The Knicks’ victory offers interesting insight into US democracy

As New York celebrates the end of a long and historic NBA championship drought, and America readies itself for its 250th birthday celebration, there’s an intriguing insight into the working of our nation we can learn from its most iconic franchise.

The Knicks’ victory highlights a profound distinction: There is a significant difference between popularity and success. Success in basketball is clearly defined and visible for all to see: the score. And although popularity has its benefits and is certainly nice to have, it does little to ensure success.

In the structure of our government, popularity is success, because the only score we keep is who won the election.

The Knicks and their legendary fans understand this distinction. If popularity determined the score, the Knicks would have won the championship many times instead of enduring one of the longest title droughts in professional sports history.

The mission of a basketball team is to make baskets.

Success in many aspects of life is defined by a number or numbers. Measures. All competitive sports, from golf to swimming to pickleball, keep score. Every team, every player is driven by it. Businesses focus on profits, sales growth and customer satisfaction to drive total return to shareholders. 

Measures define success in every field imaginable except one: government.

In the U.S., success is defined by who gets elected. While the government measures lots of things — it has more than 350,000 publicly available data sets — there are no widely recognized........

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