Good piece, thank you for sharing it.

Reminded me that I haven't brought my wife flowers in a while too. Will surprise her.

I am going to take this back to basketball for a second… as a now “once-embattled” Knicks fan (four decades without a championship for me - UNTIL NOW!!!). MM said one thing I want to nit-pick and expound on.

As a Knicks fan… I looked at that young Spurs team and was resigned to defeat. They were talented, energetic, played incredibly well together and featured arguably the best basketball player in the game right now. They were the epitome of deserving. They jumped out to double digit leads in EVERY SINGLE GAME. They played ferocious defense and believed in one another… and yes, I am still talking about the other team. I envied them… and even when we took the first two games and allowed myself a little hope … game three brought me crashing back to earth. They (the Spurs) deserved it. Or so I told myself in some warped preparatory exercise to cushion my disappointment and relentless feeling of “everything sucks and we can’t have nice things” assessment of the world.

But that’s the thing… being deserving is not enough.

We deserve a government of and for the people. We deserve a court of last resort that places the law, sound jurisprudence and a responsibility to interpret on merit versus desired outcome. We deserve roofs over our heads, access to healthcare regardless of economic ability and the resources to form a foundation of self-reliance. We deserve to love whom we want and how we want.

To my core… I believe these things. We DESERVE them. The spurs deserved to be NBA champions.

But echoing Mike, quoting Jalen Brunson “…you gotta go out there and do something.”

Deserving is not enough.

Do something.

No gesture is too small. No action lost to a sea of cynisism.

The Spurs deserved to be NBA champions.

The Knicks ARE NBA champions.

They did something about it.

I hope we all do too.

To tack onto what Jordan said so well… I saw a mind-boggling stat a couple of days ago. The Spurs led the Finals 72% of the time. That's an insane number. By all measure they should have won this. Except that the 28% that the Knicks led came when it mattered most.

Reading these comments reminded me of the Roger Federer commencement speech lesson about only having won 54% of the points he played.

Quote pulled from Kottke’s post.

“In tennis, perfection is impossible… In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches… Now, I have a question for all of you… what percentage of the POINTS do you think I won in those matches?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think: OK, I double-faulted. It’s only a point.

OK, I came to the net and I got passed again. It’s only a point.

Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN’s Top Ten Plays: that, too, is just a point.

Here’s why I am telling you this.

When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world.

But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you… This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point… and the next one after that… with intensity, clarity and focus.

The truth is, whatever game you play in life… sometimes you’re going to lose. A point, a match, a season, a job… it’s a roller coaster, with many ups and downs.

And it’s natural, when you’re down, to doubt yourself. To feel sorry for yourself.

And by the way, your opponents have self-doubt, too. Don’t ever forget that.

But negative energy is wasted energy.”

Art, but make it Sports

For some reason this article reminds me of the quote from Bojack Horseman

"It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day—that's the hard part. But it does get easier."