Bosh, Chris

Letters to a Young Athlete

Foreword

  • p.xv – “In winner-take-all scenarios like the NBA Finals, some players deal with loss stoically, some depressively, some angrily. Some seem to treat it matter-of-factly, as if it is just another loss, while others fall apart and let the tears flow. The incredible swing in emotions is hard to describe, especially if you really care. In any case, losing makes for a really bad summer. A lot of players just go down the rabbit hole and don’t come out for weeks. These failures really never leave you until the ball starts to bounce again in the fall.”

  • p.xvii – “You are smart as hell and very sensible, pragmatic individual. More than that, you have a remarkable character that is an unusual compassion and mental toughness. That combination helped us to build a truly great team.”

  • pp.xix-xx – “There will be no player like you to ever run this floor again, ever– you were a unique person and performer. One of a kind. You were part of a great, great team from 2010-2014: Four consecutive trips to the Finalsand two world championships still stand as the greatest run in the history of the franchise. What a time of great basketball, great spirit, and rabid support from our fans and media. It was pure joy, made possible by a lot of togetherness.”

  • p.xxi – “In my fifty-three years of being involved with the NBA, this moment, of not knowing what your future would bring, was a true low point for me. There were many medical diagnoses of your condition, ranging from scary to terrifying. In this game, there are always basketball decisions and then there’s the point where basketball becomes secondary to a player’s health. Period.”

Introduction

  • p.2 – “There can also be recruiters, reporters, haters, and on and on. And then there’s the toughest voice of all: the voice inside your own head. Nothing can intimidate you like that voice. Nothing can mislead you, shame you, puff you up, lead you astray, or keep you down quite like the running monologue between your own two ears.”

  • p.5 – “Looking back, waht really gives me vertigo is to think of those moments when I easily could have listened to the wrong voice. Where at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, even twenty-seven, I couldn’t messed things up forever with one wrong step. One moment of indulging the devil on my shoulder, and my life, my career, could have gone in a very different direction. My entire future– years in the pros, an Olympic gold medal, two championship rings– suddenly erased. And worse, like so many talented kids out there, I might never have even known what I had unwritten. Would I have my kids? Have my creativity? Would I even be here, alive? I was lucky in that way. I want you to be lucky, too.”

  • p.7 – “No matter what kind of talent you’ve been blessed with, you still have to answer the same question: What do you want to do with this? Where are you going, and how can you use what you’ve been given to get there?”

  • p.7 – “The great coach John Wooden once said, ‘What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.’ And I’ve been fortunate to have been surrounded by countless coaches, mentors, and teammates who lived by those words.”

  • pp.8-9 – “There isn’t a roadmap to get you there, but Rilke’s advice, which I’ve tried to take to heart, is that you have to live everything. … But if you don’t stop to live what you’re doing– if you don’t make space to experience the joy of the game– you’re missing something. You’re missing the biggest thing.”

  • p.9 – “Whatver our game of choice, whatever kind of talent we’re blessed with, wherever we’re hoping the game will take us, we’re all the same when it comes to this: We all have that capacity to stop and experience the joy of what we’re doing.”

When You Ain’t Nothing But Tired

  • p.13 – " ‘It was just kind of on to the next,’ she told me. ‘As a female basketball player you really don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, because it’s just grind after grind after grind after grind.’ "

  • p.15 – “I’ll start this book by telling you something I really believe: How an athlete plays when they’re exhausted tells you everything about who they are as a competitor. The successful ones don’t even think about being exhausted. They’re so used to it that all they think about is performing.”

  • p.17 – “You think Kobe Bryant just said all of a sudden, ‘Man I’m just really, really in shape, and now I can score 30 points a night without getting tired’? No way. You get that way by never quitting, by pushing through precisely when you are tired. That’s the irony of this game: You become capable of the grind by surviving the grind.”

  • p.18 – “At moments like that, it’s hard to push through. But I’ve always believed that how you do anything is how you do everything. If you make excuses or take shortcuts in one part of your life or you game, it’s very hard not to do it everywhere else. If you take rebounds off when it doesn’t matter, it’s that much harder to find the will to crash the boards when it does. If you take a play off when you think no one is looking, where are you going to find the strength to keep going when it’s the playoffs, when everyone is going 100 miles an hour, when your opponent wants that rebound just as much as you do?”

