Parity

 There are two types of parity though.

Type A is: every team is kinda good from a coaching, personnel and game-planning standpoint and there's no room for error so when humans are humans and make an error, the small margins make it so that any team can win on any given night.

Type B (the type that the league mostly has is): the league is full of fundamentally fragile, one-dimensional teams and led by boatloads of one-dimensional stars that can only really play one way all of whom are deliberately hamstrung by a CBA that doesn't really allow teams to acquire the talent needed to make a balanced roster leading to the reality that a) if one team is faster to exploit the other team's fragility that team will win regardless of what the betting odds has and b) any single team less fragile/more versatile than the others will win regardless of the individual consistency or excellence of their actual players.  They'll just have more room for error.

The first is likely to lead to exciting basketball.  The second is likely to produce some of the awful series and blowout losses that these playoffs offered.  Boston won but there's nothing memorable about the win.  They were just the least fragile team, in terms of what could go wrong vs what they were capable of.  I guess some people like the idea of the last team standing not having any of the top players, but basketball is both a team sport and a sport of individual brilliance.  No one on Boston had a moment that made your mouth drop.  That's part of why we watch.

Confrontationality

Karate is supposed to make one more confrontational.  Not with others, though.  To others, karate is supposed to make us more tender, more generous, more curious, more compassionate.  Karate is supposed to provide the physical and spiritual strength to allow people to act without fear, to see things and beings as they are and not as our first inclination might lead us to believe.  We are more patient with others because we have the strength and luxury of being patient.  We can give others the benefit of the doubt because we are strong enough to survive a mistake, strong enough to learn from our mistakes, should our faith be misplaced and our good will be mistaken. 

No, karate is supposed to make us more confrontational with ourselves – more willing to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves the questions we don’t want to face. Karate is supposed to make one less patient for self-deceit: the lies that people tell themselves and above all, the lies that we tell ourselves.  This is equivalent to a dodge or evasion in jutsu and karate teaches us quickly that an evasion alone is not true defense.  Evasion alone is only delaying; true defense is to confront the attack, to interact with the attack and to respond to the attack, not merely react to it.  There is an intimate directness that is explicit in the tenets of ikken hissatsu, of kobo ittai that leads to the severity of shugyou and shinken and vice versa and it would be a curious thing for a karateka to train hard to down an attacker at a stroke, or train with seriousness of life and death but then live a life of indecision and timidity.  No, a commitment to karate must also necessarily be a commitment to confronting the self: to scrutinizing the self, its habits and customs, its comforts and escapist tendencies. 

By making an accurate accounting of the self and in scrutinizing and reserving judgment for what happens inward rather than what happens outward there begins the establishment of the spirit that does not immediately think to run, to escape, to be comfortable, to be unperturbed.  The body that does not betray is forged with the mind that does not run, and ideally develops technique to penetrate obstacles – enemies, challenges – and emerge stronger on the other side.

Dirty hands

Is there any simpler mark of having accomplished something of worth today than to reflect upon the soot on your hands?  At a minimum, dirty hands tried.  At a minimum, they gave the effort.

Beyond the effort, though, dirty hands probably fixed something.  They probably cleaned something.  They probably built something.  They probably made someone's life easier or better tomorrow, perhaps their own, perhaps someone else's.

Dirty hands grasped the world.  Dirty hands engaged with the world.  Dirty hands pushed forward, made a difference.

Clean hands can make a difference, too.  But clean hands don't have to take things on personally.  Clean hands are washed clear of things and beings.  They eschew unpleasantness, and the things and beings that need the most attention are usually the most unpleasant.

Dirty hands are invested in outcomes.  Dirty hands understand that unpleasant things and beings today will become disasterous things and beings tomorrow.  Dirty hands make bad things better and are there to see it through.

Kiken, kitsui, kitanai...the other three K's of true karate.  Karate is meant to be dangerous, demanding and dirty.  But there are two meanings here.  Violence without rules has no reason to be 'clean' - subject to agreed upon behaviour.  Karate-jutsu teaches us to expect violence to be dirty and to be able to resort to 'dirty' tactics if it serves the cause of justice, protection and peace.  But there is that second meaning of dirty Karate: Karate-dou is the discipline that is invested in getting one's hands dirty.  Dirty hands that are clensed through hard work, washed by dedication, determination and sweat.  A karateka should wake with clean hands and go to sleep with clean hands.  But between those moments, a karateka's hands are meant to be dirty - to do the work that others won't or can't do, to face obstacles that cause others to squirm, to engage with the world head on, hands on, unafraid of the challenge and ever ready to pull your sleeves up and get things done.

Unsettled

I didn't know the man.  But I could recognize the fire.  In a professional setting, with all eyes on you, it is easier to manifest the fire of life - what in karate we call kiai.  Still, many don't.  He played games, yes, but the stakes were high enough for them to stop seeming like games anymore.  The man was not perfect but when the gauntlet was thrown, he did not shy away - he was not bashful.

He did not settle.

For better or worse.  People speak of Kobe Bryant and they speak first of the fire - of kiai.  There is a lesson here - not because he could put a ball through a hoop, not because he was one of the best in the world to do it.  The lesson is that he fought his way there.  He fought his way there, and other people, many people, who saw his fight, felt humbled by it.

I am unsettled by the thought of perishing without making my fire real.  I am more unsettled by the thought of my daughter going before her time or of me not being able to kindle her fire within.

I like this feeling, this mortal weariness.  I will not mourn the passing of this man.  He lived more in his 41 years than I might live in 80.

