I’ve been watching the NBA Finals series between New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs. I’m really not a basketball fanatic. I don’t root for any particular team. I’m more of a casual and neutral spectator of the game.
I enjoyed the games. But Game 4 of the series was to me something everyone will be talking about for years. It was a game that defined the character of this New York team.
I was watching that game with my son, who is a loyal Knicks fan. The game wasn’t going well for New York in the early part. At halftime, the Knicks were down by 29 points.
Most teams would have accepted defeat and would just look ahead to the next game. Knicks fans caught by the camera looked gloomy and disheartened. I told my son that the game was over for the Knicks. So, I left him and went to work on a think piece that I was writing. He said something like ‘they’ll bounce back’ although I sensed he wasn’t too confident about it.
After a quite a while, as I was lost in thought, I suddenly heard my son letting out a loud whoop of excitement.
I dropped everything I was doing and went back to join my son in front of the TV screen. The game was in its last few minutes. Unbelievably, the Knicks were now tied with the Spurs. In the last 7 seconds a timely rebound from nowhere and a tip in by one of the Knicks sealed the game for New York, which won by one point!
Eventually, two days after, as we all know, the New York Knicks went on to become NBA champions once again, after 53 years!
One reason I enjoyed the series is that it had the elements of an endearing movie – comeback after comeback, the Knicks refusing to stay down, New York fans going from despair to delirium and back again, sometimes within the same quarter. A roster rebuilt from scratch over six years finally delivered what this city had been waiting for since before most of its fans were born. To top it, there was the added layer of David versus Goliath duel, a crafty 6-foot-2 experienced point guard going against a young talented 7-foot-4 behemoth center.
Me being me, I saw a message. It wasn’t just about basketball. It’s about life. Your failures, setbacks don’t define you. How you respond to them does.
Take a moment and look back. Remember the hardships you survived, the heartbreaks you healed from, the challenges that forced you to grow. The strength you need today may already be inside you, forged by yesterday’s struggles.
My son stayed with it. He knew the team had a track record of overcoming big deficits time and again. They were a resilient team, or as someone has dubbed them, ‘the comeback kings.’
Speaking of come backs, I have a friend who had been downed by a debilitating stroke. The stroke triggered other mini strokes and multiple health issues. After being discharged, he would be rushed back to the hospital. At one time, one doctor even told the wife that my friend had only three or four weeks to live. It’s been more than a year now and it seems he is making a rebound, with the help of her wife and therapists. Through it all, she did not give up. The series of crisis developed in her what I call ‘spiritual muscle.’
Setbacks, failures, disappointments are opportunities to build, strengthen and flex our spiritual muscles.
Consider the coach of the Knicks. He was fired four times-by other NBA teams he coached. He could have walked away bitter. Instead, he kept learning, kept showing up, and kept believing his story was not finished. Now, with the New York Knicks, he’s a champion.
Sometimes rejection is not the end of the road. It is preparation for the right opportunity. Your setback may simply be setting the stage for your comeback.
Many of us find ourselves stuck in a place we think we can’t escape: a destructive habit, a toxic relationship, an addiction, a character trait that keeps hurting the people we love.
Well, there’s a beautiful thing called redemption.
In fact, there’s a redemption story that is now keeping a social media platform abuzz.
It’s about the journey of someone who has survived being an addict, who walked through hell and made it out the other side. He is the son of a former US president, who had been vilified and judged endlessly by millions.
Now he has fully recovered and he is telling his story, posting short but pithy messages to help others in the same predicament. In one post, he writes:
‘I don’t really think it’s about me. I think it’s about the idea that we all have fallen down and that we all wish we could be a little kinder to each other. And we all hope for a little grace and understanding when we get honest with ourselves and the world. And we all have that friend or brother or parent or son that has fu-d up but fought to get back on their feet. Whatever it is- it’s not about me. It’s about all of us. So I genuinely ask you to forget about me- and reach out to someone.’
If you’re going through something hard right now, stay in it. Never stop trying. Never believe for one moment that you’ve gone too far to come back. As the Japanese say ‘Nana korobi ya oki’ (fall down seven times, stand up eight.)
Don’t allow anyone make you believe you’re not worthy, because you are! The thing that breaks you is often the thing that builds you. The way you make comeback after comeback is what will truly define you.
So let me give a big shout out to each and every one of you who gets up every day, still in the game of life, ready to come from behind for the win.