Haiku Thursday: “Memphis Cookout”

Memphis in May plus
Grizzlies in playoffs equals
Barbequed Curry…

Sonnet Sunday: “Broken Brackets”

The swish of hoops, the squeak of swoosh, Nikes
Reeboks, ‘Didas, Armour, run down hardwood
An’ fly through air. Tourney dreams turn dream-like
State as kids storm courts and screams and hugs could
Be like speech—understood. But games must end
And losers named. Brackets busted upsets
Reign. Seasons over, college seniors send
Résumés—twenty-two—retir’ment met
Final quatrain of the season, epics
Played with steel-rimed goals, leather hopes, but now
Games nearly done, two teams left: set picks,
Defense, plays are run. Five month poem, how
Will it end? Blow out win that’s heaven sent?
Or a buzzer beater’s shining moment?

 Bracket Flames   Villanova Piccolo Player

Coach K, Cutting Down the Nets

Behavioral Psychology Explains Why Kentucky Won’t Win the National Title If They Lose a Game

“It’s like a finger pointing at the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or else you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.” –Bruce Lee

I don’t like Kentucky. I don’t trust Calipari. But if they go into the tournament undefeated, I will want to see them win their next six games, raise the National Championship trophy, and make the Bluegrass state smile. And not because they’re in the SEC but because I enjoy rare, high level accomplishments, regardless of who’s achieving it. And if we pay attention, John Calipari’s interviews illustrate how to arrive at success more often.

A group of children sat in a classroom, unaware that they were being studied by behavioral psychologists. Even if they were, their minds were temporarily distracted by the easy math problems upon which they eagerly scribbled their answers. The experiment really began when they were given more difficult ones. None of the children got the problems right. But something happened next: they were again given easy problems. One group of students completed the problems easily while another group was so distracted by their inability to solve the difficult problems that they had trouble completing the once easy task before them.

Dr. Carol Dweck is a leading researcher in developmental psychology. She talks about how these two types of learners: incremental and entity. The former views learning as a process, a constantly evolving growth of mind and intelligence. The latter views learning as a result, something you’ve achieved. Essentially, entity learners do well as long as they’re succeeding. Their identity is so tied into results that when they come up short, they don’t bounce back as well. Part of long-term winning involves learning from losses.

It’s like the fastest kid in class racing the new guy and losing. If he comes back the next day wanting to race again, it reflects an incremental thought process. But if he slows up before the race is even over, claiming he wasn’t trying, then that kid is an entity thinker who will likely only race guys he knows he can beat.

College coaches are highly paid, highly specialized college professors, so they know that learning is like water cupped in your hands—you may have it. But that possession is precarious. On some level, it’s easy to hold, but then again, it’s easy to lose. And a coach’s wins are based, in part, on the ability to teach. And winning, like learning or power or love or faith, is an abstract concept that you must work to grasp and work to keep or else it can slip quickly through your fingers. Incremental thinkers intuitively understand this, which is why they, in general, succeed more than entity thinkers.

This is why Calipari makes such a big deal about defensive lapses after clear blowouts. Staying focused on process when results are so prominent is difficult. What’s harder? Keeping others focused on it. And Calipari’s not alone. The most famous Vince Lombardi quote is “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Yet let’s not forget that he could talk about the Green Bay power sweep for 8 hours. That means he could start talking about this one play while someone clocks into work. And after that person has played on Facebook, watched YouTube videos, went to lunch, came back, did two hours of real work before clocking out, Lombardi would just be finishing up his discussion—about one play. The length of time is probably apocryphal, but the message is clear: Lombardi valued process. You see this same thread of thought in any of Phil Jackson’s books.

Obviously, I don’t know what kind of learners the individual Kentucky players are, but we have enough seasons of background to know that collectively, teams who earn 1 loss late in the season falter worse than undefeated teams. It’s difficult to mark exactly where teams pass that point of no return, but if you’re at 26-0, you’re definitely there. Whether they realize it or not, Kentucky is now a group of entity learners tied to the accomplishment of going undefeated. And Calipari’s job is to keep them more incremental than entity, to keep them focused, not on winning, but on doing the things that produce winning.

Now, the counterpoint to my construct is that each win breeds confidence, and that sense of self creates the habit of winning. There’s power in expecting to win; it’s hard to quantify, but we know it’s there. The “pressure” of maintaining a streak is only a factor if a team doesn’t really expect to be where they’re at. A team like Kentucky with top recruits at a legendary program would feel that pressure less than say an undefeated Tennessee team that doesn’t have a legendary basketball legacy and doesn’t have the best players clamoring to play for it. For Kentucky, each win creates more momentum than tension.

I watch sports to see my teams win, but I also watch to see history. My high school principal was an assistant coach on the undefeated ’76 Indiana team. I wasn’t alive to see that. But I’m alive for this. By default, Kentucky is, on some level, an entity team, but are they more incremental? I don’t want to find out because finding out means they’ll lose before getting to the tournament. Some things you just don’t want to learn.

Chris Paul: Insensitive But Not Sexist

“[T]his might not be for her.” –Chris Paul on Lauren Holtkamp’s technical fouls

If you re-watch the play Paul is referring to when Holtkamp gives him the tech, his story holds up. His comments weren’t tech-worthy. But he is wrong (but within his rights) to criticize the referring. He has a good point about the play, but his comments were wrong.

Now, were his comments sexist? Yes….And no. He probably doesn’t say this if it’s a guy. But he also doesn’t say it if Holtkamp is a veteran. It’s hard to watch the video and not think that his last sentence comes out the same way if she were a man, but blanketing the statement with “sexist” ignores the myriad shades of meaning through which we express complex and sometimes underdeveloped thoughts and feelings.

I don’t think Paul believes she’s a bad ref because she’s a woman. Nor do I think he believes women shouldn’t be able to compete for jobs traditionally off limits to them. The problem, of course, is that an insensitive mark could be the tip of an iceberg of hateful and destructive thoughts and feelings. But when evaluating whether or not that’s the case, we must contextualize what one says in a given moment, not just with what he or she says around that moment but what that person says throughout his or her life.

Paul doesn’t seem to have puddles of sexist comments leading up to that, so he deserves so he doesn’t deserve to be called anything more than a player who got upset and criticized a specific ref. He didn’t use profanity nor did he use derogatory language. This gives people who traffic in words and stories something to write about for the next couple of days; that’s all. Paul will get fined, but not because what he said was sexist. But because he criticized a ref–as it should be.