Photo: Imagn Images

There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, and take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit but which should help us become better players over time.

What's So Special About San Francisco?

If you have a technology startup, odds are good you're going to locate it in Silicon Valley. Why? Because that's where the majority of venture capital investors are located. Why are they located there? Because that's where the majority of tech startups are located. Why are they located there? Because that's where the majority of venture capital investors are located. Why are they… is it just me, or is this starting to sound like familiar territory?

Industries tend to concentrate within a small geographical area because there are major advantages to doing so. Buyers and sellers can keep in closer contact, contractors, and suppliers are more readily available when they are needed, and in general, the entire industry benefits from certain economies of scale. Once a critical mass of the tech industry is rooted in a place, the entire tech industry becomes rooted in that place.

We see this in the oil industry, which largely clusters in and around Houston, Texas; in fact, Houston is home to the headquarters of more Fortune 500 companies than any city except for New York City. We see this in the automobile industry, which is heavily concentrated in and around Detroit, Michigan. And we see this in technology firms, which invariably gravitate towards Silicon Valley.

Is there something special about these locations that causes them to become industrial hubs? To some extent, yes— Detroit's location on a Great Lake waterway gives it natural advantages as a transportation hub, Houston's location gives it easy access to Texas' fertile oil fields, and Stanford University provides a natural talent pool for the Silicon Valley tech firms to draw upon.

At the same time, these were hardly the only suitable locations for these burgeoning industrial hubs. Had Henry Ford built his first factory in Cleveland, there's a high likelihood that Motor City would have resided in Ohio and not Michigan. Had oil been discovered in North Dakota before Texas, it's possible that Bismark would instead be home to more than 20 multinational corporations. And had William Hewlett and David Packard met at MIT instead of Stanford, we might be talking about Boston as the world's foremost technological hub.

In other words, these areas gain significance not through their own intrinsic features but rather as an accumulated advantage that compounds over the years. It made sense for computer parts suppliers to locate in Palo Alto because that's where the first computer companies were founded. It makes sense for new computer companies to headquarter in Palo Alto because that's where all the parts suppliers are located. And on and on and on.

This is path dependence.

Bees, Path Dependence, and Royal Jelly

The majority of female bees are sterile workers. A small minority of female larvae, however, grow up to be fertile queen bees. What's interesting is that there is no difference between the bee larvae that will grow up to be workers and the larvae that will grow up to be queens.

Early in their lifespan, the worker bees feed all bee larvae a substance called "royal jelly". Each bee is fed this substance for three days. Occasionally, however, the hive will require another queen; in these instances, certain larvae will be selected to continue receiving the royal jelly after the three-day period. Indeed, the workers will create special chambers for these designated larvae and essentially marinade them in a surplus of royal jelly throughout their entire development.

The result of this special treatment is that these larvae develop into queens. But again, there is nothing special about the larvae themselves. Every worker had the potential to be a queen, and every queen had the potential to be a worker; the only difference between the two was the continued application of royal jelly.

Queen development, then, is a type of path dependence. The fact that a bee is a queen today owes to the fact that it was bathed in royal jelly yesterday and not to any intrinsic properties of the bee itself.

In 2010, Henry Abbott of ESPN drew an analogy between bee larvae receiving royal jelly and young NBA players receiving minutes and coach support. The article is a fascinating read, and I would highly recommend it whenever you have the time. For those who would prefer not to click through, the concept - which he did not invent but which he was among the first to explain in a clear and concise manner - is that every young NBA player is talented, but only certain players are placed in the ideal circumstances to develop.

In NBA games, player minutes are a finite resource (with five players on the court every minute and 48 minutes per game, coaches only have 240 player minutes to allocate in any individual game). Typically, coaches are concerned about winning, so they give the lion's share of these minutes to established veterans. Occasionally, though, teams will have a weakness or will coach with an eye toward the future, and they will give more of these minutes to young developmental prospects.

In his article, Abbott quotes David Thorpe, a professional player development specialist, with the following anecdote: "A great recent example of this was Trevor Ariza with the Lakers last season. In the spring, everyone wondered why they'd let him shoot all those 3s. It wasn't productive. But they needed him to be able to do that, they let him do that, they didn't yank him for doing that, and they coached him on how to do that better. And in the playoffs, he was amazing at that and helped them win a championship."

This, too, is a form of path dependence. The fact that Trevor Ariza was a sniper in the postseason owed at least partially to the fact that Trevor Ariza was given a lot of minutes, a green light to shoot, and a long leash when his shots weren't falling in the regular season.

Through the first four years of his career, a mere 3.8% of Trevor Ariza's shots had come from outside the three-point line, and Ariza connected on just 20.9% from that range. Then, in the 2008-2009 NBA season, Ariza received the royal jelly. That year, he attempted 32% of his shots from beyond the arc and connected on 31.9%. After that season, Ariza was virtually unrecognizable compared to the player he was before; he took 53.7% of his shots from beyond the arc and connected on 35.3%, lasting thirteen more years as a valuable role player.

Would Ariza have developed into a sniper had Los Angeles not originally had such a need? It's possible, though I think not. Instead, Ariza might well have continued on his previous developmental path and been out of the league within a few seasons.

The Royal Jelly in the NFL

Royal jelly is not merely a concept that applies to bees and NBA players; in the NFL, we see this process play out time and time again.