The Unreasonable Nature of Mindsets
Understanding the mental aspect of preparation and competition in sports is a tough exercise. It's not only hard to put into words what goes through the head of professional athletes but also to make sense of these words. When I started developing an interest in that subject a few years ago, there was a particular thing I struggled to wrap my head around: why do mindsets - as explained by athletes - seem detached from reality?
With the recent death of Kobe Bryant, there has been an outpour of tributes from other athletes. Many talked about Kobe the Athlete or Kobe the Teacher. They often referenced the Mamba Mentality, Kobe's philosophy on how to approach the game. In an episode of his podcast, Bill Simmons talked about Kobe's own elaboration on his mentality. It's an interesting segment as it reveals something peculiar about the nature of mindsets. It starts around 8:15 in the audio, here's the transcript:
The message that kept getting banged home [from other players regarding Kobe, ed] over and over again was the Mamba Mentality, what a ruthless competitor he was, how hard he worked. This was the stuff that he [Kobe] was trying to tell us for 10 years. And sometimes it would be a little awkward, sometimes it seemed contrived but he really believed it. (emphasis mine)
Simmons hits the nail on the head with the use of the word "contrived". When professional athletes talk about their mindset or philosophy, it often feels corny and unreasonable because it seems to disregard reality and its nuances. One of the most influential books I've ever read is Relentless by Tim. S. Grover. Grover is the former personal trainer of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. When I had my first read through his book, I honestly thought some parts were exaggerated. At times, I would say to myself: "Things just don't work that way; life isn't that simple". As I gained more insights from athletes on the mental aspect of the game, I realised there is an important purpose in being unreasonable: it helps you stay on the right track. The danger with being reasonable and accepting the whole of reality is that it could sidetrack you from what truly matters: constant improvement and getting closer to your goals.
To elaborate on that, let's use perhaps the most famous example of unreasonable mindset - the "no-excuse" one. Nobody can deny the role of chance in our endeavours. Nobody ever has full control over their destiny and how things play out in life. There are excuses in life. And yet, some of the top performers will refuse to find excuses for what they perceive as shortcomings. If you're a sports team, you might have lost a game because of poor officiating or injuries. These are legitimate variables that can affect the outcome of a game. But because you chose to operate under the no-excuse mindset, you will purposely not use any excuse to explain the loss. You will direct your attention to all the things you had control over. One may hear from athletes something along the lines of: "We don't want to talk about [such and such] decisions from the referees or [so and so] who did not play today" followed by "we had opportunities to win the game but we came up short". The danger with being reasonable is that you might give too much importance to chance in life and not be as focused on improving yourself as you should be.
One of the best embodiments of this mindset - someone who took it to the extreme - is Kobe Bryant (unsurprisingly). Have a read of the following:
Leading up to the game [his 81-point one, ed], Bryant had been frustrated with the referees because he didn't think he was getting calls when defenders were overly physical. Jackson told Bryant to take a day off in Phoenix, but instead Bryant got together with Shaw to work on playing through the contact.
Brian Shaw:Â So I played defense on him, and he would throw the ball to himself and he'd make a post move, and he told me to slap his arms and elbows and pull his arms down as hard as I could. He would make a move, and I would pull his arm down and he would say: "No! Do it as hard as you can ... harder than that!" So I was literally smacking his arms and his elbows as hard as I could when he was trying to shoot, and we did that for a good 20 minutes. At first, he was struggling to get the ball up, but then it got to a point with his strength he was able to work through all the stuff that I was doing and score. He was consistently making every shot.[1]
As you can see, Kobe refused to accept that referees could take part of his game away. He worked on shots while being literally fouled just to make sure he could make them. He took officiating out of the equation. It would have been easy for him to find a reasonable excuse, i.e. referees not giving the calls he deserved. He could have used that excuse to not work on playing through the contact and reason that he should be getting those foul calls anyway. But by relying on his no-excuse mindset, he found a way to make himself better. As Brian Shaw indicated, he went from having difficulties making those shots to consistently making them. If he was to get fouled and to not be able to convert the shot, he could then point the finger at himself, not the referees.
The main raison d'être of a mindset is that it dictates your behaviour and attitude. Being unreasonable in terms of mindset will ensure that you remain on this behaviour (which you hope to be positive) and prevent you from creeping up on a negative track. If we use the example of officiating, you may adopt a no-excuse mindset and decide to pay little attention to referees. You would then strive to stay close to something definitely positive - growing and focusing on the things you have control over - while staying away from something potentially negative like obsessing over officiating.
It is important to note that elements that may seem out of control are not always as such. Using officiating again, you can actually influence it to a certain degree. Circumstances may even force you to look at it. If you play a best-of-7 series and believe that officiating is becoming a factor, you may want to address it. At this stage, being unreasonable in terms of mindset is important. It can help you navigate the pitfalls of balancing "the things you have great control over" versus "the things you have little control over":
If you are unreasonable, you will look first at what you could have done better (positive) and then maybe address officiating.
If you are reasonable, you may look at officiating as the root of your problems and be consumed by it (negative).
Here's a good illustration of how not being unreasonable can have negative consequences. We'll be looking at one of the best series in NBA history: 2002 Western Conference Finals between Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers. This series is infamous for what was perceived as poor officiating in a pivotal Game 6. The Kings had a 3-2 series lead, a win away from the NBA Finals. In that game, the Lakers shot a whopping 27 free-throws in the fourth quarter (more than the Kings' total for the game), escaping with a narrow win and forcing Game 7. Here's what Sacramento Bee reporter Ailene Voisin had to say about the Kings' mood in the locker room just before Game 7:
Before the game, I went into the locker room — the thing that always stuck with me was that players were still whining about Game 6, how they got screwed, everyone from Rick Adelman to Geoff Petrie. They were still consumed by Game 6.[2]
The Kings had played the best basketball in that series and had home-court advantage for Game 7. Despite those favourable conditions and the opportunity of a lifetime, the entire organisation - from the President of Basketball Operations to the players - allowed itself to be haunted by something it had little control over. The Kings were reasonable to see Game 6 as controversial. Rarely do you see a team shooting 27 free throws in under 12 minutes. But they had very little to gain and probably a lot more to lose by focusing so much on referees. Because they didn't have the correct mindset, they did not know how to handle the controversy going into such an important moment.
The Kings ended up losing Game 7. When it mattered most, they were not able to execute. No one can say for definitive if adopting a different, more positive mindset would have made them win that game. After all, life remains unpredictable. But had they been in the same situation again, the Kings would have probably approached things differently, by leaning more on their strengths and giving less importance to matters as volatile as officiating.
Najib
Follow me on Twitter.
References
[1] Markazi, A. (2016). From The Mag: The story of Kobe Bryant's greatest game. [online] ESPN.com. Available at: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14609380/how-los-angeles-lakers-kobe-bryant-made-history-81-point-game [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].
[2] Abrams, J. (2014). All the Kings’ Men. [online] Grantland. Available at: https://grantland.com/features/2002-western-conference-oral-history-los-angeles-lakers-sacramento-kings/ [Accessed 11 Feb. 2020].
Picture by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.