What Sport Can Teach Us About Life

In my playing days and afterwards, I have thought deeply about what, exactly, sport can teach, that would make us more successful adults. I came up with five things that can be remembered through the acronym, S.P.O.R.T.

SKILL
Sport Teaches: Without quick execution, marksmanship is of little value. Skill is proper and quick execution.   

During a halftime show while I was playing for the Clippers, a tremendous shooter made twenty three pointers in a row. That’s pretty good, don’t you think? We could have used a great shooter in the second half but, had we signed him up right there at halftime and put him in the game, he would have never gotten a shot off. He was too slow a shooter. 

A boxer, when he sees an opening, must throw an accurate punch, but it must also be in there before the opening is blocked.  A forward, in soccer, must strike quickly while the defense has shifted.

Sport To Life:
The youth sportsman that later turns surgeon has learned to properly and quickly mend a bone or replace a heart, before the patient’s life is in danger. The youth sportsman that later turns firefighter must make all the right moves, but with quickness, if he is to save a life or save a home. 

The ancient Danish proverb is true: “He who hesitates is lost.”

You may be the swiftest in the flock,
You may be the fastest in the air,
But when night has played her term,
And the morning brings the worm,
The bird that will eat is the first one there.

PHYSICAL CONDITION
Sport Teachers: The health benefits of physical conditioning and how to get through it.  

Statistics show, even though 45% of Americans will make a fitness and weight loss resolution this year, within a few weeks, these goals begin to fade and, within a few months, are replaced by the old habits. A friend, who did not play organized sports in his youth, told me, “Every time I find myself talking about exercise, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.”

Sport to Life
What are the reasons 24 Hour Fitness has a full membership January 1st, and is soliciting to get more members on April 1st? As adults, it is difficult to make a permanent life change. But, those that were part of a team when younger have an advantage; in a sense, it is returning to something familiar.  They remember the health benefits and that they have it within themselves to get through the pain.

OBSESSION
Sport Teaches: The obsession to know everything about your sport is more valuable than talent.

Albert Einstein, considered by some to be the smartest man to have ever lived, was asked, by his elementary teacher to drop out of school.

After developing The Special Theory of Relativity, a concept that revolutionized the way we now look at time, space, and gravity, he was asked how he did it. He said,

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”

Magic Johnson is probably the most valuable point guard in NBA history, but he certainly was not the most physically talented. It was Magic’s mind that made him a cut above the rest. As a young player, he was obsessed with knowing how and why such things as offensive plays, fast breaks, and defenses worked. As a result, he became so cerebral, we would say, “Magic is playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers.” 

Sport to Life
The same principles for learning, Magic Johnson learned while digging deep into the “hows” and “whys” of basketball, he applied to business after retirement. Extremely interested in how business worked, he learned quickly and deeply. Today, under Magic Johnson’s leadership, Magic Johnson Enterprises is partners with such well-known companies as: 24 Hour Fitness, TGI Fridays, Starbucks in Urban Communities, SodexMagic, and Magic Workforce Solutions.

REPETITION
Sport Teaches: There is no substitute for hard work through drilling and practice.

In this day and age, we are inventing faster ways to do almost everything: Microwaves, High Speed Internet, Speed Diets, and Twitter. Efficiency is good, but shortcuts are not.

When Michael Jordan became a champion, many young people wanted to be “Like Mike.” It wasn’t long before most young players were wearing his basketball shoes. Here’s what Charles Barkley had to say about that:

“These are my new shoes. They’re good shoes. They won’t make you rich like me; they won’t make you rebound like me; they definitely won’t make you handsome like me; they only make you have shoes like me.”

It wasn’t the shoes that made Jordan great; it was practice through repetition—hours and hours of repeating the same move, over and over again until he got it right.

When inventing the light bulb, it took Thomas Edison hundreds of attempts to finally arrive at the carbonized bamboo filament that could last 1,200 hours.

Larry Bird shot 1,000 jump shots a day in the off season. I shot 500 hook shots a day in the off season. If there would have been a way for me to get the same results by shooting 100, I would have done it, but there was not.

Sports to Life:
Hard work through many challenges and barricades produces lasting results in sports. When I was shooting the 500 hook shots a day, there were times I missed four or five in a row. As I kept shooting, I always found the reason I was missing. This would not have been possible otherwise. 

Grantland Rice, a sportswriter of the great depression, said it well in his poem, How to Be a Champion.

You wonder how they do it,
You look to see the knack,
You watch the foot in action,
Or the shoulder, or the back.

But when you spot the answer,
Where the higher glamour’s lurk,
You’ll find in moving higher,
Up the laurel-covered spire,
That the most of it is practice,
And the rest of it is work.

TEAMWORK
Sport Teaches: A team is at maximum strength when all players, especially the more talented, know and respect the boundary between team glory and self glory.

When you get to the last few weeks of playoffs, for any team sport, the teams that are still playing have two things in common: On defense, they play like a seamless unit, and on offense, you never know where, and from whom, the next play is coming. 

Sidney Wicks was a talented UCLA forward. In fact, he was more talented than the player that played in front of him, Lynn Shackelford (nicknamed “Shack”). But Sidney, when in the game, crossed the boundary between team glory and self glory and, when he did, the team didn’t run as smoothly as when he was out.

But Wicks thought, because he could score more points than Shackelford, he should have been playing more. So he approached Wooden and said, “Coach, you know I’m better than Shack.” Coach responded, “Yes you are, Sidney, and it’s a shame you’re letting him beat you out.”

John Wooden has said, “It’s amazing what a team can accomplish when no one cares who receives the credit.” Wicks never started that year, but he began to understand what Wooden said. The next season, after Kareem had gone pro, UCLA was not picked to win the championship or even the league. But, because Sidney Wicks became a team player, they won the championship, not just that year, but the following year as well.

Both season, Sidney Wicks was All-America and, as a senior, he was NCAA player of the year. He learned something coach Wooden has said often, “The main ingredient to stardom is the rest of the team.”

Sports to Life
Team sports teach us to respect the boundary between team glory and self glory. On any team, those that cross that boundary make the team weaker. And, it is the same in any business.

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem, The Law of the Jungle, echoes the point.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but he wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

CONCLUSION
I chose skill, physical conditioning, obsession, repetition, and teamwork, because I believe, collectively, they are a good foundation for anyone going into adulthood. If that is true, we have a good formula for helping young people prepare for life.

Swen