Mr. President's Mind
EPISODE 248: Defying gravity.
I’ve been thinking, lately, about the player LeBron James calls “probably the No. 1 smartest basketball player and person I’ve been around.”
Who also happens to be the same person who caused Mike Krzyzewski to offer the following scouting report:
“Shane was an alien. I wanted at the end of his career to crack his head open and see if he was really human.”
In fact… the reason I wanted to do this episode with Shane Battier is because I found myself wanting to do the exact same thing to him as Coach K.
But whether you’ve ever heard of Shane before, or not, what you should know is that he’s one of my favorite examples of how to find yourself under the most pressurized situations — from a literally vomitous freshman year at Duke; to the Eastern Conference Finals, on the brink of elimination, in Boston; to playing closed-door pick-up with Barack Obama, on the president’s birthday.
Shane’s life, as he calls it, is Forrest Gump-ian.
I think it offers useful case studies about usually abstract sports concepts like “leadership” and “culture” and, well, “defense.”
He might also have you singing Wicked to yourself all weekend.
YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:
It’s time to trust my instincts,
Pablo