A 6-foot-2 guard who was nearly passed over in the draft just outdueled the most physically dominant player in basketball. Every agent competing against a bigger, better-funded rival should pay attention.

This past Saturday night, the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973. The headline everyone will run is the 53-year drought finally ending. The story I want agents to see is the matchup at the center of it, because it is the cleanest David and Goliath you will ever find, and a version of it is playing out in your market right now.

You do not need to follow basketball to feel the weight of this one. It is a story about size, about being counted out and about winning anyway, and it belongs to anyone who has ever looked at a bigger competitor and wondered how on earth to compete.

David didn’t win by becoming Goliath

Start with this story’s Goliath. Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs’ center, is the most physically dominant player in basketball. He stands 7 feet 4 inches tall with an eight-foot wingspan. He is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, the youngest ever to win the award and the first to win it unanimously. He is, quite literally, what you would build if you could design a basketball player from scratch, the prospect every franchise on earth covets.

Now meet its David. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ point guard, stands 6 feet 2 inches. By NBA standards he is small, so small that for years the book on him was a single word: undersized. He won two national championships at Villanova and was still told he could never be the centerpiece of an NBA team. He was not a lottery pick or a sure thing. He was taken 33rd overall, in the second round, after 32 other names were called. He spent the early years of his career as an afterthought who simply kept betting on himself.

On Saturday, with a championship on the line, the 6-foot-2 player nobody drafted in the first round scored 45 points, was named Finals MVP, and walked off with the title. The 7-foot-4 phenom went home without it. Fourteen inches separated those two men and it did not decide a thing.

Here is the part that makes this a lesson and not just a feel-good story: David did not win by becoming Goliath. Brunson did not magically grow. He won with everything that has nothing to do with height. Footwork. Preparation. Relentlessness. Nerve in the final minutes, which is exactly why his nickname is Captain Clutch. And one detail should make every agent sit up: Brunson got to the free-throw line 15 times and made 13. Those are the unglamorous, uncontested, high-percentage points you earn by driving straight into the giant, over and over, instead of running away from him. The boring, repeatable play is what beat the freak of nature.

You already know who Goliath is

If you work in this industry, you already know who Goliath is. Goliath is the mega-team with the seven-figure marketing budget. It is the national portal that seems to own every lead. It is the deep-pocketed competitor who can outspend you on every billboard, every postcard, and every closing gift. It is the brokerage down the street with 100 agents and a name everyone recognizes. And if you are an independent agent, or a small team, or someone still building, you may feel exactly like that old scouting report said about Brunson: too small to compete with all of that.

You are not. But here is the trap, and I watch agents fall into it constantly. When they look at Goliath, they try to beat him at his own game. They try to outspend a budget they cannot match. They try to be on every platform the giant is on, all at once. They copy the big team’s playbook and then wonder why it does not work for a team of one. They burn themselves out chasing a size they were never going to have. That is the losing strategy. You will not out-budget, out-staff, or out-shine the giant, and the good news is that you do not have to.

Four ways to out-work the giant

You beat Goliath the way Brunson did. You win with the things you actually control:

Out-prepare him. Walk into the listing appointment having studied the property, the neighborhood, the comparable sales and the seller’s real motivation, while the big team sends someone who skimmed the file in the car. Preparation is free, and the giant rarely bothers.

Out-follow-up him. The portal buys the lead, but it does not call that lead seven times. It does not send the handwritten note. It does not remember the names of the client’s kids. You do. Relationships are the one thing a giant’s budget cannot buy at scale, and they are entirely within your reach.

Do the high-percentage work, over and over. Brunson’s 15 trips to the free-throw line are your daily prospecting, your database calls, your open houses, your past-client check-ins. None of it is glamorous. All of it scores. The agent who does the boring, repeatable work every single day beats the flashy competitor who does it in bursts.

Drive straight at him. Brunson did not avoid the seven-foot-four shot-blocker. He attacked him, drew the foul, and went to the line. In your business, that means competing for the listing the big team assumes is already theirs, showing up in the neighborhood they think they own, and walking in with confidence instead of conceding before you start.

Notice that none of those four require money, size or a famous name. They require effort and consistency, the two things a giant most often takes for granted, and the two things entirely within your control.

Height you cannot change. Effort you can. Preparation you can. Follow-up you can. Nerve you can.

The most physically gifted player in the world just lost a championship to a man more than a foot shorter, because the smaller man mastered the things that were his to master. There is a Goliath in your market right now. You do not need to become him to beat him.

“You can’t out-tall Goliath. You can out-work him.”

Darryl Davis, CSP, is a speaker, coach, and bestselling author who has trained real estate professionals, and the leaders who build them, for more than 40 years. He is the founder of the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program and Darryl Davis Seminars. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

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