My basketball team lost last night. It stinks. We were just coming off a win too, with high spirits and the confidence of a winner. Getting beat by 40 has a way of lowering the mood…

Losing & Perfection

It’s my opinion that losing ought to hurt. It is failure at its core. One doesn’t work at something relentlessly so that they can fail, they do it for that feeling of success (or in many cases, to avoid the feeling of failure). Of course, failing is necessary to achieve very much success, so there’s encouragement in that, but it doesn’t help ease the pain much in the failing moment. It’s in this way that I want to be a sore loser. If losing doesn’t upset me, then it would seem that something is wrong. Of course, that doesn’t mean being unsportsmanlike – the opposing team is doing no wrong by being better – but being unfazed, as though you expected to lose or are fine with failing, to me shows poor motives. Doing something well is what makes it worth doing, or else why even try if it can’t be done well? Although things could always be done better, if the goal of the game is to win (why even keep score otherwise?), then not meeting that standard means your effort wasn’t enough.1 Even if you give your best effort towards the goal, if you don’t win, more is demanded elsewhere. Perhaps more effort in practice, or more consistent practice, or more deliberate practice. Winning as perfectly as possible (which is still quite imperfect), is of course the best case scenario, because you simply can’t play basketball perfectly. In that case, although there were mistakes made in the course of the game, the goal was achieved in victory. Then that same effort must be given in the next practice in order to fix the mistakes made and keep improving. If perfection is unattainable, then there’s always somewhere to grow.

What are your Motives?

Some will see this as fiercely competitive, which it may be, but if my ultimate goal is to succeed, and winning is the means by which I achieve success, than I suppose I ought to be that way. Now, I don’t mind someone playing the game for the fun of it (e.g. church softball), but that is a quite different frame of mind than what I have. There, the goal for many is to have an enjoyable time, and thus they can be much more happy facing a loss because their ultimate goal was never to win. Winning is fun, but losing can be fun as well, they might say. I agree with that, to an extent, but if I simply wanted to have fun then I’d be content playing church softball. There’s something more deeply rewarding about working towards a goal. Not simply trying to improve, but trying to improve with the aim of winning. It’s gratifying to beat another team and feel your work paying off, to feel like you were the better team, knowing that is due in large part to the work you put in. Being the best is fun, and even just a taste of that which comes from beating another team only adds more fuel to the competitive fire inside a person or team. The greatest winners of all time were so because they hated losing, not because they loved winning, so there may be some inconsistency between that and my views on victory, but I do hate losing a lot too, it’s just that perhaps that hatred has become watered down as I’ve experienced losing a lot the past couple seasons. That said, I’m not the Greatest Of All Time at anything, so there’s that too. It takes an extremely special type of person to be a GOAT.

The Effort that Results & Missing the Mark

When there is that fierce competitiveness inside a team, a type even more vehement than what I described above, there is superior effort. Trying with all one’s might to do one’s part for the team in order to avoid defeat is quite the motivator. No one wants to be the one that let their team down and caused the defeat. A victory for one person is a victory for the whole team, and so is a defeat. There is no individual success achieved without the help of the team as a collective, and the collective’s success hinges on as many players as possible performing as well as they can. This is why each member’s effort level is so extremely important. The team wins together, and the team loses together, so any lack of effort on a singular person’s part costs the entire team. Some people worry that sore losing or extreme competitiveness might somehow dishonor God, and while I suppose that is possible, what is far more worrisome is a lack of effort. That is the easiest way to dishonor God in whatever one may be doing.2 Our team failed in that last night, and I failed in that as well. That is something that requires repentance and an effort to fight against in future games. Running to win the prize is honoring to God, not being ‘polite’ to the other team.3 If the goal is to win, it would seem more dishonoring to me to not do everything you can to try to win, rather than worrying about the other team’s success. Sports, in many ways, are a zero sum game. For every winner there is a loser. I do not want to be the loser whenever it might be avoided. I should mention that this type of competitive spirit is far more common in men than in women, which is fine. It is perhaps a little odd when a woman exhibits this same level of competitiveness. It is perfectly acceptable for the goal to be having fun. However, that should be no excuse for lackluster effort. If you, female reader (males as well, if this is helpful), are not inspired to try harder for the sake of winning, be inspired by the desire to help your team. It is not more selfless to allow the other team to win, because in that act you’re letting your own team lose. Your own team, family, country, or other group to which you are tied, are in more need of your help than a different collection of individuals. If you wish to be sympathetic, perhaps aim to be sympathetic towards your own team (or family, country, or other group), rather than a different or opposing one. I will say to take that with a grain of salt, because I do not suffer from this same lack of competitiveness, so this advice may prove useless or unrelatable.

Unrequired Effort

So now, I come to the matter of cheering against a team. Everyone agrees that cheering for your own team is a good thing. It is inspiring to think that your presence, support, or cheering may have some positive impact on the game. But what about cheering against the other team? There are a good number of people who seem to think that it is unsportsmanlike to yell while the other team is shooting a free throw, for example. In their mind, they think that they are rooting for another to fail, and would much rather cheer for their own team to succeed. “Is it sportsmanlike to yell during a free throw?” “It is Christian?” (Whatever that means). I would ask those people, is it fine for the players playing in the game to try to beat the other team? Now consider, while playing a basketball game, players are allowed to do things that would be rude outside of the game. I am allowed to hit someone while boxing out for a rebound in a way that if I did in regular living, I might get beat up for doing (and rightfully so). Is that unsportsmanlike? This seems to be a problem with many basketball players I see (and I see it some in myself as well); they are scared to hit the other team for fear of hurting them. What if a “Christian”4 football team thought the same way? They wouldn’t make for much of a team. People often don’t think of basketball as a contact sport, but in their mind it would be preposterous to not hit an opposing player in football. Their expectations are set incorrectly. It is possible that you will hurt someone while playing basketball, but that shouldn’t give you pause. If I get hurt playing basketball because someone makes a physical-but-clean hit on me, I would have no hard feelings towards them (or at least I shouldn’t). A basketball team ought to assume the other team is the same way, and if the opposition gets their feelings hurt because you hit them too hard, that’s their own problem. So, if I can establish that it’s acceptable to do things as a player that are unacceptable in regular life, why wouldn’t the crowd be subject to those same rules? If the crowd wants to be involved in the game, then absolutely let them. If it’s not wrong for one team to try to beat the other, I don’t think it’s wrong for the crowd to do the same. Now, I don’t hold the people in the stands to the same level of effort that I expect from the players on the floor, but if a young fan feels like screaming his head off in an annoying way while the opposition shoots free throws, I can’t ask him to stop doing that while our own team is barely even trying. It’s pitiful that a fan might be trying harder than the players, but if that’s the case then more power to that fan. He is giving his all for the team that he’s not even a part of, and I struggle to think of a better display of effort than unrequired effort.

  1. It is possible to lose better than you win. It is possible to play better in a loss than in a win, and even if you did play better in the win, attitude and winning with grace are still required. ↩︎
  2. It takes no effort at all to lack effort! ↩︎
  3. More on this below ↩︎
  4. A “Christian” team and a team that glorifies God are often two different things. I am much more concerned with being the latter than the former. ↩︎