Category Archives: Sports

Slate called Kevin Garnett’s post-game interview last night (after the Celtics won the NBA championship) "the strangest post-game interview of the television era." It’s two minutes. Hilarious. Embedded below. Excerpts from Slate’s blow-by-blow at bottom.

0:00: Greeted by Tafoya, Garnett first appears to be gripped by emotions familiar to any sports fan who’s watched a championship celebration: happiness and disbelief. He presses his brand-new championship hat to his head with both hands, seemingly afraid it might come loose.

0:07: "NBA Champion—how does that sound?" Tafoya asks. Garnett is at a loss for words. After a long pause and more futzing with his new hat, he says, in a strangely even tone, "Man, I’m so, I’m so hype right now."

0:20: Garnett tells Tafoya that "anything’s possible." He then leans back and howls at the moon: "ANYTHING’S POOOOOOSSIIIIIBLLLLLLE!" He holds the note for four seconds.

0:27: At this point the catharsis gets the better of Garnett, and he begins crying. These are not the poignant tears of joy shed by Michael Jordan upon winning his first Larry O’Brien Trophy. Garnett is in the throes of something closer to a child’s tantrum, mumbling indecipherable words. Approximate translation: "Oh my buh buh, fa fa fa fa fa." He then buries his head in the shoulder of an unidentified Celtics staffer, who proceeds to say, "Yeah, baby!" repeatedly. ABC’s producers pull away for a moment, cutting to a long shot of the arena….

0:57: "This is for everybody in ‘Sota!" he bellows, a classy shout-out to the fans who supported Garnett for the first 12 years of his career. Such is the reservoir of good feeling that Garnett has built up in Boston that no fan will begrudge the Twin Cities getting top-billing in Garnett’s list of thank-yous. If Ray Allen had dedicated the Celtics win to the hardworking people of Seattle or Milwaukee, one wonders if it would have gone over quite as well….

1:06: Garnett thanks Peanut. As ABC noted in its pregame show, Garnett is very fond of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but this Peanut would seem to be a person. When Tafoya caught up with Garnett after Boston defeated the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, he closed out the exchange by saying, "What up, Brand? What up, Peanut?" Brand would seem to be Brandi, Garnett’s wife. Might that make Peanut their newborn?

1:14: Garnett screams into the camera, "I made it ma! Top of the world! TOP OF THE WORLD!" That’s exactly what James Cagney’s maniacal, cackling gangster character says at the end of White Heat as he dies in a fiery explosion atop a gigantic gas tank. This explains a lot about KG’s self-image.

1:20: Tafoya, who must be complimented on her poise throughout this exchange, parlays Garnett’s screaming into a question: "What does ‘top of the world’ feel like, Kevin?" The query seems to momentarily ground Garnett, who again flirts with the normal rules of postgame interviewing, offering up some choice platitudes: "Ray Allen had a great game" and "I’m so happy right now—I’m not going to sleep for a week." Of course, since this is Kevin Garnett, the latter statement might not be hyperbole—he’s previously claimed not to have slept for four or five nights during the Pistons series.

1:37: "I’m certified! I’m certified!" Garnett bellows. This may be the first time you could mistake a newly minted NBA champion for a raving lunatic on the subway.

1:40: In a more benign re-enactment of Joe Namath’s propositioning of Suzy Kolber, Garnett says, "Michele, you look good tonight, girl." Over the course of the playoffs, the two have developed an easy rapport. After Game 1 of the Pistons series, he told Tafoya, "You look good in your pink, girl."….

The interview concludes, but the camera stays with Garnett as he turns to find Bill Russell waiting to greet him with a benevolent grin and a bear hug. In a conversation earlier this year, the 11-time champion told Boston’s new star that he would give him one of his hard-earned rings if the team failed to take it home this year. KG almost cried. Now, even the stiffest upper lip in Boston has to be quivering as Garnett and his forebear embrace. "I got one of my own," says Garnett. "I got my own." He steps back, looks at Russell, and says "I hope we made you proud."

A less weird individual might have left it at that, but Garnett has one more line for his mentor: "Now you got to tell me where to go tonight."