I will mourn his daughter and the others aboard and I will take this lesson to heart.  A small spark...

A vivid reminder that we are running out of time.  Time is of the essence - it is here to be used.

Use time.  Don't just exist in it.

Hansei / Kime

The trick is - and it has always been - review.

Karate is about winning the moment.  But the moment was already won.  You won it that last time that you fought for the last rep.  The last time that you pushed yourself past the edge of the blade.

You just have to review the moment.  In your mind, in your heart and in your body.  You have to remember it so keenly that this moment and the next moment and the one after that feel so much like the moment that was already won that they become the same.  The moment stays with you until you wake up one day and realize - it's the only moment. 

We tell ourselves that the problem is deciding.  That we have to choose to decide over and over again.  But this is bonnō - delusion.  We made the choice.  All that's left is reviewing the choice again and again and seeing past the delusions.  The delusion that surrender is weakness.  The delusion that there is strength in inertia.

Accelerate.  That too, is karate.

Surrendering to the choice and reminding ourselves that this surrender isn't a shackle.  This is the only type of surrender that isn't slavery... 

This is the surrender that sets us free.

But you must mind your surrender and remind yourself.  Each time you remind and review you sand the imperfections and doubts away from what you know to be true.  You smooth and polish the rationale until it is without flaw. 

You must review the choice until it is the only thing that you can see.  That's where you'll finally find the most direct path.  That's where you'll find the tranquility we're all looking for.  The tranquility and unity.  The eye of the storm.

Doing, being and becoming

Karate lies in the doing

Ever since my daughter was born, I've been waiting for when I'll have more energy.

More verve, more time, more MORE...

So many illusions, bubbling up into my head.

I've forgotten about Shinken - the seriousness that is part of Karate...

Part of life.

If I don't take myself seriously, no one is going to do it for me.

Time to start seriously squeezing myself dry.

Time to start seriously finishing things I start (todome).

Time to start embracing how tired I am...

...and how much finding joy...

...is going to suck...

2019/10/30

***

"Safe" spaces

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. 
- Tacitus

• is the question of 'is' the fundamental misunderstanding between humans?
• question of being vs questions of things that beings do?
• is homosexuality something that someone is or something that someone does?
• many people see it as a "doing" - a choice made
• for them homosexuality isn't a question of identity but rather preference
• ideologically safe spaces are everywhere - and are not good
• echo chambers - positive reinforcement - people become more and more certain with less and less actual knowledge
• identity safe spaces are important especially against the danger of the tyranny of the majority
• problem comes from the blurred lines
• blurred lines from when an ideological challenge challenges the value or very validity of an identity
• blurred line between when words make that challenge and when the challenge is won and the words incite action
• it was once just words for the Nazi party to challenge the patriotism and integrity of German Jews (Nazi ideology)
• Then those words invalidated their identity and redefined their identity as other (Jews that claim to be German instead of German Jews) and made it okay to kill them like livestock (ideology redefines an identity)
• who is the arbiter of identity?
• who is the arbiter of which identities are significant?
• of great importance because identity determines the agency of voice
• why people place great importance on the identity shared by judges and less on the identity shared by children
• who determines which individuals meet the criteria for an identity?
• this is of great importance because authenticity of identity determines legitimacy of opinion
• is a person a judge if fellow judges don't recognize them as a judge?
• is a person black if they don't look black?
• how much black must a person have in them before they are worthy of being listened to regarding the black experience?
• how much do black people collectively have in common?
• how much do africans, caribbeans, afro-americans, and afro-europeans actually have in the way of shared experience?
• raises the question of the ideological value of identity classification known as 'black'
• seems to mean everything and nothing at all - based solely on an ambiguous and highly variable amount of melanin in the skin
• yet at the same time an albino can be black - so it is based on skin tone yet not based on skin tone - is it based on anything?
• and if it is based on anything...again, what is the value of the identity classification?  what does 'being black' tell you definitively about a person the way that being 'tall' tells you that it is easier for a person to reach for tall things?
• So it is not unreasonable to say that 'black'ness - the quality of being black and the identity known as black, really doesn't amount to anything
• the majority of people can agree upon this and every affirmative action program meant to factor in the historical legacy of discriminating against people because they were 'black' can be wiped away in an instance
• the ideological challenge to identity becomes more than just words - it becomes action that obliterates their existence in terms of thought, alienates them from their own ideas of themselves and affects their bodies in a material way due to social convention
• a type of conceptual homocide for no one to believe you are who you say are
• a type of conceptual genocide for no one to acknowledge that what you are is reality rather than a choice or a mere claim to truth rather than a truth
• given the gravity of the language we use:
• it is easy to see that a liberally inclined mind might come to the conclusion that anything approaching a challenge to one's identity should be off limits
• people are who they say they are, what they say they are, their lived experience of being what they say they are is more important than any outside quantification, and their identity should be respected as definitive, inviolate and worthy of voice irrespective of anything else
• a person that says they are black is black, you can't know what their experience is
• questioning of a person's identity, assigning value to it starts the process of outside forces determining whether that identity will be incorporated into the majority or marginalized as 'other' and pushed to annihilation
• it is easy to see that a conservatively inclined mind might come to the conclusion that anything approaching a protection of the identity of others represents a challenge to freedom of speech and the process of evaluating statements, claims and ideas
• people make claims of identity that need to be evaluated, truth isn't served by having topics that are off-limits, the burden of proof for recognizing an identity as significant should be high, anyone can make a claim of lived experience that amounts to basically hearsay, what matters are facts that confirm and support these claims or else any meaning classification of things and beings becomes moot, subject only to opinions
• a person can be homosexual not because they are interested in members of the same sex but rather because they say they are - homosexuality begins to mean nothing
• questioning of a person's identity, assigning value to it starts the process of outside forces determining whether that identity will be incorporated into the majority or marginalized as 'other' and pushed to annihilation
• and this is good: certain claims need to be struck down as untrue, certain voices should be extinguished at the expense of other more credible voices
• people who actually are who they say they are can prove it, people who can't are not an identity - they are merely claiming an identity by choice
• choices can be changed, modulated by conditioning of right and wrong
• the idea of a safe space is seductive
• safety is an aspiration not a destination
• it is a process not a place
• to fashion an absolutely safe place would be to create a world without risk, without offense, without dialogue
• all great things require risk - at a minimum the risk of failure
• most truths come from dialogue, all dialogue has the potential for offense 
• without the explicit acknowledgement of the paradox between an ideological challenge and an identity challenge - people are arguing at cross purposes
• the liberal mind sees one slippery slope - towards marginalization/annihilation of the minority (tyranny of the majority); the conservative mind sees another slippery slope - towards silencing dissenting voices (tyranny of the minority)

