Monday, June 4, 2018

Chinks in the Armour

In karate, we speak of Shin-Gi-Tai - the interplay between the mind, the skill and the body.  But watching the NBA Finals last night I saw a remarkable example of this indivisible trinity at work and it reminded me of something that I've known for a long time...

There's no room for error at the mountain top.  Every misstep at the top is a slight tumble back to the Earth...

The example in this case is of course, someone who is at the top.  And for a long while, the mountain top in terms of individual basketball prowess has been LeBron James.  His prowess was on full display in this first game of the 2018 Championship round matched yet again against the Warriors of Golden State creating a third consecutive rematch following their first battle in 2015.  When all was said and done, LeBron's performance was superlative: 51 pts on 19/32 shooting.  It was a level of excellence and rhythm and mushin that is rarely seen at the highest levels of competition, when so much is at stake. But LeBron did all that one man could do to put his team in a position to win...

That is to say, he almost did...

Even to one from whom so much is asked, even more is needed.  This is the nature of asymmetrical warfare which lay at the heart of karate-jutsu - how you behave when you are outmatched but must fight all the same.  LeBron is laughably outmatched by the collective talent of the Warriors - the disparity is humbling to say the least.  And yet, the combination of his patience and his urgency on the game allowed his team to play the Warriors to a standstill: to an actual stalemate in the dying seconds with a pair of chances to win the game outright.

Cue the miscues.

George Hill can't be expected to hit every free throw and the one he missed that would have given the lead to the Cavs mightn't have given them the win.  But miss it he did.  And having secured the rebound from that miss, JR Smith mightn't have put a shot in the air that would have struck true, mightn't have found daylight trying to score, might have been blocked.  He might have found LeBron at the top of the circle, eager for the chance to win the game at a stroke with one finishing technique - with todome.  Instead, Smith picked this moment to lose a sense of his surrounding - a flaw in his zanshin - the abiding mind that remains aware of the situation and the circumstance.  He mistakenly thought that his team had the lead when it was in fact tied.  And thinking this, he ran as far as possible from the opposing players, trying to allow the remaining seconds to expire and secure victory when he had the outcome of the game in his hands for the taking.

LeBron spends those precious 4.7 seconds going through every possible thought that one of his level would think.  He gives himself an angle to receive the pass and calls for the ball.  He signals to Smith to go towards the net not away.  He tries to get Smith's attention to make another pass.  He turns to his bench in an last-ditch attempt to call timeout.  Yet the time expires.

Aghast, he chastises Smith for his lapse right there.  Smith admits that he lost track of the score.  LeBron thinks to push the issue and then relents, making his way to the bench.

And in that moment, there was nothing else that could be done.  That precious opportunity - there for the taking - was gone.  All that was left was to marshal his talents for the five additional minutes of basketball.

But the disappointment, the dismay, of a mistake of that magnitude on this stage, with such a small margin for error as it was, was too much.  These were the things that were going through LeBron's mind - exhausted from 47 minutes of basketball at the highest intensity - when he sat back on his bench and asked the simple question of his team:

"Did we still have a timeout?"

Coach Tyronn Lue confirmed for him that they did.

And what comes next is so profoundly human, isn't it?  To have tried so hard and to be undone in that one moment through no fault of your own.  To let slip that inner despair, that hurt, to let it seep out of you so that it doesn't swallow you whole.  Trying as hard as you can, feeling victory in your grasp and watching it slip away through the mistakes of others...anyone who had ever felt what LeBron felt in that moment probably felt it with far less of a burden on their shoulders than the burdens that LeBron shoulder.

But that's the thing: LeBron isn't allowed to be human.  Not being human is what made him 'LeBron'.  It's what set him above others at the mountaintop, in a position where others would have to look up.  He is a leader.

The naked display of emotion that he shows is a small chink in the armour.  Compared to the previous 47 minutes of superlative basketball where he answered every challenge posed, those ten seconds of disappointment should be inconsequential...

Instead they are the most important thing that he does all game.  The game, in that one moment, is lost.

And this is an essential lesson of karate - one characterized by these terms such as suki, fudoshin, shitai, kuzushi, kakugo.

Kyle Korver feels the moment, does what he can.  He claps his hands vigourously trying to rally the troops, trying to salve the pain of the moment.  A trigger to the Captain; a message that we haven't lost yet.

But what is that small vocal display of resistance when compared with the broken spirits of the Captain.  If the Captain's spirit is broken, so too, is the team's.

The Warriors would outscore the Cavs by 10 points in the final 5 minutes of the basketball game after having played them to a standstill for the previous 48 minutes.  Nothing during the game would suggest that they would be suddenly that much better than the Cavs during the overtime frame.

Save for LeBron's chink in the armour.

We all have gaps in us - suki - places where we are vulnerable.  When we are struck in these vulnerable spots, it is very, very, very easy for us to lose heart and it is even easier for someone to say that we shouldn't.  But resolve - kakugo - becomes the most important skill that anyone can have in these moments, more important than any punch, any kick and any jumpshot.  We are unbalanced - kuzushi - by these pitfalls when they hit us at a moment when our emotional investment is greatest, when our hopes are at their highest. We are knocked off our stride and almost invariably the disappointment fills our mind and then seeps out into our bodies and our posture - shitai - the listless body that follows the mind that has lost heart.

LeBron had done all that one man can do, but leaders must be able to do more than just a man.  They must abandone their own needs & their entitlement to their own emotions in order to be what the moment demands.  And even the greatest, most skilled humans can find this undertaking a bridge too far - so in moments when a person unaccustomed to great demands finds themselves similarly challenged, chances are good that they too will stumble.

To the karateka, who builds an army of one and then would dare to command that army irrespective of your fortunes or the chance at victory, the lesson of keeping heart in the direst of circumstances is one that we must take to heart.  Because there is no reason to think that LeBron couldn't have won that game if he'd sat down and said "Bad break, boys.  But I'm going to score on anyone they put in front of me in overtime and y'all are going to do the same!"  He'd been doing exactly that all game and he just needed two of the following three things to happen:  to believe he could do it, actually do it or convince his teammates that they could do it.  Resolve was all that was needed to win that game.

Asking this of him, of anyone really, is so simple as to be naive.  Perhaps fate was already decided.  But for those of us who would defy fate and the inevitable, be the outlier that challenges the odds as LeBron himself has been for so much of his life, for those of us who decide to live our lives to the last and fight because we have no other choice, this is the answer to the question of how to win when you have no reason to.  The only chance that anyone had to win a battle that seemed lost was to fight.

LeBron lost that fight.  The question is: is that insignificant?  Or is it the real reason that they lost the game?


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