Here are his words of wisdom spoken twelve days before his championship victory:
“I’ve failed many times in my life and career and because of this I’ve learned a lot,” Mickelson wrote. “Instead of feeling defeated countless times, I’ve used it as fuel to drive me to work harder. So today, join me in accepting our failures. Let’s use them to motivate us to work even harder.”
Lebron James was born on December 30, 1984, in Akron, Ohio, to Gloria Marie James, who was 16 at the time of his birth. His father, Anthony McClelland, has an extensive criminal record and was not involved in his life. When James was growing up, life was often a struggle for the family, as they moved from apartment to apartment in the seedier neighborhoods of Akron while Gloria struggled to find steady work. Realizing that her son would be better off in a more stable family environment, Gloria allowed him to move in with the family of Frank Walker, a local youth football coach who introduced James to basketball when he was nine years old.
While King James, as some like to call him, may be one of the best to play the game his story is similar to so many. It is a rags to riches story that is driven by a unique combination of skill and motivation. I never like when athletes after accomplishing something amazing preach that with hard work anyone can achieve anything they put their minds to. It is simply not true. At 5”7 no matter how hard I work, I was never going to make it in the NBA. Yes there were people shorter than me who did make it but again their skill was greater than mine could ever be.
Yet, it is Muggsy Bogues at 5”3 who is the better story. In his autobiography, In the Land of Giants, he recounts the struggles of growing up in inner-city Baltimore and achieving success in the NBA. At five years old, he was hit by stray buckshot in his neighborhood and had to be hospitalized. As a child, he witnessed a man get beaten to death with a baseball bat, a sight that haunted him into adulthood. When Bogues was 12 years old, his father was sentenced to twenty years in prison for armed robbery. Around the same time, his brother Chuckie began using hard drugs.
Bouges had a 44 inch vertical jump. He could jump over 3 and a half feet. When asked about whether or not he could dunk the ball he responded, “I never dunked in an NBA game… but I can dunk a basketball no problem.” In 14 years in the NBA playing for four different teams he scored 6858 points, he could steal the ball from anyone at almost any time. He knew when to shoot and when to pass.
It takes tremendous willpower to achieve great things But you have to be born with that determination. King James was a man-child. He was a big man with significant size and athletic ability. But he still had the motivation. Bouges, nicknamed “Muggsy” after a diminutive character from The Bowery Boys, didn’t seem to have any of that. But he had resolve. You can’t buy that. You can’t practice that and contrary to many coaches’ approach all the yelling in the world cannot bring it out in a sustained way.
Tim Minchin in a commencement speech at University of Western Australia summed it up pretty well.
Remember, It’s All Luck
You are lucky to be here. You were incalculably lucky to be born, and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family that helped you get educated and encouraged you to go to Uni. Or if you were born into a horrible family, that’s unlucky and you have my sympathy… but you were still lucky: lucky that you happened to be made of the sort of DNA that made the sort of brain which – when placed in a horrible childhood environment – would make decisions that meant you ended up, eventually, graduating Uni. Well done you, for dragging yourself up by the shoelaces, but you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that dragged you up. They’re not even your shoelaces.
But not everyone is so lucky to attend university. For others there must be a plan if you want to get out of the circumstances you are in. And then it still takes a lot of work. You don’t even have to enjoy what you are doing. As Andre Agassi commented in his autobiography, Open “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.”
Motivation is a deeply personal attribute. How many of us have heard our parents report back after parent-teacher conferences, “if he would only apply himself” or “he has so much potential.” Yet we know motivation is contagious, and therefore can be utilized in team sports in ways that are absent in individual sports. The crossover is team sports made up of individual efforts. Who can forget Simone Biles withdrawing from the team competition at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics only to compete in the individual balance beam on the last day of competition. (The Russian Olympic Committee went on to win the gold, beating the US who had won every team gold in every Olympics since 2011).
Some want to help the team some want to make sure not to hurt the team. Some want to be the person with the ball as time runs down to take the winning shot and some want to be the person who passes the ball to that person. Not matter, when you play team sports we are motivated by others. While motivation can never be objectively measured neither can momentum.
In a world in which statistics and measurements and metrics can be an indicator of future performance. As they say about the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results. In football there is something called three and out. It means that a team chooses instead of using all four downs to achieve a first down and decides to punt the ball on fourth down instead. Three and out is the opposite of a sustained drive. Getting a first down further motivates the offense, while three and out motivates the defense. Either way it is about the drive, keeping it going or stopping it. Tennis players speak of driving the ball. Golfers actually have a club called a driver that is supposed to hit the ball the furthest. Drive is motivation and it really has less to do with a club or a racquet.
As I mentioned, coaches will give motivational speeches before a game and even at the half. It is one way to channel focus as if winning or even the money that is earned is not enough motivation for professionals and making to the pros isn’t enough for the amateur. But those speeches have a short shelf life and are probably forgotten within minutes of being back on the field or court. I have a hard time imagining that a 300 pound lineman standing opposite a 300 pound lineman remembers the coach saying “this is your moment’ or Opportunities don’t happen, you create them,” or “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
There are coincidences we believe are determinant. The Patriots winning the Superbowl after 9/11. New Orleans Saints winning the Superbowl after Hurricane Katrina. Hideki Matsuyama winning the the 2021 Masters Tournament in a year that saw extraordinary Asian hate in America. But maybe there is something to it. Who knows, you can’t measure motivation.
