He's Back: Tom Brady Returns in Style

Before Sunday night's Tampa Bay-Dallas game, NBC played a video of Michael Jordan talking about how he took almost two years off before coming back but Tom Brady's retirement did not last even two months. Jordan described the deep attachment that he and Brady feel for their respective sports, and he urged everyone to enjoy watching Brady because such greatness is rarely seen. Few people would understand Brady's retirement and return better than Jordan. Jordan did not win his first game back, but he did lead the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive NBA titles before retiring again (and coming back one more time, with less success).

In his first game back from his retirement--and is it really a retirement if you did not miss any regular season games?--Brady led the Buccaneers to a 19-3 win over the Cowboys, lifting his personal record against Dallas to 7-0. Brady became the oldest starting quarterback in NFL history (45 years old), and a video montage shown during the game proved that his release time and throwing motion now are indistinguishable from his release time and throwing motion from early in his career and from the middle of his career. Brady's numbers were solid but not great by his lofty standards--18-27, 212 yards, one touchdown, one interception, 87.3 passer rating--but he made the throws that needed to be made, he mixed the pass with the run very well, and he limited his mistakes to one bad throw, the interception that he freely admitted was his fault.

During his postgame interview with NBC's Melissa Stark, Brady said, "I always play the game for my team, my teammates and the organization. Just being around them is something I always enjoy. It keeps me very grounded, very humble. I feel like just one of the guys. Not many places where I can go where I feel like just one of the guys, but the locker room's definitely one of those places."

Last season, Brady led the NFL with a career-high 5316 passing yards plus 43 passing TDs (the second highest total of his career, topped only by his 50 TDs in 2007 for the 16-0 New England Patriots). From the standpoints of physical skill set and motivation level, it would seem that Brady can be an elite quarterback for the foreseeable future--but football is a violent game in which a season or career can come to a crashing halt after just one play. Brady has been incredibly durable save for the 2008 season when he missed 15 games after tearing his ACL in the opener, but Sunday night provided a reminder of how tenuous NFL life can be: late in the game, Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott's right hand crashed into the hands of a pass rusher on two consecutive plays, resulting in a hand injury that apparently will require surgery and cause him to miss several weeks (the exact diagnosis will not be official until further examination is done, but Prescott and Dallas owner Jerry Jones both stated the expectation that Prescott will be out for an extended period).

Brady may ride off into the sunset as a Super Bowl champion, but he already had that opportunity after the 2020 season and instead he returned in 2021. Jordan kept coming back until his balky, swollen knees forced him to accept that the end had arrived. I once compared the end of Jordan's career to the end of Jerry Rice's career: 

There is a beauty and a sadness to the way that Jordan and Rice's careers ended. There is great beauty in loving the game so much that you continue to play even though you have nothing left to prove and you risk being mocked by cynical writers, young fans who don't remember your greatness and jealous rivals who couldn't touch you in your prime but salivate at the chance to embarrass you now. Yet, there is sadness when one watches a singular performer unable to dominate the game in his usual manner. Ray Lewis can be heard on NFL Films saying, "The same thing that will make you laugh will make you cry." Watching the end of Air Jordan's career and the conclusion of Flash 80's run, I understand that statement perfectly. I take two memories from Jordan's Wizards career: first, his soaring, two handed block of Ron Mercer, pinning the ball to the glass to preserve a win against Jordan's old team, the Chicago Bulls. That clip was later shown in a Nike commercial, with a Jordan voiceover intoning "Love is playing every game like it's your last." I'm not ashamed to say that I got goose bumps every time that spot ran; second, the image of Jordan dragging his bad leg up and down the court, trying to act like everything was fine—his heart and determination made you smile and the intimations of his (and our) mortality made you cry. For Rice, my two memories of his dénouement are the aforementioned Monday night comeback from the ACL injury and the fact that last year, on a Seattle team with wide receivers who drop so many passes they should change their names to Edward Scissorhands, Seattle did not even attempt to utilize him at the end of a 27-20 playoff loss to the St. Louis Rams.

