Ryan Bisio's Musicality of the Game Makes the Case That Basketball and Music Are the Same Thing
“Nobody else can write the book that I just wrote, I believe.”
Ryan Bisio, author of Musicality of the Game
Ryan Bisio has spent two decades as a basketball coach and as a lead singer. He coached professionally in Denmark, was named the 2023 California Community College Men’s Basketball Coaches Association State Coach of the Year, and has nine studio releases as a musician. In Musicality of the Game: The Artistry of Basketball, he makes the case that basketball and music are not just similar. They are the same thing.
Not similar. The same thing.
Clip · Ryan Bisio on why basketball and music are the same thing · 37s
The theory started in Copenhagen, where Ryan was coaching professionally. He assigned basketball elements to five musical ones: rhythm, tempo, harmony, melody, and tone. The center is the drummer. The power forward is the bass player. The point guard is the lead singer. The ball is a note.
“You look at the way teammates interact with coaches, and it’s like the power of a team’s play and a power of their potential is tethered to how deeply they can communicate and connect on a human level. So in those specific ways, I think they are the exact same thing.”
— Ryan Bisio
He kept testing it on real teams for years, at the professional and college level. By the time he finished, he says, the idea had moved from “this kind of maps” to something he knew was true.
The NBA is top 40 radio
Clip · Ryan Bisio on why the NBA is top 40 radio · 60s
Some of the book is plain arithmetic. Divide a 48 minute NBA game by the 24 second shot clock and you get 120, the standard tempo of pop music. The FIBA game Ryan coached in Europe comes out at 100. Then come the media timeouts and replay reviews, which stop an NBA game every time it starts to find a flow.
“It’s like a top 40 pop station that goes to commercial after every song.”
— Ryan Bisio
A book only he could write
Clip · Ryan Bisio on writing a book only he could write · 33s
This is Ryan’s first book, and he wrote it over the course of 11 years. Instead of a coaching playbook, he built it like a concept album: four acts and an encore, every chapter tagged with a tempo, and readers free to shuffle it like a mixtape and jump straight to the rebounding chapter.
“So I thought, I want to take a shot at writing the type of book that really only I could write and then structuring it in a way that is like a piece of standalone art.”
— Ryan Bisio
He knew it was a risk. His bet was that his mix of coaching and music made the book something no other coach could put on a shelf.
“This book needs more of you”
Clip · Ryan Bisio on putting more of himself in the book · 48s
The hardest thing to get on the page, Ryan says, was himself. His instinct was to let the ideas stand on their own. Working with the Scribe team, he learned the ideas needed him in the room: the games, the stories from the music business, his voice.
“And I got to give some of the folks at Scribe credit for that as well, where it’s like, nah, this book needs more of you. And I was like, oh, I don’t know. It’s not about me. It’s about the ideas. No, I was dead wrong. As soon as I just really inserted more of my personality, my writing style, my experiences, my passion, my ways to turn phrases, just me, me, me, me, me, the book really came to life.”
— Ryan Bisio
The team also shaped the order. The book opens on a six-year-old winning a bowling gold medal in 1988 and coming home to the piano his nana promised him, the moment music came into his life.
“I actually wasn’t going to start with that, but some of the wonderful folks at Scribe really encouraged me to be like, hey, this is a great way to tell people who you are”
— Ryan Bisio
Art is not a competition
Clip · Ryan Bisio on why art is not a competition · 44s
In the 2023 regional final, Ryan’s team held the Sequoias to 58 points, against a team averaging nearly 90 a game, and still lost. He told his locker room they had won the music of the game. It became a chapter of the book, and a way for coaches to rethink winning and losing.
“I think that loss helped me realize that art is not a competition.”
— Ryan Bisio
“And we won basically every metric you could imagine, except for the final score, which is what the only thing that most people look at.”
— Ryan Bisio
It is also why he wants coaches to drop the word expectation and replace it with want and hope.
“If you expect somebody to do something, they start performing for your approval as opposed to their own personal growth.”
— Ryan Bisio
What he tells anyone with a book inside them
Clip · Ryan Bisio on why finishing is the win · 35s
Ryan’s advice to aspiring authors is to check whether the book needs more of you in it, to let go of what you think it should be, and to finish. Next, he wants to build a way for coaches to put on headphones after a game and hear the music their team played that night.
“And if you’ve created art that can be experienced by another human being, you won.”
— Ryan Bisio
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