Bench your best player to win the series. Close roads to get everyone home faster. Can we harness the power of Braess's paradox?
IT IS the second game of the 1999 US National Basketball Association play-offs – the New York Knicks vs the Indiana Pacers. The eighth-seeded Knicks are holding their own against the number 2 seeds when their best player, Patrick Ewing, tears his Achilles tendon. All seems lost with the Pacers heavily favoured for the rest of the series. Yet against all odds, the Knicks go on to win the series 4-2 and qualify for the finals.
The Knicks's success against the Pacers was so unexpected that the story behind it has since become a legend, even gaining its own name. The so-called "Ewing effect" has been evoked by pundits ...
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