LeBron James has had an awesome year, with a coveted NBA championship and Olympic gold medal on hand. And the year is not over, yet.
No one can deny this athlete's ungodly talent, but it's his personality - words and actions - that seems to land him in
disfavor among fans time and time again. Touting serial capture of the Larry O'Brien trophy on stage with his partners in crime, fellow Miami Heat Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch, was arrogant to a fault. Then, until the playoff run this past season, he was the quintessential shrinking violet, if not David Copperfield act, in the fourth quarter.
These are certainly reasons I dislike LeBron. But the main reason is, I am a Bulls fan, and his dreaded Heat ushered our team right out of the 2011 conference finals.
I was talking to a friend soon after the NBA finals this year, and she clearly wasn't past the hating of LeBron or the Heat. "But you have to admit," I said, "the dude was beast mode!"
For all his veteran years in the NBA, I often forget that LeBron is still a young man. I remind myself that he has quite a lot of maturing to do. A 'man-child,' one ESPN analyst called him. This pulls me back from wading into full-on, hate-on LeBron waters.
Playing it differently
Einstein purportedly said, Madness is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. So what was different for LeBron? Here he is with answers, in a deft, thoughtful interview with ESPN Michael Wilbon:
Part 1 and
Part 2.
This is a process I call 'extracting the algorithms.' Essentially, it's a deeper dive into the underlying dynamics and reasons why a situation is working or not working. His goal was clear as day, but obviously he needed to re-examine both his play and personality, if he wanted to avoid the fate of Karl Malone or Charles Barclay: stellar career, sans championship.
We are not machines, so we cannot just pop the hood open and check our engine. Flaws and limits are the essence of who we are, but these are sometimes difficult to get at. So doing a deep dive and going at it differently are easier said than done. But it's a must to gain a better measure of success.
LeBron disconnected and reflected
The underbelly of our technologized world is that we are sometimes so tethered to our devices, as to be effectively shackled from doing anything else. It helps to turn these off, and read those anachronistic things called books, as LeBron did, in order to free himself enough to turn inward. To his credit, it worked.
But I'd like to highlight a handful things from the interview.
1. Self-reflect regularly
Mindfulness, or zen mind, is what martial artists are often schooled to attain. It's being open and thoughtful about what their situation
truly is. Our situation is not a static thing, but rather, for an athlete, it is a shifting, often unpredictable thing. So turning inward now and then serves to keep us in the flow of that situation and keep us in a mindful state outside of it.
In cutaways during the interview, we see LeBron with his eyes closed or pouring over a book, in a deeply meditative state.
2. Do only what works
How many times have you seen friends or family doing things, which don't really work, even for their own stated purpose. Sure, join a glam health club and dish out beaucoup bucks. But having done so doesn't lead to fitness or weight loss, because we may be traveling often for work and we have an active family life on the weekend. So there is no time for the club, yet we keep renewing the membership, right?
We don't know all that LeBron went through in his personal life to finally happen upon things that worked for him, but clearly he kept at it. Again, it's an imperfect process and it often takes time. But in our self-reflection, we must be open and honest enough to acknowledge when something we thought was working actually isn't working.
3. Balance things
If I may take the liberty of expanding on what LeBron meant by "balance" in the interview, it's this: We must keep things in perspective, and not get caught in just one thing or another.
The reality is, basketball is a complex sport. Yes, it's absolutely spot-on to say that it's a team sport. In this light, it's ludicrous to focus on individual stat lines, isn't it. Yet, that sport is comprised of very real individuals. Some would-be inspirational posts on Facebook tout the idea that there is no 'I' in Team, and I say in retort, Hell, yeah, there is most definitely a lot of 'I's in Team!
So it's avoiding the simplistic characterizations of team versus individual, but acknowledging both and even reveling in the intricacy of their dynamics. I argue that zen-master Phil Jackson's repeated success as a coach has to do with (a) his empathic insight into the likes of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant; (b) his astute grasp of basketball as a team sport; and (c) his deft weaving of these individuals into a unique, seamless fabric we call a winning formula.
LeBron knows full well that the things he did differently were in relation to, and in the context of, playing for the Heat.
4. Tap into a formula
I often help my daughter with her math homework. When she was in third grader, her language abilities were at a high school level. Math was her relative weakness, though she still tested at fifth grade level back then. In my absence, she often struggled with it.
I helped her think through problems, especially those presented as a narrative, which apparently all young students dread. She had formulas at her disposal, of course. But I helped her grasp what the problem was about, first of all, and then which formula applied. Moreover, I helped her understand these formulas better, so she had insight into their derivation.
I'm happy to add that as of last year, as a seventh grader, she tested in the 98th percentile for math.
In my conceptual framework, Theory of Algorithms, a formula is an algorithm. Once you've extracted the right one, then you can use it again in different situations. Which is what LeBron is poised to do, now that the new NBA season has started.
Which is bad news, once again, for my beloved Bulls (sigh).
A point of emphasis, in closing
You have to make sure, it's the right algorithms you're extracting vis-a-vis your situation, just as my daughter had to use the right formulas for particular problems.
If you come away from this LeBron interview thinking that turning off your iPhone 5 or delving into 'War and Peace' will lift your success to the next level, you haven't extracted the right algorithms. Instead, the right ones, which were not so explicit in the interview, are self-reflecting regularly and teasing out what actually works for you.
So you may use LeBron's formula, but how you apply it in your sport may be entirely different from what he did.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
