tl;dr: when the practice is the game.
Sports fans are familiar with the (in)famous Allen Iverson “Practice” rant.
The meme has become one that Iverson was saying “practice doesn’t matter.”
As it turns out, according to ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary on him, “No Crossover,” the reason that Iverson actually missed practice that day was because he had attended the funeral of a friend of his who had been shot.
That part has mostly been lost to history and Iverson has been unfairly judged over time for the implication that practice doesn’t matter.
If you listen closely to the “rant,” he wasn’t saying that practice doesn’t matter at all. He actually says, “I know I am supposed to be there. I know I am supposed to be a leader.”
His point wasn’t that practice doesn’t matter. His point was that the reporters were wasting everyone’s time by asking him why he wasn’t at practice.
Iverson is one of the all-time greats of the NBA. He fully understands that practice matters.
When Practice is the Game
Iverson said, “we’re not talking about the game, where I give it my all every time, we’re talking about practice.”
I was thinking about this earlier today as I had that split second of freak out where I asked myself, “oh man, I have no idea what I am going to blog about today.”
This moment of anxiety shot into my head while I was at my own practice-of meditation.
I was sitting outside, listening to the crickets and my mind naturally was wandering towards, “when is the final bell going to ring?”
Which is what led to the “oh wait, that means I have to go blog.”
But then it hit me, literally a flash of insight, where I realized, “it’s all about the practice.”
The practice of meditation.
The practice of blogging.
The practice of OKRs, which I have been doing since June 1.
And all of the other disciplines that I seek to make automated routines in my life….for me, these are “the Game.”
For Iverson, the “game” moments are obvious. For the rest of us, the “game” moments are less obvious.
That’s because they are disguised as practice.
