In basketball, the pass that leads to the assist never shows up on the stat sheet. Most of life’s work doesn’t either.

Somebody made the pass that made the assist possible, and no column has a place for it. Stat sheets measure what is easy to count, which is almost never the same as what mattered. Most of the work holding a thing together sits one step back from the moment anyone claps.

Look one step behind the next win you see this week and say the name out loud. The person who covered the shift, the one who sent the group the notes. Keep making your own uncounted passes too, because the people actually on the floor notice them even when the sheet does not.