  • pp.19-20 – “That’s what pushing yourself in practic and in the gym is for. It’s not just physical– it’s mental. It teaches you about your Empty light, and when to ignore it. I remember the first time I ran a mile in practice. The whole time, I had that ’little man’ on my shoulder, telling me that there was no way, tell me that I was going to collapse before I made it a whole mile. And then I made it. I thought, Damn, I pushed through that voice. I can do it. What else can I do? If you’re pushing yourself in practice, you’re having a version of that thought every day. You aren’t just teaching your lungs and heart to keep up with your legs– you’re teaching yourself to beat that voice in your head.”

  • p.21 – “What Ray said about the ending to Game 6 has always stuck with me: Imagine if we put in just a little less in practice. Imagine if we coasted just a little bit more. Imagine we had a little less in the tank when it counted. ‘It would’ve been a shame for that to cost us a championship.’ But instead, we put in the work so we had what it took at the moment it was needed. By the time we got to that life-or-death situation, it was what Ray called ‘familiar territory.’ "

  • p.22 – “I still remember what our team president, Pat Riley, like to say. ‘Scratch the depths of your soul and see what’s there.’ "

  • p.23 – “Three of the toughest guys in the NBA when I was coming up were Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, and Ben Wallace. They made their names on defense and on the boards. Want to know where they went to college? Southeastern Oklahoma State, Central Arkansas, and Virginia Union, respectively. They did not have the ’talent’ to attract scholarships to big-time D-1 programs. They only had grit and toughness and conditioning. You know what else they had in common? Fifteen-plus-year careers, and twelve rings between them. They’re all champions.”

  • p.26 – “It’s there, at the outer limits of your endurance, where you find out what you’re really made of. And when it’s game time, that work pays off. Not just in the game, but everywhere. When you’re running suicides in practice, it’s over when the coach says it’s over. But in the game, it’s not over until there’s zero on the clock and a winner has been decided. How often you end up on the winner’s side of the final score is really up to you and how far you choose to push yourself.”

  • p.27 – “So yeah, I get being tired. I empathize with it, I really do. I can almost feel you nodding off as you read this, on the team bus or in your bedroom after having done your homework and your chores and spent another long day in the weight room.”

“I feel that.”

“But you know what I say? I say good.”

“You’re building your muscle. You’re becoming stronger mentally, you’re becoming more familiar with a kind of discomfort most people can’t stand. You’re building the strength that you’re going to need when the game is on the line, when something really important is on the line. You’re building supreme conditioning. The ability not just to keep going, but to want to keep going.”

You Have To Find Your Why (And It Can’t Be Fame Or Money)

  • pp.29-30 – “All of it. You know what I mean: Getting in reps in the weight room when your friends are partying. Waking up before dawn to run. Pushing through the criticism or the doubters. Getting back on the court after a full practice or a game, when all of your muscles are telling you to quit, and shooting a hundred more free throws. What is all of that for?”

  • p.30 – “Because, believe me, there’s nothing sadder than watching someone going through the motions with no real idea about why they’re doing it. Those people aren’t living their own lives, their own dreams. At best, they’re living someone else’s. You still have time to do better.”

  • p.30-31 – “So, sure, listen to your coach when he tells you to run suicides. But don’t listen when he or she tries to tell you what this game means to you. You gotta figure that out for yourself.”

  • p.32 – “Southwest isn’t selling airline tickets– it’s selling the idea that travel and adventure can be for regular people, too. Disney isn’t just making movies– it’s telling stories, stories so vivid you want to experience them in every form possible. Me? I wasn’t playing ball– I was trying to be the best version of myself I could possibly be. I was trying to realize my potential in life, and I carry that why with me to this day.”

  • pp.32-33 – “What is a why? Knowing– not just thinking, but knowing– that you’re making the most of your God-given talents. The joy of operating at the peak of your ability. The joy of being part of a team that runs like a well-oiled machine.”

“For me, a big part of my why was the squeak of shoes on the gym floor. I just love that sound. The actual smell of the gym. I love the sensation of straining my muscles and feeling the strength in them. It’s trusting that your teammate is going to be where you think he’s going to be when you whip him a pass– and then he is. It’s the hand helping you up off the floor when you’re down. It’s the swish of the ball through the net, the anticipation surging through your body in the seconds before tip-off, the feeling of the blood pounding through your body as the seconds tick down in a close game.”