Jerry Rice's retirement leaves me feeling the same way that I did after Michael Jordan’s last season with the Wizards: I am sad that Jerry Rice will no longer play in the NFL—and yet I am glad that he left now rather than spend a season sitting on the bench. Yes, the same thing that will make you laugh will make you cry.

Kobe Bryant once vowed to play until the wheels fell off, and he pretty much accomplished that, summoning up the requisite energy to drop 60 points in his career finale after being hobbled by multiple injuries that limited him to just 107 out of a possible 246 games in his final three seasons. 

Will Brady leave on top, or will he ride it out until the wheels fall off? Jordan is right that we should savor Brady's greatness--not only because such greatness is rare, but because it could end suddenly and unexpectedly.

Enjoying the Process

"Focus, while I display flows ferocious."--Busta Rhymes, "Everything Remains Raw"

Consistently converting winning positions is one of the greatest challenges that a chess player faces. Perhaps the biggest difference between Masters and non-Masters is that Masters are much more proficient at winning the games that they "should" win. I have worked very hard to improve at this phase of the game and I have made enough progress to maintain an Expert rating but not quite enough progress to earn the Master title. Throughout my chess career I have sought the advice of Masters on this subject, trying to gain insight about how their minds function when victory is in sight but not yet secured.

When I was a Class A player trying to reach Expert level in the early 1990s, Senior Master Boris Men explained to me that when you have the advantage the most important thing is to "play against your opponent's play." I had never heard this expression before, though I later realized that it is a standard Master level technique. The idea is that by squelching any possible counterplay you will force your opponent to either trade pieces or else place his pieces passively; this is much more prudent than chasing after stray pawns or prematurely launching an attack that could weaken your position. SM Men's advice has helped me a lot, though following through on his prescription is easier said than done.

More recently, Hans Multhopp, a USCF Master who is also a FIDE Master, told me to enjoy the winning process. At first I thought that he meant savor the prospect of victory--by cultivating the Relentless mindset of champions like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant, players who are not satisfied until they dominate and destroy their opponents--but Multhopp clarified that a chess player should enjoy looking for the best moves and solving problems over the board. Chess should be fun! When you are winning a chess game it is easy to become bored, stressed out and/or distracted but ideally one should remain focused and joyful.

This is one of the many ways that chess is a metaphor for life. In The Spiritual Practices of the Ninja: Mastering the Four Gates to Freedom, Ross Heaven writes, "Life is meant to be played with, not stressed over." Having a winning position can be more nerve-wracking than having a losing position, because the losing player may have already resigned himself to his fate while the winning player, paradoxically, has everything to lose if he makes one false move. Chess can be a masochistic endeavor: we suffer when we are losing because we hate to lose but we also suffer when we are winning because we are afraid that we might lose! I overheard an International Master exclaim, "I hate this game!"--and this was after he had just won from a losing position. Something is very wrong if someone who has reached the 99th percentile in his chosen endeavor feels miserable after winning a game instead of being happy not just for the victory but also for becoming so proficient and accomplished in such a challenging sport/art. Caissa is a mistress who both tempts and torments her lovers.

I am more convinced than ever that Multhopp is right: enjoying the process is the key not just to attaining chess mastery but also the key to getting the most out of chess--and life. Making Master is a worthy goal but achieving mastery of one's emotions--"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same," as Kipling put it--is the ultimate goal. Win or lose, in chess or in life, I am fighting to not say/feel, "I hate this game!"

