Maxwell Pearce

Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution.

I am an athlete and an artist, and I have witnessed how play can break rules to improve both of these worlds that I live in.

So just imagine if play, creativity and a little bit of rule-breaking

was in every industry.

There once was a time in basketball where dunking was frowned upon so much that the NCAA banned it for nine years.

Once that ban was lifted, the popularity of the game skyrocketed.

This context reminds me of my coaches yelling at me to stick to the fundamentals, all because I decided or had the audacity to try and dunk the ball one time.

Thankfully, I didn't listen to them, and I got more and more comfortable with it.

And over time, I was able to land my first dunk contest.

With a lot of work, I was able to build a global reputation for dunking the basketball.

I began to experiment with the boundaries of this.

I would incorporate things that we didn't normally associate with dunking, like with a dog, or catching a baseball, or catching the ball without looking from someone else who's not looking.

Every time I approached this with a playful mindset, I was rewarded, not only with advancing the game, but also with the opportunities that I dreamed of as a kid.

There were several video games that I used to love to play, like NBA Live and NBA 2K, and I had the opportunity to feature my dunks in both of them.

I've also had the opportunity to feature my dunks in GQ magazine, as well as SportsCenter Top 10, and eventually received an honorable mention for an ESPY award.

Unlike what my coaches constantly bickered about, being a Globetrotter requires much of the opposite.

So much of what we love about the game today, a lot of that was at one point deemed as not fundamental or nontraditional.

There's a beauty in balancing seriousness with play.

For example, if I decided that I wanted to do something and I accidentally made a mistake, there is a way that I could brush that off.

When a Globetrotter makes a mistake,