From the late, great David Halberstam and his book A March to Madness: A View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference, page 37:

Every team needs a motherfucker, someone who is tough and mean and willing to do anything to win. That can mean getting in the other team’s face or getting in the face of a teammate if necessary. Michael Jordan was a motherfucker, even if his college coach wouldn’t use the term. Christian Laettner was a motherfucker and his college coach wouldn’t hesitate to use the term. Years ago, Maryland center Buck Williams, who carried a Bible with him everywhere he went, was a motherfucker. His coach liked to say of Williams: "Off the court he’s the nicest person you’ll ever meet. ‘Yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, no ma’am. On the court, he’ll kill you if he has to."

Barnes was convinced he had a burgeoning motherfucker in Buckner, someone who would do anything to win a basketball game and never back down from anybody. That was what he felt his team needed to compete in the ACC: an attitude, one that said, “We are motherfuckers and you can’t scare us.”

(hat tip to my brother)

Two years ago I asked, Is a killer instinct necessary in business and life? There were some good comments. But I’ve never thought hard about what the components of a "killer instinct" actually are. In this Sports Illustrated piece praising Kobe Bryant’s "freakish love of the game" and peerless tenacity, there’s this interesting graf:

Idan Ravin, a personal trainer who works with…Carmelo Anthony, Gilbert Arenas and Elton Brand and is known by some in the league as "the hoops whisperer" for his effect on players, has even broken killer instinct down into components: love of the game, ambition, obsessive-compulsive behavior, arrogance/ confidence, selfishness and nonculpability/ guiltlessness. He sees them all in Bryant.

Earlier there’s this:

There are no plus-minus stats to measure a player’s ruthlessness, his desire to beat his opponent so badly he’ll need therapy to recover. One thing’s for sure: You can’t teach it.

I wonder whether similar observations could be made in business. Are the big time CEOs freakishly competitive, mind-blowingly arrogant, and singularly focused on their business goals even at the cost of "balance"?

(hat tip: del.icio.us/chrisyeh)

In this Wall Street Journal article on how Chinese immigrants dominate the U.S. national ping-pong team (and not just the U.S.), there’s this interesting graf:

Homes in Canada and the U.S. are often large enough for a ping-pong table in the basement or garage, which means children here are exposed to table tennis informally. In Europe and Asia, home to the best players competing in lucrative professional leagues, generally smaller living spaces mean children must play at a sports club, where there are organized teams and training.

Makes sense — all my American friends and I grew up playing ping-pong in the backyard or in the attic or at summer camp. This type of casual play probably screws up your form at an early age.

For those new to this blog, I love ping pong. Related links:

• Smack talking before my ping pong match against Jonah Spear. Pretty funny email exchange.
• Here’s David Cohen analyzing my ping pong strengths and weaknesses. He calls me "mentally tough" and says, "Playing against Ben is tough because he can reach literally anything."
• Here’s my travel blog post on trying desperately to play a match in China, but shockingly not finding an opponent or table.
• Here’s the recent NYT piece on how ping pong makes you smarter.

From the world of sports psychology, this is an interesting breakdown of three different points of concentration golf putters had in mind during a clutch moment. Concentrating on a single "holistic cue word" like smooth proved most successful:

There are two common explanations for why some athletes perform poorly in the clutch: either the pressure distracts them, or it causes them to focus too intently on usually automatic actions. To test the competing theories, two researchers studied 20 experienced Australian golfers in a low-stakes contest and a high-stakes competition with monetary prizes. The participants played three 10-putt rounds, and they were given different instructions at the start of each: first, they were told to concentrate on three things that were irrelevant to the task; then to focus on three words that related to technical aspects of their swing, such as arms, weight, or acceleration; and finally to concentrate on a single “holistic cue word” describing their intended movement, such as smooth. In the high-pressure situation, participants did worse when thinking about words related to execution; overall, golfers in both situations did best while concentrating on the holistic cue. The authors speculate that focusing on a cue word prevents experts from trying to “consciously control their movements under pressure,” which suggests that overthinking, rather than distraction, may be the greater danger facing athletes in the clutch.

Clutch moments exist in business, and the sports idea of "muscle memory" transfers as well. When I was doing a lot of enterprise software sales calls I had a successful routine. When the stakes were unusually high, it was easy to over think how I delivered my pitch and try to change my routine. Bad approach. I learned this lesson in basketball, too. What successful athletes and CEOs figure out is how to channel heightened adrenaline in a productive way.

Source link is subscribers only; hat tip to Atlantic Monthly’s Primary Sources.