At the bottom of the page, the conclusion is what you didn't want to hear: no one is the good guy.  No one is right on 100% of things, 100% of the time; no particular way of thinking, save perhaps good old skepticism, will make you right more often than you are wrong.  Everyone is selling something - the people who yell the loudest can be the most right or the most wrong.  Or as the great Greg House puts it - "There are only two things you can depend on: Everybody dies.  And everybody - everybody - lies."

Bigger not better

Re: 2019 WCF Semi Game 5:  **Start of Rant - feel free to move on**

Steph said something in the post-game interview that I know he's said a million times but it bothered me nonetheless.  He said that it was a game of runs...

At 3:00 left in the 2nd the Dubs were up 57 to 37.  You'd think any team in the convo for 'Best Ever', any team that can play the kind of defense that they could, would just control tempo and make the other team work.  From that point, one of the most talented teams in history scored not a single point missing on 8 straight attempts, all by their best three players - 2 by Steph, 3 by KD and 3 by Klay.  Only one was a drive to the basket: a blown layup by KD.

I remember the days when any team, let alone a championship team, would have a couple of empty trips down the floor and you just knew that the best player on the team would put their head down and go to the hole and get to the line.  The other team was putting together a run, so you came down and put yourself in a position to get a basket or a whistle.  There was an art to stifling a run - killing a run.  KD, Klay and Steph all remember those days, they grew up watching it on TV.  But they have so much talent that they don't have to do things like that, think the game. 

Talented scorers in the past the calibur of Klay, Steph and KD were always leveraging the threat of shooting at range to get easier shots and to get to the line, the way Harden does now.  But Klay shoots the ball 20 times and doesn't get to the line once in FORTY-FIVE minutes of play (doesn't even try to) and everyone is like that's normal.  Steph is the most dangerous shooter of all times and can break down guys on the perimeter seemingly at will, but going to the hole is like a complete afterthought.  He played absolute dogshit the first half, had no feel at all at range and you couldn't point to the moment when he said to himself he should try going to the hole and get to the line to get himself going.  Steph has gotten better but you can't tell me he's clearly getting smarter.

They really haven't had to get smarter because they have all these safety nets to fall back on.  I'm not talking about gaming the refs for a call.  I'm talking about putting pressure on the defense in a way that they don't expect when your shot isn't falling.  I'm talking about consciously feeding a hot Klay instead of watching him light it up for the first 12 minutes and then mindlessly going away from him.  For all the nonsense that Harden engages in, he has a much better sense of taking advantage of all of his talents, maximizing what's around him, mainly because he has to.  He scored only once in the last 8 minutes but he made the right play every time: Rox scored on 8 of 12 possessions.  It was only when KD went down did you see Steph actually consciously decide to go to the hole and mix it up.  Suddenly he's scoring again and if you asked him after the game, he probably wouldn't be able to see the relationship between going to the hole and finally putting some shots down.

People will say it's just because he has the ball in his hand more when KD's out.  It's not that.  It's what Steph does with it when it's in his hand.  If the defense is sure that you're going to shoot, then that's a problem.  The defense should never be sure what you're going to do when you're at Steph's level.  His live dribble gives him too many options to play like garbage.  No one who can handle the ball AND move off-ball like Steph has an excuse.

For all the bellyaching for how good the Warriors are, they should be way better than this.  Draymond is still reckless.  Klay is as dependable as he is predictable.  Livingston looks as bad as CP3.  Steph disappears in proportion to KD rising and STILL hasn't put together that avoiding a touch foul is more important than staying on the floor.  KD hasn't been incorporated into the Warriors system, leveraging him to make everyone else even more deadly. He just does his own thing and scores 35 because any double team he sees is by someone terrified to leave their man - because of the chaos of a simple off-ball screen for Steph or Klay.  If anything he's stifled their system in two ways: 1) off-ball stuff takes effort, KD iso doesn't and 2) KD's excellence lets Steph off the hook for stretches of the game.  Steph plays like shit and doesn't feel any urgency, doesn't do anything different, because KD's really good and when he's really good all they need from Steph is passable.  If they finished the half yesterday the way they should have, they way you expect of a championship team, they could have easily been up 20+.  Maybe KD doesn't have to log as many minutes, maybe he doesn't get injured. 