Perfection Versus Perspective

"What makes a man wanna rule the world? (A double a double arrogance)."--Prince, "Arrogance"

A complex combination of conflicting character traits comprise the strange witches' brew that fuels a champion; a champion must "chase perfection" in order to "catch excellence" (as Vince Lombardi once put it) but a champion must also have the resiliency to accept failure. How can one simultaneously have perfection as a goal and yet deal with the reality that nothing in this world--particularly one's ability to perform under pressure--is perfect? Seth Wickersham's recent article about Bill Walsh analyzes the potent mixture of perfectionism, arrogance and insecurity that drove Walsh to greatness (including three Super Bowl championships in 10 seasons as San Francisco's head coach)--and then drove him to leave the game at the height of his career.

Wickersham writes of Walsh, "He always coached through existential torture, with alternating bouts of believing that he was brilliant and that he was incapable of fulfilling his own idea of greatness." Despite his tremendous success, Walsh felt torment both during and after his coaching career. Wickersham explains, "What haunted Walsh went deeper than pink slips and long nights. It was his drive to be great at something he couldn't control. His colleagues recall him as the most intelligent coach they'd ever seen, which Walsh not so discreetly agreed with. But he could be sensitive to the point of devastation, crushed by failures large and small."

Wickersham says that the so-called 49ers Way "was really the Walsh Way, a system flowing from one man's ingenuity and insecurity. By the late '80s, as Walsh's definition of success became so narrow as to be unattainable, the Walsh Way started to cripple the coach. He would sit dazed in his hot tub even after wins, despondent that he had miscalculated a play or two. 'I was a tortured person,' Walsh later told biographer [David] Harris. 'I felt the failure so personally...eventually I couldn't get out from under it all. You can't live that way long. You can only attack that part of your nervous system so many times."

Almost immediately after he retired following San Francisco's January 1989 Super Bowl victory, Walsh decided that he had left the game too soon--a feeling that only intensified when his successor George Seifert led the 49ers to a dominant season capped off by a Super Bowl triumph in January 1990. Wickersham declares, "Walsh hated that Seifert won a championship that year with his team, his West Coast offense, his philosophy; he so hated the ring that the team awarded him that he gave it away." Walsh's son Craig confirms Wickersham's account: "He didn't want them to win. He couldn't hand over the team he had created to someone else, because he wasn't capable of it."

Walsh wanted to define his legacy on his terms and explain to the world the exact reasons for his success, so he decided to assemble a comprehensive blueprint for putting together a championship organization from top to bottom. The result, after years of painstaking work--and the help of several collaborators, including his one-time assistant coach (and future Super Bowl champion coach in his own right) Brian Billick--was Finding the Winning Edge, a massive book that has become a bible for both aspiring and established football coaches. Wickersham writes, "For those who coached under Walsh, Finding the Winning Edge was a study of the genius beyond his playbook. For those who coached against him, it was a window into the mind of their nemesis. For [Bill] Belichick, it was validation. It was published during the crossroads of his career, while he was working as a Jets assistant. The book reinforced Belichick's own belief in detailed planning, which is why he calls it and Jack Welch and the GE Way the two most influential books of his career."

Walsh's book explores in detail a subject that has long fascinated me: The Difference Between Winners and Champions. Here is my explanation of that difference:

All pro athletes are winners. They are better at what they do best than 99% of people are at doing anything and they've been winning games or matches for most of their lives. Only a select few athletes are champions, though. They are the ones who make you watch, who are compelling figures to even casual fans--guys like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods...

Champions project a message to their opponents that induces fear and resignation. Opponents of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer used to call it "Fischer Fear." They used to say that they could feel his manic energy, his fierce will to win, across the chessboard. Michael Jordan's opponents used to feel a similar thing, as did Kasparov's and as do Woods' and Federer's.

The flip side of this kind of ferocious, single-minded drive and determination is that, as Kobe Bryant candidly admitted recently, "Winning takes precedence over all. There's no gray area. No almosts. It's a very unbalanced way to live and I know that. It's not healthy. And I can't justify it, but someone has to win and why not me and the Lakers organization." My personality is naturally wired in that fashion and while this can lead to great success there is the constant danger that without the right perspective it can also turn life into a joyless all or nothing proposition.

