Watching Film and Showing Up
Practicing the Mamba Mentality in all things
Basketball has been part of my life since I can remember. I’m by no means one of the more talented players in my family; those accolades belong to my father, sister, brothers and cousins, all whom I’ve learned from on the court or watched from the bleachers. My dad coached my sister and me when we played town leagues, and he’d break down basics such as defense and form, never gave us any preferential treatment for being blood relations, and emphasized the importance of practice both with our team in the gym and in our back driveway on non-basketball days. The love of the sport may have been a dominant gene of the particular family God placed me in. My uncle and godfather, two men I worshiped with awe as a kid, used to spin the ball on a pen and hand it off to me and my siblings. My uncle introduced us to the great Pete Mavarich with the VHS copy of some film; it may have been the 1991 movie The Pistol, but we knew it as the Pistol Pete movie since that had been written in Sharpie and taped to the cassette. There’s just something about great athletes who commit their lives to the sport that inspires cult-like worship and a desire to emulate them.
I was in awe of my dad, uncles and Pistol Pete, but Basketball was more fun for me than anything in those days. I liked being on my sister’s team and picking a number and being better at left-handed layups than most of the other girls, but I lacked the drive to get out in the driveway and practice the Miken drill in temperatures too cold for my liking. I liked playing HORSE - mainly because of the name, never because I won - and I had fun attempting shots from our back porch with my siblings, but I didn’t dig into the fundamentals in the same way my sister or brothers did. I loved basketball, but I tended to stop at discomfort. I didn’t understand the sport as having the potential to function as an extension of my life in the way truly great players do.
I recently listened to a podcast that featured Kobe Bryant as the guest interviewee, and their conversation sparked my interest in reading his book The Mamba Mentality, an inspiring collection of his thoughts on his experience playing paired with the work of Hall of Fame photographer Andy Bernstein. I found that I was relating pretty much everything that Kobe has to say about basketball and life to my experiences in recovery. His growth - from a kid who didn’t make a single shot during one summer at basketball camp into a man whose legacy stands for greatness, hard work, and complete commitment of self to a greater cause - is a story that bears parallels to our lives despite the glaring discrepancy that we don’t play at his level. He identified something in himself that could be cultivated into greatness, and he went after it with an honest perspective on himself, the courage to endure pain and admit failure, and an ever-deepening love for the game that became an extension of his selfhood. We can view our experiences in recovery as something like Kobe’s basketball path. We start out knowing nothing and usually in a pretty deplorable state. Like young Kobe, we shoot zero percent and have nothing to lose and only upward to go.
Something Kobe says in this interview that really stuck with me was about failure. He describes failure as “exciting”, a take I’ve never heard. Hearing him - someone who has persevered through so much to achieve the greatness he did - describe losing as exciting made me listen a bit more closely. Kobe says that losing means you have certain ways to get better, certain weaknesses to work on if you can look honestly at your loss and learn from it. He says that you learn from wins as well, but he focuses on failure in this discussion, perhaps because our need to improve upon something is a bit more urgent in the face of a loss than a win. When we lose a game of basketball, or when we experience a loss in life - a relapse, a broken relationship, a job layoff, or a serious misunderstanding, we choose how to move forward from that loss. Kobe studied the losses, looking for the spaces in his play and in that of his team, so that he could target those areas of weakness as he prepared to move forward in his basketball career. He watched film obsessively after each game doing just that. Kobe watching film functions in the same way writing inventory does for us. The tenth of the twelve steps of AA involves continuous practice of personal inventory and of recognizing when we’re wrong and promptly admitting to the wrong. This step calls for self reflection and honesty, for the courage to admit to failure, and for the initiative to take steps to right it. Part of writing this inventory involves reflecting on how we could rely on God in these situations to better engage in our actions, direct our fears and deal with our resentments. Kobe developed a comparable approach to looking at his own perceived failures when looking at his basketball. In his book, he comments about how his engagement in this practice developed over his career: “I went from watching what was there to watching for what was missing and should have been there.” When we look for what should have been there, we look at how we could have been better; and when we see it, we can embrace that action and integrate it into our lives moving forward. This kind of examination is what we do when we look at how in certain situations when we let fear or resentment dictate our actions; we look at how we relied on ourselves in our limited capacities to handle the situation, and we ask ourselves how we might have trusted in a higher power than ourselves in that same situation. We reflect on how we might rely on God when faced with similar insecurities and fears in the future. Taking inventory is our version of watching film if we can do it with the same bare honesty and scrutiny that someone like Kobe used when he looked at the footage of his games. Watching film for him wasn’t just looking back on good or bad times; it was a serious analysis of his timing and movements, a return to a past performance with a clearer and more removed perspective than he had in the moment of play so that he might learn from it.
There’s a photo in Mamba Mentality of Kobe playing defense against Michael Jordan in 1998. On one glance, it’s a visual of two legends captured in stop motion; but Kobe looks at it with criticism. He recognizes that, in contrast to Jordan’s controlled stance, his own balance is off. He comments that he was able to use this photo to correct his posture and balance so that he eventually achieved that same composure that Jordan demonstrates even in the face of aggressive defense.
