Page 156 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

the earthquake and the broken han d, I had to tur n my emotions to my
advantage.

*

It has been my observation that the greatest per formers conv ert the ir pa ssions

into fuel with tremendous consistency. Ther e are exampl es in every di scipl ine .
For basketball fans, think about the Reggi e Miller/Spi ke Lee saga. Le e is New
York’s No. 1 Knicks fan. Reggie Miller was the star of the Indi ana Pacers from
1987 to 2005. Throughout the 1990s , the Kni cks and Pacers repeatedl y met in

the playoffs and Lee would be sitting in hi s cour tside seat in Madison Squa re
Garden for every home game. Time and agai n he woul d heckl e Miller unt il
Miller started to respond. At first this looked like a good situation to Kni cks
fans. Spike was distracting Reggie from the game. Sometimes it seemed tha t

Reggie was paying more attention to Spi ke than to the Kni cks. But the n it
became apparent that Miller was using Lee as fuel for hi s fi e. Over and over,
Reggie would banter with Spike whi le torching the Kni cks with unbe lievabl e
shooting. After a while Knicks fans just hoped Spi ke woul d shut up. The lesson

had been learned—don’t piss off Reggi e.
Incidentally, young NBA players learned the same lesson dur ing the
Michael Jordan era. Jordan was a notorious trash talker on the cour t. He woul d
goad defenders into dialogue, but the pr obl em was that if you talke d ba ck it

inspired Jordan to blow you off the cour t. The onl y thi ng to do was to let
Jordan talk and play your game. Try to keep some of the beast asleep. The n he
would just score his thirty points and move on to the next gam e. But if you
woke the beast, Mike would score fi ty and then do it agai n next time you

played him.
A few years ago I was talking with Keith Hernan dez abo ut the role of ange r
in his career. For those who are not big spo rts fans , Keith was a domina nt force
with the St. Louis Cardinals and then the New York Mets, playing Major

League Baseball from 1974 to 1990. Keith won 11 Gold Glove awards , won
the batting title and National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1979,
and led the Mets to victory in the historic 1986 World Series aga ins t the
Boston Red Sox. Hernandez is known as one of the toughes t hitters in ba seba ll

history.