It's like - if the Dubs are so good, why is playing Harden, the corpse of 34 year old CP3, a Capela that is a shell of himself and "Here comes Austin Rivers" such a toss up? If the Rox need to lose the smugness if they go on to lose, I think the Dubs have to as well, too.  They could have legitimately been beaten by Harden and Eric Gordon.  The Dubs haven't decisively been the better team for two consecutive quarters in the whole series.  They haven't been dominant at all.  They could reasonably have lost every game.

TL;DR: People dislike the Dubs because they're so good.  If they were as good as they think they are, they sure as shit don't play like it.

***Rant over***

Worry vs Panic in basketball

Watched 5 games last night and something occurred to me when thinking about the two players that really stood out: Kawhi and Steph.

I saw two possessions where Jimmy Butler (of winning with 3rd stringers fame) saw Kawhi standing in front of him and just passed the ball away. Which is the defensive equivalent of watching Kelly Oubre's face as Steph drains another 1st quarter 3.

Guys like KD and Jimmy Butler are players that you worry about. But Steph and Kawhi are guys that make the entire team panic, the other team always knows where they are either to try and stop them or to avoid them. It's the difference between being helpless and being hopeless. KD scores 30 on 72% shooting and the opponent feels helpless. But Kawhi standing between you and the basket or Steph bombing from the logo, makes players feel hopeless.

I know that AD and Giannis definitely increase the other team's stress levels. But are they at the level where the opposing coach sees them and says "Oh, shit..."?

Every player that is all-star level and above has moments where they are engaged and in sufficient rhythm that you would say the other team was panicked by their presence on the court.  My contention is that, whether it can be quantified by say points per possession or plus/minus, when talking about MVP level talent, there are players that are really good like DeMar DeRozen, whose performance is contributory to the outcome of the game and other players such as Harden last year, whose performance was deterministic of the outcome of the game.

DeMar could play well for the Raptors and the Raptors could lose, he could play badly and they could win.  Same thing for KD on the Warriors.  But it seems less likely that Kawhi could play well and the Raptors lose or that he could play poorly and the Raptors win, just as its difficult for the Warriors to overcome a poor night from Steph or fall short when Steph is lighting it up.  

Their influence on the court will either elevate or drag down all the others, because they represent a question that the other team doesn't have a meaningful answer for.  As the opposition continues trying to answer the question to no avail, other players become more of a threat.  Kawhi and Steph are the most fascinating examples because of the polar opposition of their effect: on offense, Steph broadens the effective field of play, while the ground that Kawhi can cover is like a big black hole on the court that causes most players to think twice about dribbling too close or passing too near.

Calling it gravity or repulsivity is only representative of the phenomenon as it relates to spacing.  But I'm also talking about the isolation factor - the one that Harden exemplified so well last year.  The idea that he can get points on anyone in the league, one on one.  Kawhi's bump-off fadeaway is at that level, Steph's one-dribble pull-up is at that level.  Harden's stepback was at that level last year.  LeBron is at that level against the Raptors but was less so against the Celtics.  His lack of that one defining move is probably one of the greatest criticisms of his game.

When people see those moves happen, they know it's going in.  When defenders see those moves happen they feel dejected.  So they do everything in their power to prevent those moves from getting a chance to happen.  Creating this desperation, this panic, is what separates the good from the elite.  And it isn't the same as simply putting up a lot of numbers.

It's not fair...

In the NBA finals for 2018, we witness once more the obliteration of the Cavs of Cleveland by the Warriors of Golden State.  A graceless dominance...a one-sided affair; the battle between the last two teams standing was competitive only in spurts with no question as to the better team.  The two decade long disparity in the talent levels of the Eastern and Western Conferences since the retirement of Michael Jordan has reached its zenith with an Eastern Conference team being swept out of the Championships for the first time since 2007 - which happened to be LeBron's first Finals berth.

While each of the previous three matchups between these teams had their own flavor to it - LeBron without Love or Kyrie vs a virgin Warriors team, LeBron the underdog vs a 73-win juggernaut, KD and the Warriors avenging their defeats at LeBron's hands - this matchup had much less in the way of tactics or strategic dynamics at work by either squad.  Watching the games there was a strong sense that the Warriors didn't have to play their best to win and yet they did win and win in a fashion that was laughable and embarrassing.

In sport, we seem to want outcomes that are both competitive & definitive, and yet, we love the narrative of the underdog.  We love the idea of underdogs rising to the occasion and felling those who 'should' win.  But we also have a strange distaste for matches that are 'unfair' where the dispararity between two competitors is too vast.  This is a strange contradiction: the only way to have a meaningful underdog is when the talent disparity is overwhelming.  One would think that anyone that liked rooting for an underdog would also like seeing a team badly outmatched in a competition.  But it raises another, more profound paradox for those with even a passing concern for what is fair or right: why would it be more satisfying or fair for a bad team to prevail over a good team than for a dominant team to perform in a dominant fashion?  