  • pp.33-34 – “What I began to understand later was that it wasn’t about ‘attention,’ it was that I had capabilities and talents– like all kids do– and when I put in the effort to realize them, I could do incredible things. That to become who you are in sports, in life, in business is the loudest statement a person can make.”

  • p.37 – “I’m better for having that extra motivation, but I meant it when I said it was only extra. Need is necessary but not sufficient in this life. Proof? There are plenty of talented kids who had everything they needed to make it… and for some reason could never be bothered to put in the work or care enough to get it. Every generation who’s balled out at the Drew League in LA or at Rucker Park in New York or any playground in America has a story about a guy they played with who could have made it to the league, if only… Yeah, if only.”

  • p.38 – “It wouldn’t be told if I didn’t tell it. Who knows if that’s the attitude that made it possible for Nas to drop an all-time classic. The point is, he had a why– the kind of attitude that means it doesn’t matter if your story becomes a classic, because it’s your story, and you have to tell it. If I didn’t play, no one would play like me. If I didn’t play, my teammates would be worse off.”

  • p.40 – “But in those weeks after the Finals, I imagined what it would have felt like to win with that attitude, to actually shut up the haters. Maybe you’ll call it sour grapes, but I came to realize that winning like that wouldn’t really make me happy. Maybe for a few days, or a few months. But not in the long run. Because my story would have been about the haters, not about what I accomplished with my teammates. Even if I wont that way, I still wouldn’t been giving the haters power over me.”

  • p.40 – “Victory gets old and unsatisfying really fast without a purpose you can be proud of. If you make anger your why, it will suck the joy out of everything you accomplish– even if you win as much as Jordan.”

  • p.41 – “When I think about Bobby Hurley, who is now the head coach at Arizona State, or Waitkus, who became Comeback Player of the Year, or Ryan Shazier, who has fought his way back to walking again, inch by inch, I see guys who clearly had a deeper why than just the superficial stuff. They had to. When someone like Hurley makes it back to basketball after life-threatening injuries, that’s inspiring. But what’s more inspiring to me is to know that even if he didn’t make it back, he still would have found a way to live a life of meaning and purpose.”

The Gift of Hunger

  • p.45 – “When you think about the greats who can feel the pain of losing, or the joy of winning, so deep in their gut that it’s almost a physical sensation, realize that their hunger is just as important to their success as their height or their lung capacity or their 40 time or their why.”

  • p.47 – “It’s the type of scene that’s happened a thousand times in a thousand games in every sport you can imagine. Even at the elite level, hunger is rarer than you think.”

  • p.47 – “You can talk to any NBA player and they’ll tell you about someone they knew who had all the talent he needed to be in the league, but just didn’t have the drive. I’ve seen it– they’ll tell you about the time he threw down a huge dunk or that epic game she took over in the fourth quarter, and they’ll say something like, ‘He could’ve been great. He just…’ And they’ll trail off. But what they’re saying is that, in a league full of elite talent, elite talent isn’t enough.”

  • p.50 – “After our first championship with the Heat, a friend told me, ‘Man, anybody can do it once. You gotta do it twice.’ Finding a reason for hunger when you have every reason to feel full– that’s what separates good from great.”

  • pp.50-51 – “And that’s something all of the greats have in common. They come in all kinds of body types, with all kinds of skill sets– but where the good ones stop, the great ones keep going. They’re never satisfied. They’re never full.”

  • p.51 – “And, of course, I grew up watching MJ do the same thing. Just like Brady, he could have easily rested on his laurels way before he retired. Pretty much any given night in the ’90s, he could have said, ‘I’m Michael Jordan. Everyone knows what I can do. I’m gonna take it easy tonight.’ But he never did that– even when it took making up grudges and slights to give himself a reason to play hard every night. Someone with Jordan-level talent but not Jordan-level hunger might’ve been content with one championship. It takes both to get six.”

  • p.53 – “Little things like that fuel you. That hunger sustained me for years. I never forgot it. I never forget any of that stuff.”

