The team had already discovered the drug.… Coach Adrian Vale had spent twenty-eight years on basketball courts, from dusty high-school gyms to professional arenas where every seat seemed to carry a price tag. One evening, after his team had won its seventh game in a row, a young sports journalist asked him what made the team so difficult to beat. Vale smiled. “Let me tell you something about winning,” he said. “Victory is a drug.” The journalist laughed, assuming it was a metaphor. Vale continued. “Basketball is usually explained as a game of coordination. Five players must understand spacing, timing, defensive rotations, passing angles, and countless other details. Modern teams even use tracking data to measure things that spectators cannot see—how quickly players close out on shooters, how often they create advantages, how efficiently they generate quality shots.” He pointed toward the court. “But none of that explains what ...