Clearly this seems to fly in the face of definitive results and in basketball in particular, a definitive result can and has been reached in many seasons - when the team with the best record in the regular season is also the team that has the best record in the playoffs i.e. the team that wins the Finals.  Only in these conditions can a team be said in an unambiguous way to be the best team in basketball, and in a perfect world any team that doesn't do both of these things couldn't be the most winningest team and therefore would have a questionable claim to being the best.  In 2017, the Warriors had the best record in basketball and lost only once in the playoffs - the best team was clear.  In 2018, the Warriors had the second best record in basketball and was pushed to 7 games against the team with the best record, the Rockets of Houston, and prevailed while that team was missing its second best player, Chris Paul.  How could they clearly be the best team in basketball when those doubts remain?  Would they have even gone to the Finals had Chris Paul not been injured or if the Rockets hadn't achieved the statistically improbable feat of missing 27 consecutive 3-pointers in the decisive game 7 in front of their home crowd?

Thus, despite wanting definitive results and fair matchups, we see that not only can definitive results only come from unfair matchups but also that one type of winning - playoff or 16-game winning - is clearly seen as more important that another type of winning - consistent 82-game winning.  This creates this strange disatisfaction with the underdog win whereby the Cavs who won in 2016 have people saying that their win was due chiefly to luck, as people say of the Warriors in surpassing the Rockets this year.  This is the strange dichotomy that comes from wanting in the first place - that the underdog inspires us and reminds us that anything is possible yet at the same time it discomforts us that even the strong, the talented and the hard working can be felled by lesser rivals, by circumstances and the world around them.

Karate, like life, has little concern for what is fair.  LeBron is to individual athletes what the Warriors are to professional sports teams.  LeBron is a mixture of skill with overwhelming physical prowess; the Warriors are a mixture of system/culture with overwhelming basketball talent.  LeBron is going to finish with the most points in basketball history, cementing his claim to greatest of all time.  What is the signature move of his that helped him get all those points?  Is it the Duncan high-off-the-glass jumper?  The Hakeem dream-shake?  The Kareem sky-hook?  The Jordan fade-away?  The Iverson cross-over?  The Ginobli euro-step?

It is none of the above.  LeBron scored that many points without one go-to signature move because for his entire career he's been able to get to the basket at will based on sheer athleticism and strength alone.  This is something that absolutely no one has been able to do as well or as long.  This is a genetic reality that was apparent from his first days in the league.  "He's bigger and faster than the guy in front of him" has been the foundation of his 30000+ points.

Likewise, the Warriors could play the most skillful basketball but they really don't have to.  They have, on average, more people on the court who can score, score at a high percentage, and manufacture their own shot than perhaps any team in NBA history.  Only USA men's basketball teams have been better and the Warriors are currently better than some of those teams.

In a very real way this is 'unfair' by any definition of fairness.  It is interesting then that those who marvel at the seeming unfairness of the Warriors don't similarly remark about LeBron.  In a game such as basketball, where skill should be the determining factor, it isn't 'fair' that he can bully his way to the basket whenever he wants but that's the reality.  Some of us are born with gifts that others aren't.  

Kevin Durant - gifted in ways parallel to LeBron - felt the brunt of that 'unfairness' when his Thunder team fell to LeBron's Heat team in 2012.  The Warriors felt the brunt of that 'unfairness' in 2016 when they similarly fell to LeBron's Cavs.  Them teaming up to visit unfairness upon LeBron is something that only a non-karateka could complain about.

All of these ways in which people react to sport is revealing of the degree to which the average person lives under the illusion of fairness - the illusion of right.  To the karateka, complaining about fairness is missing the mark.  It certainly doesn't make us stronger or keep us safer.  Life is what we make of right and justice when it doesn't exist - what these things cause us to do.  How we perform and what lengths we are willing to go to in spite of an unfair world.  LeBron was 'unfairly' outmatched yet again and he opened his effort with a sublime 51 pt performance that made everyone for a moment question what was possible, wasted largely through a mental error on the part of his teammate, JR Smith.  But did he reach those heights again to see if the outcome could be changed?  No, he didn't and perhaps it is impossible to ask that.  Perhaps it is asking too much.  But this is a question that only LeBron can answer - a test that only he can take.  All of us have the choice of trying even harder tomorrow or satisfying ourselves that what is asked of us is impossible.

Wanting or expecting what is fair generally causes us to do the latter and not the former.

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?

12. On the Road Again...

As always the challenge is to simplify. Chop wood and carry water.  Jog and strengthen your core.  Lots of soreness in my vastus lateralis and my glutes.  Got to spend less time sitting.

Trying to stay in the moment, focusing on breathing and midfoot striking.  Still a fair amount of ankle pain.  Days off have to be devoted to stretching, strengthening the my groin and strengthening my ankle.  It is my biggest gap.

I feel so heavy out there.  I feel like each step is a 1.0 on the Richter scale.  2-3 weeks of going out every day should build up the needed capacity in my joints and ligaments.  Then we’ll start opening up the distance.

I figure once I’m able to run a 5k in an hour then it might be time to buckle down and do the handstand and pullup treatment.  Who knows when that might be.  Jogging for 20 minutes and my heart is bawling most of the way.

I’m an unfinished sentence.  I’m a work in progress.  It took me 12 months to count to 12.  Just need to improve on that mark.

I’m happy to be on the road again.

11. Human being or becoming myself?

I am unfinished.  I am unfinished.  I am an unfinished sentence.  An unfinished story, an unfinished work of art.

The illusion is the idea of stasis: the idea of status quo.  The universe is defined by vectors and to understand this is to see our lives dramatically different - as big a difference as the difference between classical physics and relativity.  Yesterday I didn't do any exercise.  I didn't stay the same.  I changed. I got weaker.  Today I did 10 leg lifts.  And I will change again.  Tomorrow I'll be stronger.

