LeBron James had the Cavaliers watch Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address for inspiration

“It was late, but apparently not too late,” Ramona Shelburne reports for ESPN. “The Cleveland Cavaliers had lost the first two games of the NBA Finals by a combined 48 points. The Golden State Warriors were dominating every phase of the game. And LeBron James was looking for something, for anything, he could say to his teammates to help them believe a comeback was possible.”

“LeBron had spent the weekend watching old Muhammad Ali fights, in awe at the champ’s perseverance. His longtime friend and adviser, Nike executive Lynn Merritt, had suggested he study the way Ali carried himself in those epic 12- and 15-round fights. The way Ali took punches, knowing his opponent would eventually tire,” Shelburne reports. “The way he taunted opponents, flaunting his superior skill and talents, knowing he would get into their heads. His teammates needed something else, though. Something they could connect to that would make them believe this series was not over. And so LeBron gathered everyone in the Cavaliers locker room before Game 3 and played a portion of Steve Jobs’ commencement address to Stanford University in 2005.”

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years late… You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. — Steve Jobs Stanford commencement address

“The guy Jefferson was taking minutes from, Kevin Love, had been ruled out for Game 3 with a concussion. Love had started reading about Jobs on his own a few weeks earlier,” Shelburne reports. “One phrase stuck with him: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” Love started writing it on his shoes as a way to remind himself to loosen up — to not judge his performances on the statistics he was recording (which weren’t even close to his career numbers), but rather by the effort and energy he gave for tasks like rebounding and defense. ‘I had just ordered a shirt from a company in Akron with that Jobs quote,’ Love said. ‘And then [LeBron] played that [speech] like two days later. I came up to him and was like, ‘It’s so crazy you played that with all the chaos that was going on with our team, being hungry, but being down in the series.””

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: That’s gotta be like pouring a 55-gallon drum of salted vinegar on Eddy’s open wound.

SEE ALSO:
One major drawback of the Golden State Warriors making the NBA finals – May 31, 2016
Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address ‘a remarkable event’ – June 23, 2005
Full text of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address available – June 15, 2005