  • p.53 – “At the same time, there are a lot of fables in history about those with insatiable appetites. You don’t want to overreach and you don’t want the joy of vicotry to become ash in your mouth.”

Cultivating the Mind

  • p.56 – “There are not-very-bright plumbers and presidents, too, but the vast majority of athletes I’ve met– the really great ones– wer more than just physically brilliant. You have to have an elite mind to be an elite player.”

  • p.58 – “It wasn’t phycial prowess that gave Maddux his edge. It was his mental advantage. He knew every single hitter’s tendencies and weaknesses, he knew how they hit against him and even how he’d pitched them the last time they faced each other. Like a chess grand master, he’d played out at-bats before the game even started. He’d beaten 80 percent of the hitters he faced with his mind– with his focus and preparation and understanding of the game– before they’d even stepped into the batter’s box.”

  • p.60 – “But so much of success at the game depends on mental sharpness, mental recall, metnal creativity, mental resilience, mental preparedness, and yes, even some intuitive geometry.”

  • p.61 – “Most game nights, I made sure to take some time to read a book before suiting up. I learned that I was only to be able to play at my best if I could stay menatlly sharp, so that meant exercising my mind along with my body.”

  • p.61 – “Because unless something tragic happens, there’s going to be an afterward, and what yu d to cultivate your mind right now will make the difference gbeetween your afterward being a rewarding part of your journey and being a boring slog.”

  • p.63 – “But there’s something powerful about the ideal we have on this side of the pond– that being an athlete means training you brain as well as your body– no matter how bad we often are at living up to it.”

  • p.65 – “It was their hunger to win that made them explore every possible avenue for improvements.”

  • p.67 – “And it goes beyond strategy. You have to envision yourself playing the game before you play it. You have to really visualize getting back on D after a missed shot. You have to imagine the crowd noise and the trash talk before you hear it. You have to envision all of the different ways your body is going to be hurting by the fourth quarter.”

  • p.67 – “Mental toughness isn’t something you just ‘have’ or not. It’s something you build up like any other muscle– by envisioning all of your worst-case scenarios, in a calm state of mine, and gaming out your response. It’s not just toughness you’re building up– it’s trust. Trust in your skill, your preparation, your jumper. Trust in your preparation– so that when the other team makes a run, you know that you’ll be ready to counter. Trust in your teammates. You have to condition your mind so thoroughly that when the game is on the line, you don’t even think about whether or not you trust the guy next to you. You just do.”

pp.68-69 – “But over the years, I built up my mental toughness. My interests off the court weren’t a distraction from that– they were how I made myself tougher. When I started to doubt myself on the court– What if I let my teammates down when they need me? What if I embarrass myself in front of the fans?– having a life outside the game reminded me of how much bigger the world is. It helped me overcome those worries by putting them in perspective.”

  • p.69 – “Fortunately, a night like that was more the exception than the rule. But the reason it was an exception was because I practiced mental toughness just like I practiced my jumper.”

  • p.71 – “No matter how high you climb in your sport, you don’t want to be an old athlete with nothing to think about or talk about but memories of the glory days. You want to keep learning and growing until the day you die. And so you have to start now.”

Comminication is Key

  • p.73 – “A big part of learning to play a game at a high level is actually learning the language.”

  • p.75 – “Because no matter how smart you are, and no matter how good your court vision is, there is more happening on the court at any one time than any one person can take in. You need to be able to process the situation with five pairs of eyes, or you’re getting steam-rolled.”

  • p.77 – " ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ’ "

  • p.78 – “In whatever form, a leader sees the challenge ahead, knows what the members of the team need to do to meet the challenge, and knows the words or the symbols or the images that will get them where they need to be. Knowing that doesn’t just take charisma: It takes a huge amount of insight into the team members. What kinds of words motivate them, and what kinds of words turn them off? How far can they be pushed? Is this a time to pick up their spirits, or a time to get them to ratchet up the intensity? Leaders have to know all that before they find the right words.”

  • p.79 – “Some players use it as an excuse from the obligation to be a decent person. It’s the truth, so why not tweet it, right? If you’re a warrior, you get to be an asshole, right? But for the most part– though, sure, there are exceptions– the most effective coaches and the most talented players are the opposite of assholes. They’re secure enough that they let their success speak for itself– and when they communicate, they’re trying to build you up, not to dominate you.”

