The recent NBA Finals has left me thinking about leadership qualities. Dirk Nowitzki's leadership of the Dallas Mavs has been stellar. He never got on anybody's case. Even after a loss he would slap five with everyone including the waterboys. An article in the WSJ said that the teams that slap five the most win the most (of course it could be because the teams that are winning the most have the most to celebrate). But Nowitzki was still slapping five on losses, and never had a harsh word for anyone.
The Miami Heat were good. They were even excellent at times, but in clutch moments their leader (LeBron James) seemed to fall apart. This has to do with mental toughness. I don't know when I first noticed in James this mental frailty. But it was at least five years ago that I saw in him a resemblance to a powerful slamdunker in Seattle named Shawn Kemp. Kemp would play well all season then in the playoffs he'd get three fouls in the first minute. He'd get overexcited.
The Mavs this time around were a study in even temperament. Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Tyson Chandler, and the bench itself (including the general manager) composed themselves as adults. They played like men. The Heat, on the other hand, were like spoiled Bratz. Even when they announced they would be a dynasty it struck me as so much hooey, and I couldn't wait for them to lose. It was always about their top three, and last night when they lost, Bosh laid on the ground and wept and couldn't compose himself for interviews.
One thing I saw in the OT is that it's about leadership lessons. Moses is a study in a certain kind of tough leader. He has to have faith. He has to hunker down with God and get the message right. He has to have public relations skills. He has to take his people on his shoulders and do what's right for them even if it's oppressive for him.
Dallas Mavericks had a similar personality in Dirk Nowitzki. He took the team on his shoulders even when he had a 102 degree fever. He continued to make his fade-away jumpers. Last night in the ultimate game of the series he was 0 for 12 going into the second half. I knew he would explode in the fourth, and once again he did, getting 11 points in the fourth quarter.
LeBron James, on the other hand, had only 18 points in the fourth quarters of the six entire games of the series.
When the chips were down, James yelled at the lesser players. He threw the ball out of bounds and threw up air balls and passed the buck.
Dirk, on the other hand, remained kind, and reached out to the lesser players. Last night even Mahinma, a behemoth without much of a brain, scored a key three-point shot in the fourth. Mahinma is a disaster who fouls everyone around him, and generally couldn't make a shot to save his life, but is huge and can get clutch rebounds. Nowitzki got the best out of him.
The great leaders pull the best out of their people. It happens in teaching that great teachers get excellent papers out of their students. They are the kinds of papers even the students didn't know they could write. Great editors pull the best out of their writers. Great parents pull the best out of their kids.
Lousy leaders can lead a group to perdition. They focus on envy, or other worst-case emotions. Feminist leaders have led a generation of women out of the kitchen into divorce and suicide and therapy centers. Partially this is because they've used Marx and Foucault as their touchstones. No one can use Marx and Foucault as their touchstones and end up as anything but a blackhole of evil and loss. Generations of black leaders have kept their people in poverty, pushing themselves as poverty pimps. Again, they focus on the worst possible emotions and use them to lead their people into emotional bondage. It's a shame.
Great leaders can rise in an instant. George W. Bush pulled it together for five minutes to give an important speech after 9/11. He met with religious leaders of many faiths and pulled together an impressive array of priests rabbis and imams, who were willing to argue against OBL.
On the other hand, when the Navy Seals took out OBL a month ago Obama wanted all the credit.
In the next round of elections we need to find a decent leader. Sarah Palin's family is a mess, and I think this bears on her. When kids make poor decisions, the parents are at least partially to blame. We don't know much about the Obama family but the kids seem ok. This says a lot for BO and his wife. I don't know if they've accomplished anything else, but if the kids are ok, that's the most important thing that adults can achieve. If the kids are thriving: if they are clean, have decent values, are achieving well in school, the parents are doing their job.
Nowitzki, like Moses, shows us what great leadership is.
What made Moses so great? Many other leaders in the OT don't come off so well. They either get the message wrong, or they take their people back into bondage with the Philistines or the Canaanites. They make bad choices and sell their people into poor compromises with crude nations and crude ideas that don't get the best out of their population. Mrs. BO, whatever else we can say about her, is trying to turn things around with her diet plans. But has anybody lost so much as an ounce due to her? I grant that she herself is a pretty good role model in this respect, as is BO himself. They have self-discipline. A lesser couple would be ordering chocolate mousse for breakfast out of the WH kitchen, and bloating up. To their credit, they haven't done this.
But the rest of the nation is eating Hotpockets.
Michelle asks her constituency to get out and play basketball. But she's wearing a party dress when she says it. Shouldn't she be in sweatpants and show us her three-point shot? Does she herself play basketball? Can she stuff her husband?
Nowitzki hopefully will lead the country back to the gym. He's a tall gangly goofy grape with a great fade-away jumper that is almost impossible to defend and which arcs in the air like a rainbow leading to the Promised Land of an NBA championship.
Congratulations, Dirk, you've inspired America, perhaps you will lead us out of the Egypt of couch-potato-dom.
