"Not a game, Not a game, Not a game”: Outline of Some Theories of Practice

Cait McKinney and Dylan Mulvin use ex-NBA star Allen Iverson’s 2002“Practice Rant” as a starting point for their dialogue. Iverson’s broadside was part heated press conference and part poem, a speech in which the point-guard dismissed the importance of practice. Practice, for Iverson, is negligible because it is, by definition, “not a game.” Taking our cue from his speech, we define practice as the repertoire of necessary and repetitive activities that precede “performance”—activities that are ignored, elided, and generally taken for granted because of their necessity and repetitiveness.