How can one chase perfection without losing a balanced perspective? Is it even possible to do so? More than a decade ago, ESPN's "SportsCentury" series profiled dozens of the 20th century's greatest athletes; this may be a slight exaggeration but my recollection is that Jack Nicklaus was about the only champion who appeared to be well-balanced: most champions seem to be tormented like Walsh and/or unable to completely integrate their perfectionism into their post-competition lives, often resulting in some combination of drug addiction, infidelity and/or reckless business moves leading to financial ruin. Perfectionism may be an asset during a 60 minute NFL game or a 48 minute NBA game but, as Walsh ruefully noted, "You can only attack that part of your nervous system so many times." Jerry West, the all-time great player who later drafted Kobe Bryant, is a classic example of someone who achieved greatness because of his perfectionism and yet still feels tormented.

Striving for greatness is important and meaningful but there can be a high price to pay for such striving and few people who attain greatness avoid paying for it in some fashion; that does not mean that anyone should settle for mediocrity but rather that those who strive for greatness must have tremendous self-awareness and must concentrate on maintaining proper balance mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. 

Jets Prove Once Again That Talk is Cheap

Rex Ryan's New York Jets talk big but they still have no rings to show for it after the Pittsburgh Steelers raced to a 24-0 lead and then held on to beat the Jets 24-19 in the AFC Championship Game. This is the second year in a row that the Jets lost in the AFC Championship Game. The Jets' slow start versus Pittsburgh markedly contrasts with how the Jets kept the New England Patriots off balance for most of their Divisional playoff game last week and--considering all of the woofing that Ryan and the Jets did about Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the Patriots--makes one wonder if at some level beating New England really was New York's biggest goal.

New York linebacker Bart Scott--who has made one Pro Bowl and has never won a Super Bowl in his nine season NFL career--barked last week about New England's defense not being able to "stop a nosebleed" but he was largely invisible as Rashard Mendenhall bulldozed over the Jets' defense in the AFC Championship. Scott exclaimed "Can't wait!" when asked about playing the Steelers and his emphatic, colorful comments during that interview with Sal Paolantonio rank up there with Lee Flowers' "paper champions" line regarding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Flowers ran his mouth and then watched the Buccaneers later win a Super Bowl while he never won a ring (or even made a Pro Bowl) and Scott's premature boasting and posturing looks just as foolish.

On the fifth anniversary of Kobe Bryant's 81 point game, ESPN commentator Jalen Rose--who guarded Bryant part of the time during that epic performance--said that his Toronto Raptors did not commit a flagrant foul against Bryant because Bryant's demeanor never changed during the game: Bryant was focused on winning the game, not showing up the Raptors; it is worth remembering that earlier in that season Bryant outscored the Dallas Mavericks--a championship-contending team--62-61 in the first three quarters but he sat out the entire fourth quarter because the Lakers had total control over the game: Bryant clearly could have scored at least 70 points (and probably more than that) but the larger goal--the only goal--is winning, not padding one's stats or puffing out one's chest (that is also why Bryant plays hurt even though this damages his stats: he knows that even when he is not 100% healthy he can still draw double teams and maybe even hit a game-winning shot).

I have no problem with guys who talk as long as they deliver the goods--champions like Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson and Deion Sanders backed up their words by delivering multiple championships--but here is a bit of wisdom from Julius Erving: "I wanted to win without boasting and lose without crying. If you chew on that one, it's going to keep you in a good place that helps you maintain your sanity while all the madness is going on around you."

Kobe Bryant Rallies Support for Darfur

I originally posted this at 20 Second Timeout but due to the importance of this issue I decided to reprint it here as well.