13 comments:
Generally a good post, though you're wrong when you said that Dirk never had harsh words for his teammates - he did lay into them a few times...
A telling moment was near the end of (I believe it was game 3), Terry messed up on defense and left his man wide open, who hit a three to tie it. Dirk yelled at Terry as they went into a timeout, and then when leaving the huddle said 'I got your back.'
Then he went out and hit the game-winning shot.
So I think there's another side to Dirk's leadership that you missed, or glossed over - He never Demeaned his fellow players, but he did have high expectations of them, and yelled at them when they failed to live up to those expectations - And Then he said 'I'm still your guy,' and went out and took care of business.
And James simply buckled under the pressure - he doesn't have that killer instinct. You could see this even in press conferences - instead of saying 'I screwed up and it's my fault,' he said 'we played well enough to win.'
But if you play well enough to win, you would, by definition, win.
Or when he made the Very obvious mistake of not taking it to the hole in crunch time (to get fouls, to get high percentage shots)...he didn't acknowledge that he messed up, he said 'I take shots I usually make.'
Whether you make the shot or no, darnit, in crunch time you attack the basket. I remember one sequence when James lobbed up an ill-advised 18-footer, and it clanged, and then Dirk drove baseline and dunked it.
Which is perhaps the inverse of their normal games, but when it's crunchtime, Dirk attacked, and James laid back -
How many times did you see him just pass the ball late in the game? He wasn't even creating shots for his teammates...he might as well have been Craig Ehlo.
OMG, you remember Craig Ehlo! I saw him play when he was with the Gonzaga team way back in the 80s. I knew he was very very good, but thought he'd be too short to ever make it in the NBA. He did have a good run for such a shortster. What about JJ Barea? He had a terrific series.
I've been reading more about Nowitzki and after one game he kicked the basketball into the stands. Cuban used to fly into a rage, too.
Sounds like they have had an attitude adjustment.
Terry in game 3 had a tremendous goof when he left I think it was Bosh wide open for a three. Bosh drained it and they caught up and tied thanks to that with about 8 seconds left, but Dirk turned around for a two-pointer and won the game.
It was an AMAZING series. Every game was close and a nail biter. Even last night was close until about the last two minutes when the Heat had to try to foul and then the Mavs put it away.
Nah, it wasn't Bosh who nailed the three-pointer - I believe it was Chalmers, who actually made more big shots for the Heat than Lebron did.
You could tell he had bigger cajones.
And yes, Dirk and Cuban have grown up -
It remains to be seen if Lebron will ever follow suit.
You're right that it was Chalmers. I never got the details on the smaller figures on the Heat squad. By smaller I mean in terms of rep.
The series reaffirmed my faith in human nature.
LeBron said that the merriment people felt at his downfall would only last a few days, and then people would have to return to their own lives. Again, I think he's wrong.
I think when your team wins it can last a very long time esp. when your team takes out hyper-inflated hubris like that of LeBron.
I have bee claiming for years that LeBron lacked mental toughness, maintaining this in the face of 4th graders and 5th graders whom I coach. They have been quite hostile about this, but I think I finally have some cred with them.
thing about moses
he never got to go into the promise lande no no
he nevah nevah nevah got ta go in
just saw it from the far shore
american sports are based on the subtle equation - you can have your cake and eat it too if you're a physical freak of nature worth millions the world is your angelfood go ahead
be the superstar see how many people need you you pathetic sportsnut illiterate rich moron with your own reality tv show and supermodels as housekeepers
if they know how to cook and clean that's OK otherwise i'd say they're just leadweight
too heavy to carry around
no this is about spreading the wealth all those rich bastards should give their money away to poor people they shouldn't be allowed to prance around liek they're the paragons of virtue and success to hell with them
o sorry getting a littlel carried away
i'm sure they're all very very nice people
ahem
the nba story was on the bottom of the page of the local paper as if evryone knows this has gone on way to phuqqing long it shoulda been over months ago why do they drag these testiclespecatcles into the frosting and the lockerroomm filled with whipped cream champaign and naked cheerleaders i mean that's what they get isn't it i mean we never get to see it but they all get these huge decadent parties of safe sex and dirty dancing they get high for weeks and then they go to sleep untill what o my phrigggginnn god basketball camp in the summer important things like that
gimee a break this is cerebralnarcosis squared this is force feeding the masses the drugs of spectacle spectelibria the new soporific made of natural things like you like it
moses stuttered
and then and then and then people get all righteous about who wins and who loses and for sweating nothing more getting out there dancing around and sweating
culture on the rim of the toilet
the basketball players should be forced to read madame bovary and G and lady chatterleys lover and sartre this summer then ask me what's important
fools makin money for bein fools that's all
keep on blippin in the tick world
tick season everyone
look out for sikorskis
coming over the hill
black hawk dowwwwwwwn!
jh
I'm not nearly so negative on the Feminists.
Women have been held back for centuries, persecuted for their sex, treated like slaves and second-class citizens, almost as less than human. That needed/needs to change.