There is a mountain top out there for all of us.  A vision of ourselves that we have in our heads.  We work at jobs we don't like and it's like an itch in your head that you can't scratch.  You know that you were meant to be more and we try to define 'more' by our salary, by things we buy.  But 'more' is that person in our heads: the vision of ourselves, a person who is unafraid and made real through pursuing what actually moves them.  We call this 'following our heart' but that expression reduces it to something emotional and irrational.

Living life this way is the most rational process a conscious, mortal being can make.  Living any other way is irrationality driven by an overvaluation of what we have and an undervaluation of what might be - of possibility.

We think that we are ourselves that we are beings and complete and definitive.  But the definitive version of ourselves is up on that mountain top.  And we know inside that we aren't there.  It is very important for us not to be okay with this.  Because once we become okay with it - with not being as good as we could be - we have decided on a direction.  We aren't standing pat, we've chosen a direction.

The direction is down.

Just because mortality has a 100% win record does mean that we should stop fighting it.  If we aren't going to fight it, why not just hasten it's victory?  Why equivocate?  I have a great deal of respect for people who smoke and drink and live themselves into an early death.  It's the difference between doing something and simply saying that you're doing something.  Why exist between those two decisions, those two positions?

Why do I do that?  After all, I think I know better - I always think I know better.  But do I really know better if knowing doesn't make me better?

Prove that you know.

10. Surprise…Counting to 52 will take longer than I thought

It wasn’t an unexpected turn.  Things just get away from us.  I’m disappointed that I let it get to my head.  I surrendered.  I told myself that I’d catch up after the fact but I surrendered.  And now I’m on the road again.

Ideally, I won’t worry so much about falling off the path.  I’ll worry a lot more about how fast I can get back on it.  Suki – suki is the appreciation of small things.  Small things can make a big difference.  I have always taken small things – like a step, or a day for granted.  I’m still working on it.  Human becoming and all that.

One kata.  One push-up.  One walk.  One sentence.  Even for a master calligrapher, the number one is the hardest to write.  One is the hardest part of counting to 52.  It’s just that when you count to one for a while it gets less hard.  I can’t see how it ever gets easier.  Just less difficult.

That's a big difference there.

The Stillpoint calls to me again.  I sprained my ankle and I thought that I was 26 instead of 36.  It still hurts and I have no excuse.  I used my recovering ankle as an excuse to postpone my counting.  When I know full well that being hurt is the most important time to count of all.   It is my hope that knowing this I’ll do better next time that I forget to count.

But for now, I’ll take pride in being able to finally count to…

…10.

9. Rational extremist

Think of how useful it would be - I’m just thinking aloud here – how useful it would be to choose exactly what memories to remember and what to forget.  What to reinforce and what to undo from existing in your mind.  Every bad memory banished, every blessing polished.  It would be a form of extremism certainly, but if done right, it could be a kind of superpower, couldn’t it? 

The obvious benefit of such an ability would be an overwhelming amount of confidence.  If you could forget or selectively diminish your failures, you’d think that you had proportionately a lot more success than failure, justifying your confidence.  Would your newfound confidence lead you to have more success or would it just make you dangerously overconfident?

My shot starts from my calves.  My heels should be off the floor, a slight forward lean.  The ball is held mostly in my off-hand, with my off-arm having very little tension.  My shooting wrist is minimally flexed and the ball is held lightly.  The ball is pumped down forcefully in time to the bend in my knees before rising into my shooting pocket.  My shooting wrist flexes more extensively rolling the ball up to position just above my forehead.  There is a feeling of alignment between my hip, my shoulder, my elbow and my wrist and a pushing motion in my pecs and triceps driving the ball up like a shot-put.  My off-wrist pops and snaps off the ball as my shooting wrist extends forward towards the basket.  There is a coordination between the extension of my calves, knee, and wrist.

The difference between the rhythm of this sequence in alignment and balance and this rhythm out of sequence out of alignment and out of balance is stark.  Like breathtakingly stark.  When the rhythm and sequence and alignment is in sync, I feel like I have control of the shot to within probably four or five inches at 15 feet away.  When anything is out of wack, I can tell that its out of wack but I have no idea whether the ball will be long or short.  It really is akin to shooting versus shooting in the dark: it’s like I can see the basket, but I can’t feel it.  It feels like I have no idea where the basket is.

Now what would happen if I couldn’t help but remember the feeling of my shot and the feeling of knowing where the basket is?  If I had no memory of something being out of alignment?  I spent 40 minutes shooting badly on Tuesday, another 20 minutes shooting poorly today before putting it back together: more pressure from the off-hand, more flex in my wrist in the shooting pocket.  But couldn’t that time have been saved if I could only remember shooting the one way?

I tell myself that the bad shots and the misses are necessary: one less miss for when it counts.  But each miss shot is the memory of having missed.  It’s the memory of the possibility of missing.  Missing is good for your muscle memory – it improves through both the trial and the error.  But to the conscious mind, the rational mind, missing is bad.  Missing becomes more than a possibility; it becomes an option and then a reality.

Confidence makes courage possible.  Confidence comes from familiarity, the readily available memory of capability.  Familiarity is simply mushin and rhythm – what you do without thinking. But sometimes that memory is so far away, so elusive.  The memory of missing is sometimes much more available.

***

I don't generally take breaks from my measured nature.  I don't really explore extremes.  I've never really been terribly good at being obsessive.  I should try it out considering I talk about visiting extremes as a means to find actual balance.

