The Fear of Losing

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I'm bradley and it's my job to keep you from being the sucker at the table.

The New York Knickerbockers won their first NBA championship in 53 years. And they did it in dramatic fashion. With 9:27 remaining  in the third quarter of Game Four, the Spurs held an 81-52 lead. Anyone who had San Antonio to win was doubling down at this point and feeling pretty smug about it. 

Except - the remaining twenty-one minutes and thirty two seconds of that game belonged to New York. You know the rest. A tip in of a Jaylen Brunson miss gave the Knicks the game by one point. Stunning really. A record setting comeback for the ages.

The game was in Madison Square Garden. It involved the Knicks. So you know the media was going to be over the top with coverage of the team. They canonized each and every moment, as if the league and the fans had never seen anything like it. They had - I'll get to that in just a bit.

Every player, every coach, every inch of the game was analyzed, until it was threadbare. There's just one thing.

No one addressed the real reason for the loss. The Fear.

It's inconceivable to me how devastated the Spurs were. The good news was they had little time to think about it. Shower, dress, pack, get on the bus, get to the airport, fly home. Another game less than 48 hours later was waiting. 

But once home, unpacked and allowed some time with their thoughts, life's cruel moment had to erupt in each and every member of the team. 

For the fans, that one was crushing. But for the players to psychologically get over that hill and get re-centered was - practically inhuman. One minute, you're thinking you're going home with the series tied at 2. You played an awesome game and you're ready for best two of three.

And then, suddenly - nothing. 

You've become part of the most epic failure in the history of the league. You're the Ralph Branca of basketball (Google him).  You're Scott Norwood (yeah, Google him too). No matter what you achieve, you will forever be known for the most historic gag job in NBA history. It's mind numbing.

No one has spent a lot of time finding out the 'why' or the 'how'. They're not going to - no one can explain it properly. But I'll give it a shot just the same and tackle what 'may' have happened.

Group mentality is real. People who would normally be one way as an individual, become more primal and basic when part of a group. So, instead of being who they were - proud, strong and confident - together, they couldn't find the strength to stop the tsunami that was hitting them. 

That tsunami is the fear of losing.

When the 'fear of losing' infects a group, it's hard to overtake. What was needed was a complete reset, a way to shake the team up so it broke out of its 'fear' group mentality and regained its confidence and individual pride.

But it wasn't going to happen here. 

And even though none were alive to have seen it, there was precedent from NBA Finals history for what was happening. 

Game Five, 1970 NBA Championship. Knicks Lakers. Madison Square Garden. Ten minutes into the game Willis Reed, Knicks captain, falls hard and leaves the game with a hip flexor. Gone from the game, maybe the series. The Lakers, with Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West (all Hall of Fame), looked as if they would be unstoppable. They had been handed the series on a silver platter. Win game five, go home, finish the series in game six and be crowned champs. It was all there.

By the third quarter they had established as much as a 15 point lead. Seemed like they're coasting. The Garden was pensive, quiet, tense.

But something happened. The Knicks began to catch fire, trimming the lead little by little. And suddenly you could see it in the faces of every Laker player. The fear crept in. Hall of Famer to bench player.  It was going through their heads like wildfire.

'What if we lose this game?'

The Lakers began playing as if in a dream world, going through the motions. They stopped what made them successful and began just standing around, waiting for something to happen.

It did.

The Knicks overcame them, took a late lead and were actually pulling away at the final buzzer. The Lakers couldn't explain what happened - but they all knew.

San Antonio players were saying the same thing in the post game press conference. They blamed effort, focus, consistency.

But they knew. They knew exactly what happened.

In the end, the fear of losing is gripping, dark and overpowering. An athlete looks hard at themselves and wonders, 'why'? How did it turn so fast and so completely? Self doubts get planted and will rise again because of it. 

It will also sit squarely in the minds of players in future NBA finals games. The thought of the 2026 Spurs Game Four catastrophe will be there, lurking in every players mind.

Sports can be very empirical, relying on numbers and analyzing how they work. But then, there's the unexplained. The fear of losing is part of that. And it's as real as any numbers you can analyze. Maybe along with the coach and all the assistants and trainers, sports teams need to have a shrink on the bench with them, ready at the first sign of fear to rally the troops and stop it in its tracks.

Don't you dare. 

I'm bradley, and it's my job to keep you from being the sucker at the table.