I agree that many women use that historical trope to beat on all men. Sort of like blaming people today in Oregon for Antebellum slavery. It's unfair. These things take time to work out. I worked under and with women and blacks and Gays and Hispanics while in the government. A few were fair, but most practiced reverse discrimination--they used that excuse about "getting even" to perpetrate the most blatant biases and capricious favoritism. And then there's nothing you can do about it, because the whole system is set up to allow it.
You can see what it feels like to be dissed just on account of your genetic inheritance. But it's unfair. If it was unfair before, how can it now be "fair" to do it as revenge?
I was a fan of the Golden State Warriors when they won their championship.
They were led by Rick Barry, a strong-willed and intelligent player--who'd already had a stellar career by 1974. Wilkes and Phil Smith were also on that team. It had weaknesses--no classic Center, and several of the stars weren't regular gamers.
In the fourth game against the Bullets, who were heavily favored to win, the Warriors led three games to none. The Bullets, desperate to change the course of the series, had guard Mike Riordan deliberately "attack" Barry as he drove for a lay-up. He swung a big round-house punch at Barry from the side as he went by. Barry pushed back at him. Then Al Attles, the Warriors coach strode onto the court and began wrestling with Riordan. Attles was thrown out, but Barry stayed, and led the Warriors to a well-deserved fourth win, and the championship.
I regard Scott Cousins's "spearing" of Buster Posey as the same kind of maneuver. Dirty play under pressure is the mark of cowardice.
When James left Cleveland, you had that "selfish" guy feeling. Players have been leaving to play for the Lakers for decades--going on to become stars on one great team after another. But great franchises aren't built just through buying big talent. It's been proven over and over again: The best teams are constructed as TEAMS, well-managed and balanced. Dallas proved that. There have to be star players on great teams, but stars alone aren't the whole package. James may be a great player, but that wasn't enough here.
The problem with the feminists is not that they didn't deserve to feel a bit of umbrage when it came to their situation, any more than the Jews under Pharoah had reason to think they had the short end of the schtick. The problem is only the question of leadership and the mental mapping of where they ought to take their beknighted populations.
Moses had God to help him.
The feminists had only Marx, since they thought too much of God as a patriarchal thinker (Marx was far worse in this regard!).
At any rate, what happened has happened. But clearly all the left movements are completely screwed up because of their leadership and their leadership models.
I have no idea what the far right is on to -- perhaps Ayn Rand. Mark Cuban actually says Ayn Rand was a huge revelation to him.
I hate Ayn Rand.
She's humorless and can't write well.
Her bio gives me ulcers.
Locke and Smith on the other still animate what little you can still find of a middle. The road to life is narrow.
Cuban is actually Jewish, it turns out, in his wiki bio. I thought his name meant he was from Cuba. Oy vey, comme on dit.
I spent the day in NYC with a pile of 6th graders at the Bronx Zoo and the Natural History Museum. Very enlightening day! Ha!
I didn't really watch this series that closely. I mostly tuned in for the last three minutes of the game and that's where Dallas won it, four times out of six. Nowitzki did make some clutch baskets in the closing sequence, but he was also one for twelve in the first half. If anybody was Moses on that floor it was Jason Kidd.
The key to the Dallas victory over Miami came in game 5 against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Dallas was down by 15 points with 5 minutes to play and won handily against a more talented but far less experienced team.
The average age of the Thunder's four leading scorers is 21 and a half. The average age of the starters for Dallas is about 34. They have seven players earning more than ten million a year. The only starter earning less than ten million is Jason Kidd.
The only Thunder player earning close to ten million is a 33 year old backup center named Mohammed, who has more playoff experience and nearly more years in the league than the rest of the roster combined.
The Heat have only had one season for Lebron James to accommodate himself to playing on Dwayne Wade's team. He's still got a few years to make it happen and he will eventually get the hang of it, but the future belongs to young teams like the Thunder, the Grizzlies and the Bulls.
"I spent the day in NYC with a pile of 6th graders at the Bronx Zoo and the Natural History Museum. Very enlightening day! Ha!"
Make a movie!
Kidd's the definition of a 'coach on the floor.'
Even if you watched his post-game interview after they won everything, he talked about how he knew that they were going to get open three-point shots because the Heat had a tendency to over-help, and that they'd get worn down.
Or something...
Good strategic thinking is very important in sports. Nowitzki said they had to play smart because they weren't good enough to do otherwise. I found this to be very striking. LeBron and Dwayne thought that because they were athletically superior to the Mavs that they would win. Wrong again. The Mavs had just enough athletic talent to win enough rebounds and enough scrambles for loose balls to stay more or less even. Plus, they were sinking their foul shots. Miami missed at least a dozen foul shots in the last game: had they sunk them, they would have won.
Kidd held the team together, the Odysseus of this journey of heroes, with his strategic thinking. Nowitzki was a giant fountain of faith. Tyson Chandler was a big strong Ajax in the middle. Jason Terry was a puzzling figure who could suddenly turn on and off, as could Barea. They were little lightning rods. You couldn't count on them but when they were on they lit the place up.
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