You may have already seen the PSA that Kobe Bryant just did regarding the genocide that the Sudanese government has been committing for years in the Darfur region. If you missed it, you can check it out here:

Darfur/Kobe Bryant PSA

According to a press release that I received from Hunter Payne, the founder of the non-profit organization Aid Still Required, "Bryant joins NBA notables Steve Nash, Tracy McGrady, Luol Deng, Derek Fisher, Baron Davis, Grant Hill, Derek Fisher, Emeka Okafor, Andrew Bynum and many more in speaking out about the atrocities. Celebrities and dignitaries involved in similar advocacy include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Sheryl Crow, Mia Farrow, Common, Ellen DeGeneres, Donovan McNabb, Jessica Biel, Don Cheadle, Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama and President Bush. A few weeks ago Steven Spielberg quit his Beijing Olympics Artistic Director position in protest of China’s policies regarding Darfur. Between 200,000 and 450,000 people have been slaughtered in Darfur over the past five years and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps...Cleveland Cavaliers forward Ira Newble began the NBA players Darfur campaign late last season by writing a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao asking him to use his considerable influence on Sudan to stop the violence. 12 Cavaliers signed the letter, the notable exception being LeBron James, who said at the time he needed to know about the situation more before signing. Separately last summer Newble and Tracy McGrady traveled to refugee camps in Chad on the Darfur border. Both have professed their trips to be life-altering. 15 NBA players have taped public service announcements, all calling for support."

Anything that increases public awareness of the horrors of Darfur is important and could still potentially save thousands of lives; as Edmund Burke once wrote, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." That said, I must disagree with one of the premises cited in the aforementioned press release, namely that the crisis in Darfur is primarily related to drought conditions there and a lack of "sustained economic development." While those issues do indeed need to be addressed, what has been going on in Darfur for years while most of the rest of the world shut its collective eyes is nothing less than state-sponsored genocide being committed by Sudan's Arab/Muslim government against ethnic African communities within its borders. This has been documented for quite some time. For instance, an April 27, 2004 fact sheet from the U.S. State Department declared, "The international community can no longer ignore the violence and atrocities taking place in Darfur. For more than 20 years the people of Sudan have been witness to a civil war between the Government of Sudan in the north and the Sudan’s Peoples Liberation Movement/Army stationed in the south. Now as both sides are close to the signing of an agreement that would end the conflict in the country, the Sudanese government, using supported Jingaweid (Arab) militia groups, are systematically killing, looting and destroying ethnic African communities in the western Darfur region of the country."

Basically, the Sudanese government has used the region's very real economic and ecological problems as a pretext to commit ethnic cleansing against a non-Arab, non-Muslim population that it considers to be undesirable. For that reason, simply sending aid to the region is not enough, because the Sudanese government will not equitably distribute that aid, as the above report noted: "Government forces obstructed the flow of humanitarian assistance to the Darfur region. Many thousands of civilians fled into Chad and were without access to any aid because of continued fighting. The UN reported that there has been a total disengagement of Government administration and suspension of all services in non-Arab villages in Darfur. However, no such measures have taken place in Arab villages located in the Darfur region. For example, South Darfur/West Darfur border, non-Arab and ethnic Fur villages in the vicinity are without services but a largely Arab village only four kilometers away has full services complete with schools, health and administrative facilities."

It is worth noting that Sudan is ruled by an authoritarian government controlled by the National Congress Party, which used to be known more descriptively as the National Islamic Front; that group has been in charge of the country for two decades and in the 1990s they provided sanctuary for Osama bin Laden. Perhaps it is not fashionable to speak of good and evil but the horrors of Darfur are not simply the result of ecological and economic problems; these atrocities have been committed at the direction of evil Sudanese leaders and their followers who are determined to completely destroy defenseless ethnic communities in Sudan. I seriously doubt that this genocide will be stopped until that fact is understood and the international community finds the necessary backbone to deal with this issue aggressively; for instance, the political and military leaders who are responsible for this genocide should be put on trial just like the Nazi war criminals and perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge massacres were brought to justice.