8. Leaning

Karate is about centeredness.  It’s about keeping your weight directly above your base.  This isn’t glamourous but it is necessary.  We – I especially – always want to get ahead of ourselves.  We want to get there sooner so we lean forward.  We want to avoid unpleasantness so we lean backwards.  People who love fighting are always leaning forward.  People who hate conflict are always leaning backwards.  Well-balanced people, centered people, are actually quite rare.

In many things, my center stays directly above my base.  But in many other things, my training comes to mind, I’m forever getting ahead of myself.  And despite my admonishments, despite my actively trying to avoid doing exactly this, I think I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Things aren’t built high and strong through plan and will alone.  Things are built high and strong by having a broad and dependable base.  Things are built high and strong by building over a strong base.  It’s both.  A strong base is necessary to build anything that lasts, but to build high, there is an alignment, both in space and time.  You build up and over the base, centered.  Otherwise, if you’re lucky, you have the leaning Tower of Pisa.  If you’re not lucky, you get something worse.

The base and the alignment to the base.  The foundation and the center.  The faster you find the base and the faster that you align yourself to the base, the higher you can go.

I leaned to far forward, getting ahead of myself, out of eagerness.  And now, my groin hurts, my knee aches and I have to wonder whether I’m stronger or weaker than before.   The white belt has to learn to recognize leaning and alignment before anything else.  They have to know what leaning looks like and feels like so that they can find their center again.  Finding your center is especially difficult when you don’t realize that your leaning.

My center is simple.  My weight, my groin, my knee, my feet, my rotator, my core and my heart.  So long as these gaps – these suki – remain, any skill or strength I gain somewhere will simply weaken my foundation in one of these places.  A day gone by where I don’t improve or strengthen one of these things is a wasted day – and even the smallest improvement is a massive victory, a return to my center.  I thought that I could start being strong, then sturdy then powerful.  But before I’m any of those things I have to be balanced enough to stop leaning, to fill the gaps in my foundation.  I have to be able to stand up straight, above my base, completely centered.  That’s the first task of any white belt.

7. Places to visit

I was eating a cookie.  I could feel the refined sugar assaulting my system, the baked carbohydrates.  I could feel my brain revelling in it, craving more.

And then I closed the container.

The cookie, delicious and full of delight as it was, was just a vacation.  It was just a place to visit.  But I wouldn’t want to live in a vacation.  It wouldn’t be long before I didn’t consider it a vacation anymore.

Training with weights is a vacation.  As is jogging.  And skipping rope.  And swimming.  Biking.  Rock Climbing.  They are all productive vacations meant to reinforce the collection of thoughts, movements, actions and behaviour that constitute me.

I want to be better at these things not in and of themselves.  I want to be better at these things so that I can one day consider myself to be good at karate and basketball.  Karate and basketball are where I live and work.  Everything comes back to that.

It is a shame how many days and weeks and years that I avoided my home, the places in my heart where karate and ball reside.  I think that my absolute peak will never be what it could have been and it saddens me…

And then I think of the peak that I’m yet to reach and I continue my climb.  Chopping wood, carrying water.

6. 20.5 or the Power of Numbers

One must imagine that if you were a person that felt intimidated by any type of math beyond arithmetic, that if you had anxiety looking at a page of calculation that had more letters than numbers on it, that the world would be much more freeing than it actually was.  The person who can’t appreciate the % sign, the relationship between a circle’s radius and circumference and geometric rates of change is playing the whole world by ear, getting by on rules of thumb.  Everything is immediate; uncertainty is replaced with comforting sham certainty.  We see this more and more today – this tacking back away from numbers.  Using numbers to obfuscate or simply making numbers subservient accomplices in what we’ve made up our minds about already. 

This is a sad state.  Mathematics is like philosophy – a way of interpreting the world.  But maths also has the benefit of quantifying the world as it qualifies it.  The shape of things comes to be seen; equations map out the relationships between things, between controls and variables.  One relationship after another comes to be appreciated right down to the fundamental relationships between subatomic particles.

If it seems daunting its because it is.  It’s supposed to be: the universe is daunting and gaining the power to understand it should be as well.  But I’m getting away from myself.  Because really I just want to illustrate the power of a number to change perspective.

20.5.  If it were working days in a month, it would be expected.  If it were vertical jump in inches it could be impressive.  But what if it were the amount of years you had left to live?  What would that number immediately do to even the person that resents numbers and math the most?  20.5 weeks?  20.5 hours?

Fortunately 20.5 does not signify this to me (at least, not to my knowledge).  But it is no less able to change my life.  20.5 is my body fat percentage as determined by an InBody 570 Body Composition test on Tuesday February 28.

I know of the limits of induction currents in determining the accuracy of fat stores.  That doesn’t really matter.  What matters is having a number.  A number to work with.  A frame of reference to move away from.  The number 205, which is my current weight, won’t do as well because it can go up with things I want, like muscle, as it goes down with things I can do without, like fat.  But 20.5 is a standard.  It is an island upon which I long stood.  And now is time to push away from that island and make sure that its getting smaller as I move away.

This will take everpresence of mind, which we call zanshin in karate, and mindfulness which we call shoshin in karate.  I will have to keep that number in the back of my mind and be mindful of what I put into my body, both from a nutritional and exercise standpoint.  In 8 weeks I will stand on that machine again and see if the island has gotten any smaller.  And if it hasn’t I’ll still have made progress.  Because I’ll know what I shouldn’t be doing.

