Hubris and Motivation

“A wise man once said that I am awesome...that wise man was me" This is an example of hubris, or too much pride. Why do I start this with such a random line? Well it goes all the way back to exactly a week from today when the Miami Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA finals. Now I’ve been watching the NBA finals every summer since middle school. I remember watching the 2006 NBA finals when the Heat destroyed the Mavericks. That season, the Heat were the underdogs, Mavs were favorites to win, Shaq Daddy was still the most dominant Center in the NBA, Dirk was still a pussy, and Dwayne Wade was only a star. 2006 finals boosted him to all-star status when after they lost the first two games, the heat won 4 in a row to claim the NBA championship because of Wades MVP performance and clutchness. This summer, it was pretty nice to see a finals rematch. All in all it was a good series and I ate a lot of wings. I was rooting for Miami for the following reasons:

1. Lebron James has been one of my favorite players since he got drafted into the NBA

2. Wade is also one of my favorite players since watching him play in the 2006 finals

3. Dallas cheated against my hometown team the Houston Rockets during the 2005 playoffs http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/5830135.html

4. Dirk Nowitzski of the Dallas Mavericks has been one of my least favorite players since I started watching the NBA

5. Dirk Nowitzski is obviously still at pussy-status  

It was a valiant effort by both teams but in the end, the Mavericks won because their team as a whole was better. They had all 15 players on the team contributing while the Heat only had Lebron, Wade, and Bosh doing all the work. I gotta admit though in the end, Dirk deserved it because he played his heart out and showed that he wanted the championship very badly. Felt sorry for Lebron because the whole year people have been hating on him for being too good for his former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. When he blew off New York City and went to Miami, everyone in the U.S. jumped on the New York and Cleveland bandwagon and drank some Lebron hate-orade. In my opinion, Lebron James has been the best player in the NBA for the past 5 years, (kobe has been the luckiest). The only problem with him is this year, he made the mistake of developing too much pride to counteract the massive amount of hate produced by his haters this year. He basically promised South Beach that the Heat would win 7 championships. Guess the Heat was too hot to handle because he has to keep the promise starting next year. With so much bad publicity and media surrounding him this year, the pressure and pride overwhelmed him, causing him to do “bad” in the playoffs, bad being a relative term to his past performances since if he was just an average player and not an all-star, his finals performance would be considered exceptionally good. I hope this summer he channels his mistakes, the haters out there, and the finals loss into motivation instead and wish him best of luck next season because I’m quite positive the Miami Heat will win the 2012 NBA championship if no one gets injured. Check me baby one more time (next summer).

By the way next summer is also the 2012 summer Olympics in London, cannot wait to see Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and other athletes compete. I respect athletes a lot because I know it takes a lot of hard work, motivation, and sacrifice to be the best. They go through brutal amounts of training and practice, and are most definitely not lazy.  All in all, like going to school and getting good grades, athletes pretty much dedicate their lives to being the best at their event/sport, whether it is swimming, track, gymnastics, or basketball. But motivation is key, it is what gets everyone up in the morning, what drives people like me to try harder after failure. It is used on a daily basis to achieve personal goals, like graduating college or winning 8 gold medals like Michael Phelps.

Motivation is a term I first learned from my father. In dedication of fathers day, I read this article from yahoo this morning http://us.m.yahoo.com/w/ygo-frontpage/lp/story/us/100425/coke.bp?ref_w=frontdoors&.ysid=lWC1gY9mzDCjAHKehEf8PqKX&.intl=us&.lang=en and it sorta reminds me of my dad. It got me thinking how though I’m not that close with him (I still do not know a lot about his early life) and though he doesn’t really show much affection, he does work hard for the family and does little things that I probably forgot. But things I do remember are his life lessons and over time, especially recently, I have come to respect him more. I remember the summer before high school started, his parents (my grandparents) were also visiting from china, cooking for us and taking care of the house. They would always praise my dad for his accomplishments and challenged me to be better than him when I get older. I was pretty satisfied with what I had achieved thus far, and didn’t really respect him that much, but I loved challenges and throughout the summer I would challenge him to arm wrestling matches, swimming, and basketball to prove I can beat him in something. Now my dad is a pretty strong man I’ll admit, so it took me a couple more years to beat him in arm wrestling. But I did beat him in swimming and started working on basketball. One night I was playing him one-on-one basketball and at the time he was of course bigger and taller than me and I was not quite athletic. After losing to him multiple times I gave up. So he told me if I beat him one game, he would buy me a xbox game. That got me going and I finally won a game (I dunno if he let me win). He explained how he had given me motivation. Then he further elaborates by giving an example of how I was last chair, philharmonic(the bad one) region orchestra in 6^th grade, and noticed how I was practicing more after that and became concert master in the region symphonic orchestra( the good one) in 8^th grade because I was motivated to not be the worst. He said in high school and life, motivation is very important and he will not always be there to “push” me to achieve something. He told me if you want something, find your own ways to “push” yourself to get it. (basically life is not a game). Ever since then, I have taken those words to heart. So thank you Dad through good and bad times, for motivating me to be better everyday.  

Other than that its been a relaxing, stress-free week, summer is passing by too fast for my own good, time is of essence.