Here are his words of wisdom spoken twelve days before his championship victory:
“I’ve failed many times in my life and career and because of this I’ve learned a lot,” Mickelson wrote. “Instead of feeling defeated countless times, I’ve used it as fuel to drive me to work harder. So today, join me in accepting our failures. Let’s use them to motivate us to work even harder.”
Lebron James was born on December 30, 1984, in Akron, Ohio, to Gloria Marie James, who was 16 at the time of his birth. His father, Anthony McClelland, has an extensive criminal record and was not involved in his life. When James was growing up, life was often a struggle for the family, as they moved from apartment to apartment in the seedier neighborhoods of Akron while Gloria struggled to find steady work. Realizing that her son would be better off in a more stable family environment, Gloria allowed him to move in with the family of Frank Walker, a local youth football coach who introduced James to basketball when he was nine years old.
While King James, as some like to call him, may be one of the best to play the game his story is similar to so many. It is a rags to riches story that is driven by a unique combination of skill and motivation. I never like when athletes after accomplishing something amazing preach that with hard work anyone can achieve anything they put their minds to. It is simply not true. At 5”7 no matter how hard I work, I was never going to make it in the NBA. Yes there were people shorter than me who did make it but again their skill was greater than mine could ever be.
Yet, it is Muggsy Bogues at 5”3 who is the better story. In his autobiography, In the Land of Giants, he recounts the struggles of growing up in inner-city Baltimore and achieving success in the NBA. At five years old, he was hit by stray buckshot in his neighborhood and had to be hospitalized. As a child, he witnessed a man get beaten to death with a baseball bat, a sight that haunted him into adulthood. When Bogues was 12 years old, his father was sentenced to twenty years in prison for armed robbery. Around the same time, his brother Chuckie began using hard drugs.
Bouges had a 44 inch vertical jump. He could jump over 3 and a half feet. When asked about whether or not he could dunk the ball he responded, “I never dunked in an NBA game… but I can dunk a basketball no problem.” In 14 years in the NBA playing for four different teams he scored 6858 points, he could steal the ball from anyone at almost any time. He knew when to shoot and when to pass.
It takes tremendous willpower to achieve great things But you have to be born with that determination. King James was a man-child. He was a big man with significant size and athletic ability. But he still had the motivation. Bouges, nicknamed “Muggsy” after a diminutive character from The Bowery Boys, didn’t seem to have any of that. But he had resolve. You can’t buy that. You can’t practice that and contrary to many coaches’ approach all the yelling in the world cannot bring it out in a sustained way.
Tiim Minchin in a commencement speech at University of Western Australia summed it up pretty well.
Remember, It’s All Luck
You are lucky to be here. You were incalculably lucky to be born, and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family that helped you get educated and encouraged you to go to Uni. Or if you were born into a horrible family, that’s unlucky and you have my sympathy… but you were still lucky: lucky that you happened to be made of the sort of DNA that made the sort of brain which – when placed in a horrible childhood environment – would make decisions that meant you ended up, eventually, graduating Uni. Well done you, for dragging yourself up by the shoelaces, but you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that dragged you up. They’re not even your shoelaces.
But not everyone is so lucky to attend university. For others there must be a plan if you want to get out of the circumstances you are in. And then it still takes a lot of work. You don’t even have to enjoy what you are doing. As Andre Agassi commented in his autobiography, Open “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.”
Motivation is a deeply personal attribute. How many of us have heard our parents report back after parent-teacher conferences, “if he would only apply himself” or “he has so much potential.” Yet we know motivation is contagious, and therefore can be utilized in team sports in ways that are absent in individual sports. The crossover is team sports made up of individual efforts. Who can forget Simone Biles withdrawing from the team competition at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics only to compete in the individual balance beam on the last day of competition. (The Russian Olympic Committee went on to win the gold, beating the US who had won every team gold in every Olympics since 2011).
Some want to help the team some want to make sure not to hurt the team. Some want to be the person with the ball as time runs down to take the winning shot and some want to be the person who passes the ball to that person. Not matter, when you play team sports we are motivated by others. While motivation can never be objectively measured neither can momentum.
In a world in which statistics and measurements and metrics can be an indicator of future performance. As they say about the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results. In football there is something called three and out. It means that a team chooses instead of using all four downs to achieve a first down and decides to punt the ball on fourth down instead. Three and out is the opposite of a sustained drive. Getting a first down further motivates the offense, while three and out motivates the defense. Either way it is about the drive, keeping it going or stopping it. Tennis players speak of driving the ball. Golfers actually have a club called a driver that is supposed to hit the ball the furthest. Drive is motivation and it really has less to do with a club or a racquet.
As I mentioned, coaches will give motivational speeches before a game and even at the half. It is one way to channel focus as if winning or even the money that is earned is not enough motivation for professionals and making to the pros isn’t enough for the amateur. But those speeches have a short shelf life and are probably forgotten within minutes of being back on the field or court. I have a hard time imagining that a 300 pound lineman standing opposite a 300 pound lineman remembers the coach saying “this is your moment’ or Opportunities don’t happen, you create them,” or “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
There are coincidences we believe are determinant. The Patriots winning the Superbowl after 9/11. New Orleans Saints winning the Superbowl after Hurricane Katrina. Hideki Matsuyama winning the the 2021 Masters Tournament in a year that saw extraordinary Asian hate in America. But maybe there is something to it. Who knows, you can’t measure motivation.