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Beat the Competition: Balance Offense and Defense, with Shane Battier, ESPN commentator and former NBA player
On the basketball court everyone has different strengths. I believe that you have a mind for defense or you have a mind for offense. Me personally I always found defense much easier. The concepts of being able to stop my man and being able to understand where I’m supposed to be on the court when my man has the ball or my man doesn’t have the ball. It just – it made sense to me and I was always in the right place. I think that came from being the tallest kid in my sixth grade class at six feet tall and blocking all my friends’ shots. So I learned to like defense a lot when I was younger.
Embrace both mentalities
When you have an offensive mentality I think of some of the greatest offensive players I played with – LeBron James, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming. And they were so aggressive and always taking real estate, just going after it. And where defense is more I’m going to draw a line in the sand and you’re not getting past this line. And there’s not one mindset that’s better than the other. They’re just different. And in the real world you have your people who are absolutely go getters and who don’t let failure stop them. And I would say that is an offensive mindset.
Because in basketball you’re going to fail half the time, you’re going to miss half your shots. If you miss half your shots you’re in the hall of fame. So there’s a lot of failure but those are truly special and elites continue to attack and to reach out and try to grow their universe. And I think if you have a defensive mindset in the real world you are, you’re staunch and you’re steadfast and you understand that it’s a process. Because in defense, look, they’re going to score on you half the time. And so there’s a lot of failure in defense as well. How do you react? Do you wilt or do you come back reinvigorated and steadfast in your beliefs and you stay the course. I think that is a defensive mindset in life and I think you have to have a little bit of both if you want to unlock your potential.
Everybody matters
The dirty little secret about sports at the end of the day is that everyone’s a role player. Everybody has a specific role on a team that needs to be fulfilled if a team wants to reach an elite level wing a championship, all right. Sometimes the role is to be the superstar and to absorb most of the spotlight. And some of the roles may not be as highly publicized or given enough credit but they’re all essential, they’re all essential. And when each player plays his or her role to the tee, your team will have success. And that’s the secret behind any corporation, any great family, any great membership that is out there. Playing your roles, playing it better than anyone can play it.