CHICAGO BULLS - February 1,1998
Kobe took a similar approach to the setbacks posed by injuries in his career. He had his share of these over the course of his career, his most notable one being when he ruptured his Achilles tendon, and he dealt with each without looking back or making excuses for himself. He emphasizes a forward-focused mentality when dealing with injuries. In his book, he writes that injuries sustained while playing incited one of two major questions in his mind. Could he play through the pain without causing further damage? And if not, what did he need to do to get back to playing at a hundred percent? It’s a tough mentality, but it’s also realistic. Sometimes the pain we experience feels impossible to bear, and most of the time we crave relief, whether from emotional distress or physical agony. It’s only natural to want to stop the pain. That’s one of the major reasons so many of us slipped so hard into the cycle of addiction: it kept the pain away for a time. But looking at that pain and accepting its place in our lives as an indicator of something lacking or off is the only real way forward if our path is to lead to greatness.
Kobe comments that most of the time physical pain stems from an imbalance somewhere in the body. For instance, weak knees can result from weak ankles. Kobe worked meticulously on strengthening his ankles, even taking up tap dancing, to address the weakness that had caused a number of small injuries and pains in other areas of his body. Emotional pain works in a similar way. A case of RID - restless, irritable, discontent - doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere; it’s rooted in some imbalance in our holistic - mind, body, spirit - health. So much of the time when I’m feeling off, I realize that I’ve been slacking in my prayer practice or giving a back seat to program work that may seem unappealing. When I choose to make time for writing, for prayer, for talking with other people in recovery and helping when I can, I find that the emotional pain that creeps in when I’m alone lessens or just doesn’t visit at all.
When we’ve abused substances to numb any emotional pain and discomfort for so long, those pains are often sort of carried over into our sobriety and can surface at inopportune times. We might feel the grief of loss years after the loss itself if we never properly mourned. We might experience intense discomfort in social situations and feel crippled because for a long time we had a ready solution to any and all social anxiety. We might fear cultivating connections and slip into the painful existence of isolation. We feel restless, irritable and discontent in sobriety in ways that feel unsettlingly similar to those states in which we existed in active addiction. All these forms of pain are indicators of some imbalance or lacking somewhere in our spiritual development and in our practice of conscious connection with self and others. Only when we can identify the true source of this pain, the degree to which it can be sustained, and the proper remedy for moving forward with it and through it, can we grow in our recovery. If we take Kobe’s approach, we don’t just wallow in pain. We endure in the best way possible to strengthen the areas that have caused it in the first place.
The Mamba Mentality is about working hard every day both mentally and physically to master the pursuits in which you care about being great. One thing I remember from the aforementioned Pistol Pete movie was that Mavarich used to walk around his neighborhood at night dribbling basketballs. He took them with him everywhere he went so that they became an extension of himself and as familiar to his hands as a pen is to writers or a mug to coffee drinkers. Kobe used to wake up at an hour most of us prefer to be in bed to start his workout regimen because he viewed this sacrifice of sleep as vital to his routine. Greats like Pete Mavarich and Kobe just did this for a few reasons. They recognized a greatness in them that needed to be cultivated in order to be actualized. Kobe reflects on this regimen: “It wasn’t a matter of whether it was an option or not. It was, if I want to play, this is what I have to do, so I’d just show up and do it.” He just showed up every day. Kobe’s commitment to improving himself involved consistent, unrelenting criticism of his game and honing the fundamentals. He sacrificed comfort and familiarity in his pursuit of greatness, but he made basketball an extension of his life and a tool to connect with himself and with others.
Self knowledge plays a huge role in living with this Mamba Mentality. Kobe recalls his belief in the importance of image that weighed in his mind in his younger years. He says that he was so focused on how the media would portray him until he realized the importance of authenticity in every aspect of his life, both how he viewed himself and how presented himself. As he became more experienced as a player and in life, he came to this truth: “No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are.” Reading this felt like being told something I already knew but needed to be reminded of to actually get it. I’m currently reworking a bit of my original fourth step, which involves looking at a lot of past resentments with people from my past, and I find that the fear of rejection drove a lot of my behaviors and created unhealthy boundaries in relationships with others. This fear of rejection and being alone didn’t give me space for embracing and valuing my authentic self. I find that this same fear surfaces today in sneaky ways and puts distorted but familiar thinking in my mind. I forget to be authentic sometimes, and it hurts when I slip into this mentality because I lose sight of the greatness I really care about cultivating. If we’re in touch with our authentic selves and actively doing the work of greatness that Kobe describes as definitive of the all-time greats, we shouldn’t have to worry about the judgment or acceptance of others. We can practice acceptance more easily when we play in accordance with the values that matter most in our lives. If we’re constantly examining the ways in which we can improve and working on those paths of greatness with honesty and persistence even through pain, we shouldn’t have to make time for wondering how others might perceive or value us.
We all have this greatness in us. Maybe it’s not basketball for the majority of us, but we were born for something. I think that pursuits such as basketball, running, the arts, communications, our chosen career paths and studies, and so many other forms of channeling our particular passions and experiences into a lifestyle can be paths that help facilitate our recovery and actualization of this greatness. I think the program of recovery works in that way too, and it works all the more effectively when it involves our talents and connects us to others. Kobe writes of the factor that defines the all-time great players that it’s not pure talent, but rather “their ability to self-assess, diagnose weaknesses, and turn those flaws into strengths.” We can all do that on some level, and it’s simple enough to start with the basics and take a look at ourselves. When we do that, we can assess what we need to do and start showing up every day to just do it. That might look like attending church or meetings, sitting down to write for an hour every day, making time to meditate before work, taking time to rest, or scheduling time for running, golf, guitar practice or chess. Whatever it is that we love enough to want it in our particular brand of greatness, we need to show up for it.
