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Winning Leads To Hatred, Perception & Fear.
Posted by: Lakers4Kobe on Mar 26, 2008 - 02:15 AM
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Winning feels good, really good. It feels even better when you know you have worked hard to achieve your goal and looking back on the road behind you cannot stop and reminisce on what led you to this point. For the Los Angeles Lakers winning is better than anything else. It has given the team an extra boost of energy and has given them the ability to be the best team on the court. But with winning comes hatred, perception and fear. Teams begin to hate you as jealousy fills their hearts and minds. People begin to have a different perception about your team finding anyway possible to account the winning as a fault of something else. Finally when the reality hits, people become afraid of you and your abilities. This is the story of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers started the season with close to no pressure on them to succeed. Kobe Bryant’s off-season rants were still fresh in everyone’s mind and the team was thought to be dysfunctional. A 9-8 start to the season didn’t particularly help the situation but it did lead to the team to think about what was needed to get to that next level. Through some major improvement in Andre Bynum and the addition of Pau Gasol and Trevor Ariza the team has learn how to win, sporting a 49-22 record. However, while there is nothing but smiles in Lakerland, the rest of the league has something to say.
Hatred. No matter what you do, someone is going to hate you for it. This same principle applies to the Lakers. Teams have started to envy the Lakers’ success and it has lead to some interesting games where the hate is clearly seen. Unfortunately, the Lakers will have this hate so long as they are winning. But fear not, this team has shown numerous times that it is able to overcome the hate and have the mental will-power to push through and succeed.
Hatred extends out to the players as well. Kobe Bryant is hated by 90% of all non-Laker fans and there is no valid reason to this except that these fans have to see their teams dominated by the best player in the game. Luckily Kobe is one of the mentally strongest players in the league and he is able to shrug these things off without a second thought.
Unfortunately, hatred extends out to the beloved Derek Fisher also. Derek is one of the greatest guys in the game (as stated by anyone that knows him) and I am sad to see people hate on this guy. He came back to the Lakers so he could have more adequate care for his daughter so suffers from a rare form of eye cancer. When Derek returned to Utah, the team that let him go, he was greeted with a thunderous “BOO!” from the crowd. I lost a lot of respect for Jazz fans that night. I hope for Laker fans to never do something like that if one of our players had to leave because of a family matter. As the saying goes, family over work.
Perception. Every person has a different view of a winning team. If you are not a fan of the team you will rack your brains out thinking of any plausible reason to suggest how this team is “lucky” or how they have been blessed with “flukes” ala Houston Rockets 22 game win streak. When you win, you have to put up with this. My school’s senior football team (yes, football not soccer) had an undefeated season and students from other schools were thinking up of every reason possible to say how it was a “fluke” or we were just plain old “lucky”. No matter what your team does, they are always going to be subject to different perceptions.
Fear. Winning creates fear in your opponent’s hearts. It makes them dread meeting you throughout the season and it scares them even more when they realise they are going to meet you in the post-season. It is the best mental advantage you can have. The main reason the number 1 seed almost always beats the number 8 seed in the first round is the mental advantage they have over their opponents. However sometimes it is just skill and sometimes teams cannot make use of that mental advantage ala Dallas Mavericks.
Look at all the previous post-seasons and watch a few of the games. When you see a superior opponent going up against a sub-par foe there is always a look on their face that says “You’re going down!” Unfortunately for that sub-par team they are at the same time thinking “Oh Sh*t! We’re going down!!” Hence the mental advantage is a key tool for a winning team. It can be used to win games throughout the season but come the post-season it is their biggest weapon. This is why they succeed; they are smart, skilled and just downright scary.
So what does this mean for the Lakers of 2007-2008? Well it means that they are going to face more adversity as the season winds down and as the post-season begins they are going to have more pressure on them to succeed mores so than any other team. They can use this to their advantage or they will stumble and fall under the pressure to succeed; only time will tell.
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| Winning Leads To Hatred, Perception & Fear. | Log-in or register a new user account | 4 Reviews/Comments |
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| Reviews and Comments are opinion statements made by the author.
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Re: Winning Leads To Hatred, Perception & Fear.
by Dave on Mar 30, 2008 - 11:35 PM
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Another good Laker blog L4K- repped!
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Re: Winning Leads To Hatred, Perception & Fear.
by mambamonk87 on Mar 31, 2008 - 03:48 PM
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Glad to see you blogging! I blog once and I'm gone for months lol xP. It's good to see how invested you are in this; keep it up dude.
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