~ An excerpt from my forthcoming book examining Microsoft's long history in basketball. ~
Throughout his tenure at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer was a constant presence on the basketball court outside the lunch commons on the Redmond campus. Sweating profusely in his typical Windows Chicago headband, Ballmer's ruthless competitiveness was as feared on court as it was in the tech world of the late 90s.
On one particularly memorable occasion, Ballmer led a group of interns from the Excel team to the finals in the annual company spring classic tournament, facing off against a squad assembled by Paul Allen that included Clyde Drexler wearing a contractor badge. In keeping with his total war approach to all forms of competition, Ballmer appealed to Bill Gates in his role as tournament commissioner, arguing that Drexler, as a contractor, was ineligible to play in the employee tournament.
Gates, always keen to promote competition within his ranks, denied Ballmer's request to have Drexler disqualified, and pointed out that Ballmer's Excel interns weren't technically full time employees either. Incensed, Ballmer threw a basketball across the court with such force that it became permanently lopsided. While a search for a replacement game ball was under way, Ballmer gave his overmatched squad one final pep talk, emphasizing, "Fundamentals, Fundamentals, Fundamentals!"
In a game that went down in the annals of Microsoft history, Ballmer's interns were defeated 131-129 in overtime by Allen's PDP-11 Mail Blazers. Ballmer himself was controversially ejected late in the 4th quarter for allegedly intentionally spilling a drink on the court with no timeouts remaining.
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One day in late spring 2025, 11 years on from his retirement as CEO, Ballmer once again stepped back on court for the hotly contested Microsoft lunch game. Many of the old heads from Ballmer's heyday were out of the office, mostly working from home in the post COVID-19 era, and without advance notice of Ballmer's return, the new crop of Microsoft employees were caught off guard. After dropping 40 points, Ballmer ended the game with a thunderous block and immediately left the court and headed to current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's office.
"Listen, Steve, we currently have 90% of the public Azure capacity, the vast majority of the undersea installations, the orbital facilities, as well as all of Microsoft Research and the whole quantum computing project committed to this thing," Nadella told Ballmer as he sat down next to Gates. Nadella continued, "and looking toward the future, I feel the opportunity is there to accomplish more in AI with these resources than another first round exit in the playoffs."
Ballmer took a moment to reply, "Satya, if we gave up on Windows after 2.0 failed, we never would have gotten where we are today. Every success Microsoft has ever had we built incrementally, refusing to give up after 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, whatever it took. We are only at Kawhi 3.0 right now, and if we stick with this, we can build a basketball dynasty the world has never seen. The Bay had their time in the sun, but the future will be ours."
"Steve," Nadella replied, "I'm worried we just can't solve this. This isn't software development, mathematics, fine art, or music. AI may never be competitive with the best humans in basketball. With their current roster alone, not to mention their draft picks, the human players on Oklahoma City are going to win for the forseeable future."
Ballmer just shook his head, so Satya tried another tack, appealing to Gates, "Bill, think of what we could do in business, in education, in healthcare, if we put these resources to better use!"
Gates took a deep breath, and finally replied, "I'm sorry Satya, but the current resource allocation is consistent with Microsoft's mission."
A frustrated Nadella shot back, "What mission!? To empower every person on the planet to achieve more!?"
"No," Gates replied, "I mean the real mission, the one Paul and I swore to each other back in 1976, to take over the world ...
... the world of basketball."
Nearly defeated, Nadella tried one last strategy, "Steve, look at it this way, the Clippers are at a local maximum. Harden, Lue, we've gotten all of the training data we can out of them. If we step back, rebuild, refocus on AGI, we can rule more than just LA."
Ballmer, with uncharacteristic calm, got up and walked to the door. Just before opening it, he turned, looked Nadella in the eye, and said, "Ball is life."