***

A new way of being ready – I’ve discovered a new way of being ready…One that never occurred to me before.  Surprise, surprise – it depends on wantpower, awareness of self, and restraint.  Time to go exploring…

5. Sturdy, strong, powerful

I always want more, don’t I?  Always thinking of the horizon.  That’s never gotten me anywhere.  I’d go to gym and work out at the rep max that they say builds ‘optimal muscle’.  And I’d get so sore and hurt myself so easily.  It was like a bad joke.

How did I get strong in karate?  A lot of mundane, mind-numbing repetition of relatively, unchallenging things.  Chopping wood and carrying water isn’t about trying to chop a lot of wood and carrying a lot of water right now.  It’s just chopping wood and carrying water – nothing more or less.  The habit of a physical reality, a physical relationship with your own body.  Once it was punching at air in a mirror, every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday morning for over three years…

And now its doing squats a little lighter than I think I should, doing fewer pullups than I think makes a difference, deadlifts lighter than I can, bench lighter than I’d like, handstands for shorter than is totally exhausting, plank before I collapse and crunches before I start to cramp.  I want to be powerful before I’m strong and strong before I’m sturdy.  I’m 36 years old.  I haven’t even been sturdy in at least seven years.

I can bench 140 lbs eight times.  But not one of those reps would be stable.  I wouldn’t feel like I was controlling the weight – I’d feel like the weight was controlling me.  Same for squats and deadlifts…the anxiety is always there.  The anxiety should be there for the last rep, not the first.  If it’s there for the first rep, you might be strong enough to lift it, but you sure aren’t sturdy.

Is it just about supporting weight or is it about handling weight with comfort?  The difference is night and day.  I can lift Sheba but she definitely doesn’t feel like I should do that.  It isn’t easy, and she can tell that I’m struggling.  I don’t want her to feel my struggle.  I want her to feel like she could stay there forever.

Consistency then volume then intensity... Do, do more, then do harder.

So, as I’ve been saying for years and never actually putting into practice, I’m going to show myself some consideration.  I’m going to go easy because I have a tendency to go too hard too soon.  And who knows, maybe I’ll even find that I enjoy it more than I ever did before.

***

The body betrays... The heart aches, not of the emotional kind, the kind that is joined with lost breath. When was the last time that I played basketball and kept my breath? 10 years now? 12? It isn't healthy. How to strengthen my heart for something I love so much. How to enjoy it to the fullest.

4. Soft Calloused Hands

Is the mark of a potent life gentle, but calloused hands?  Karate – the empty hand – an empty hand can be an open hand or a closed fist.  But many people close their fist and shouldn't punch something or someone.  Their fist is just a superficial feature of evolution: the semblance of a weapon, of potency.  Most unconditioned people who punch something hard will sprain their wrist or break a bone.  Having a fist isn’t enough.

In the same vein, hands that are too soft are obviously not indicative of a strong body behind them. The makiwara taught me this lesson first - pullups reminded me.  I look down at my hands and they hurt, long before my muscles burned.  Your training and your life can be hidden within your body in many ways but it really is difficult to hide them from your hands.  Your hands either have callouses – where you grip things with purpose or strike things with intention – or they don’t.  They are indicative of your growing skill and your dedication, or they aren’t.  They potentiate everything that happens in your body every joint in the chain later.  No one with unconditioned hands could have a truly strong body.  You can have a strong heartbeat without calloused hands but not a strong body.  And getting strong hands usually cannot happen without having more heartbeats.

Obviously callouses aren’t the only mark of strength, of a person who tests themselves.  It is the easiest to see perhaps, but hands aren’t merely the first link in a chain of applying force.  They are also magnificent instruments – perhaps in the final analysis the most remarkable instrument in the universe.  Maybe there is a species with better formed hands somewhere out there, or a form of life that can move things with their minds alone, but until we find that pinnacle, the human hand was ultimately the tool of note in every single made or crafted thing in our human world: from the plastic tips on the end of laces to the Panama Canal and the Great Wall of China.  Human hands, making tools, making more tools, making tools to make other better tools.  All of them which have their start from our first instrument – four fingers and a thumb.  There can be no mistaking the fact that a human that uses the hand primarily in fist form - as a bludgeon or to simply lift things from here to there - has barely scratched the surface of what it is to be human at all.

Soft, calloused hands then.  Gentle and precise, when sitting at the keys of a piano or signing one’s signature.  Strong and tough enough to support one’s weight, hanging from a bar.  This is self-realization, making the most of what we are physically and spiritually.  I would argue that karate creates an expectation of both – the hand capable of caressing and abusing.  Is a key problem to humanity that most people only use their hand as one or the other?  Would our world be more balanced if humans were more balanced?  And would humans be more balanced if they could use their hands as easily as an instrument of fine precision as they do a blunt, simple, dull object?

Chop wood, carry water – this builds callouses quickly.  Sitting and writing about chopping wood & carrying water – maybe this is part of the softness that should accompany the hardness.

***

Consider the shooters pocket

the feel of the release point, elevated, the elbow held high
fingertips – hold the ball lightly, like jello, tofu

guide hand? More like the anchor hand…locks the ball comfortably and then you drop anchor, pops off the ball, reverse flick of the wrist

elevated elbow, push through the elbow
minimal finger tension
relaxed wrist – tofu – more tension & action as range increases
up and over the rim

targeting b. r. a. d. – kime, focus intently upon the front then back ring
follow up and through to the point of your gaze
range doesn't matter, control & consistency