Gregg Popovich on Adversity and Entitlement

This is like being coached about life from a person, hundreds of thousands of miles away.
The influence Gregg Popovich gets and given freely by people. A true mark of a leader.

 On overcoming adversity and failure:

 "In today's world, if you don't win the whole thing, whether it's football or basketball, or this and that, people have a tendency to paint you as a loser or act like you just robbed the cookie jar. Well that's baloney.

 "You guys have got it," Popovich told his team. "It's there. You've got the will, you've got the determination, you've got the fiber to do this again. And Game 7 proved it. It didn't happen for us, but is everything going to go your way in life? You think you're on the Earth and everything you want to happen to you is going to happen to you positively? The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn't go our way."

 "What we didn't want to do is have them have the notion that the basketball gods got us," Popovich said. "'Ah, jeez, that one bounce here or we missed a free throw or we didn't get that offensive rebound. It's just the way it was supposed to be.' Well, no, it's got nothing to do with the basketball gods. You're in charge of yourself. There are always things you can do better."

 On Entitlement

 "We spend a decent amount of time talking about what else you could be doing in your life, how fortunate we are basically just by the accident of birth," Popovich said. "Think about it. It all starts with the accident of birth. Because you were born to these parents or this area geographically, or this situation, you deserve more than somebody else? Put that notion away. That's the most false notion one can imagine.

 "But I think a lot of people forget that. They think that they're entitled to what they have. They don't understand the opportunity that they have compared to somebody else. And they don't understand the other person's lack of opportunity, why he or she is in a certain situation they're in. So we talk about those things all the time. You have no excuse not to work your best. You have no reason not to be thankful every day that you have the opportunity to come back from a defeat, because some people never even have the opportunity. So it's the measure of what you're worth, what you're made of."
credits: 
J.A. Adande, ESPN.com
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11901128/spurs-2014-title-run-started-game-7-2013-finals


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