  • p.79 – “When the stakes are low– when you’re trying to sound smart in a pointless office meeting, for instance– that’s when the BS comes out, stuff like, ‘We need to circle back and do a deep dive on optimizing our synergies.’ Everyone knows that doesn’t mean anything, but because the stakes are low, it doesn’t matter. When the stakes are high– when winning or losing comes down to knowing those other four guys on the floor have your back– communication needs to be sharp, direct, and to the point.”

  • p.81 – “Like every habit, it can feel a bit weird at first. I’m already running at a full sprint, now I have to use sme of my oxygen to yell at my teammates who should already know what they need to do while I’m doing it, too? It can feel a bit silly, like you’re narrating what you’re doing while you’re doing it. But do it enough, and you’ll get over it. Remember, each player on the court has access to some information that the other players don’t. So when you share that information, it’s like you’re becoming exponentially smarter as a unit.”

  • p.82 – “It’s hard to say what’s cause and what’s effect, but I think it goes both ways. Bad teams take their frustration out on one another. But doing that also makes them worse, because they can’t honestly assess what they need to do to get better. When everyone is afraid of a fight breaking out, no one is honest. When people are closed off, no one is connected.”

  • p.82 – “It’s close to a rule: The better the communication, the better the team.”

  • p.84 – “He helped to build the kind of environment where I felt like I culd speak my truth, rather than one where I had to keep it bottled up until the stress got too be too much. Instead of just yelling, ‘Hey, give me the damn ball,’ like I felt tempted to do at times, instead of letting my frustration fester and boil over, I talked it ut with Coach, and got to a place where I felt like I was contributing everything I could to make the team a champion.”

  • p.85 – “But leading as a veteran isn’t about chewing guys out when a play goes wrong. It’s about knowing each one of your teammates, and understanding how to motivate them. Some guys get fired up when you yell at them. Other guys say, ‘Hey, I don’t like yelling. It just throws me off my game.’ You have to know the difference. A good communicator knows how to discover and respond to those differences. A good communicator knows that each teammate and each situation is unique– what works with one guy in a certain scenario will backfire with another guy in a different scenario.”

  • p.86 – “Part of communicating at a high level is learning to take your ego out of it, and learning not to attack other people’s egos. You’re not criticizing a teammate to make him or feel bad, or to make yourself feel better– you’re doing it to solve a particular problem. You’re going to solve that problem a lot more effectively if the target of your criticism comes away feeling better rather than worse. One of the great military and political leaders of the twentieth century, Dwight Eisenhower, said that he never dealt in ‘personalities.’ "

  • p.86 – “And you’ve got to be able to take it, too. That’s the part of communication that many would-be leaders miss. You can’t just dish, dish, dish, and then storm off in a huff when someone tries to fix something about your game. People know it instinctively– no one respects a guy who dishes it out but can’t take it. Remember, when you’re responding to criticism, you’re modeling the way others are going to respond to you.”

  • p.87 – “If you listen patiently and take criticism in stride, you’re increasing the chances that you’re going to get listened to down the road. Communication has to go both ways, or it doesn’t work. And we’ve talked about this before– if you’re really hungry to improve your craft, you’ll welcome all the criticism you get, because every critique is a chance to get better at some aspect of the game.”

  • p.87 – “That’s when having steady veteran leaders can matter the most. You need people to mediate– to say, ‘No, no, no, that’s not what he meant. What did you hear when he said X? What did you mean when you said Y?’ It takes a lot of patience and a lot of tolerance. But it pays off.”

  • p.89 – “But there’s a reason Coach K is so good at what he does. He’s a great communicator. He knew how I could contribute, and he knew how to put the idea in my head. If it had been something like, ‘Chris, we just don’t need you on offense,’ it would have hurt my pride, and I probably would have tuned out. Coach K knew that, so instead he told me what I needed to hear in a way that made it more likely that I would hear it.”

  • p.90 – “It’s been fascinating to observe how the loudest talkers on any team probably aren’t the best listeners– but that the real leaders know how to do both. When it’s time for them to talk, they get right to the point. When you’re talking to them, they make you feel like you have 100 percent of their attention.”