14只球队死亡，然后几周后是另外14只球队去钓鱼。）

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我能想到这些中的一些可能听起来很矛盾：要逆向思维，但是又要尊重传统，同时又要寄望于破坏。这就是阴阳之道：保持观察，保持怀疑。

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以上为辛基辞职信的上半部分，可能看起来更偏向哲学一点，比较无聊。下半部分涉及到更多的球队操作，我会用接下来的两周翻译出来。翻译过程中，如果觉得有什么地方我翻译的有问题，欢迎随时私我与我联系。

希望76人能战胜第二轮的对手，希望下次我发的时候76人已经在备战东决了。

最后，喊两句口号：

Hinkie died for our sins.

Trust the process!