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You can’t break the rules until you know how to play the game. RICKI LEE JONES
The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.
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“On a good team there are no superstars,” Red insisted. “There are great players who show they are great players by being able to play with others as a team. They have the ability to be superstars, but if they fit into a good team, they make sacrifices, they do things necessary to help the team win. What the numbers are in salaries or statistics don’t matter; how they play together does.”
“Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he used to say. “Perfect practice does.”
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh talks about “dwelling happily in the present moment,” because that’s where everything you need is available. “Life can be found only in the present moment,” he writes. “The past is gone, and the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”
Every year Tex, who loved inspirational sayings, would recite to the team his favorite proverb about the importance of learning the details: For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
I added that Red Holzman used to say that “the real mark of a star was how much better he made his teammates.”
“There’s no I in the word ‘team,’” Tex would say. “But there is in the word ‘win,’” Michael would counter with a grin.
Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive. Oneness is not something you can turn on with a switch. You need to create the right environment for it to grow, then nurture it carefully every day.
I often reminded the players to focus on the journey rather than the endgame, because if you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.
The first thing I did with the Bulls was to teach the players an abbreviated version of mindfulness meditation based on the Zen practice I’d been doing for years. I didn’t make a big deal of it. We sat for about ten minutes or so during practice, usually before one of our video-viewing sessions. Some players thought it was weird; others used the time to take a nap. But they humored me because they knew that meditation was an important part of my life. From my point of view, getting the players to sit quietly together for ten minutes was a good start. And some players, notably B.J. Armstrong,
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The master nodded. “To hear the unheard,” he said, “is a necessary discipline to be a good ruler. For only when a ruler has learned to listen closely to the people’s hearts, hearing their feelings uncommunicated, pains unexpressed, and complaints not spoken of, can he hope to inspire confidence in the people, understand when something is wrong, and meet the true needs of his citizens.”
The way you do anything is the way you do everything. TOM WAITS
John Wooden used to say that “winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
As Michael put it, “Success turns we’s back into me’s.”
Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile. INDIAN PROVERB (PUNJABI)
It’s the old standard: Great players make other players better.
Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between them. The essence of wheel-making lies in the craftman’s ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?”
Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?” After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, “Everything changes.” Those words, Suzuki said, contain the basic truth of existence: Everything is always in flux.
