Limited Possibility
March is a magical time of year for sports fans, bringing one of the most cherished athletic events in the world: the NCAA college basketball tournament.
While many adore this time-honored tradition for a variety of reasons, there is no question that it has become beloved by Americans because of the possibility for dramatic upsets: practically any team can beat any team on any given night. While a No. 2 seed might beat a No. 15 seed almost every game during the regular season, all bets are off during the tournament.
Americans love the idea of the underdog, but we forget that even a Cinderella story is generally proceeded by a preparation story. In fact, one of the greatest underdog stories of all time, David and Goliath, isn’t really about a Cinderella story at all – it is an account primarily focused on a promise, a process, and practice.
When David talks to Saul about his plan to fight Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, David not only invokes God’s promise to Israel in referencing the giant’s “def[iance]’ of the “armies of the living God,” he points out his prior experience, which was both applicable and ascending in difficulty. He tells Saul, “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them…”
David understood the promise that God had made to His people, and David’s faith certainly played an important role in the story. However, David also places confidence in his capacity to defeat Goliath due to the preparation he possessed through experience and the process that he followed by fighting increasingly dangerous beasts of the field. While the result of his combat with Goliath was nothing short of miraculous, it was predicated on practicality.
No matter the extent of media or the breadth of its scope in our culture, everything we see in terms of success in sports, business, or even politics is nothing more than a snapshot in time. We are rarely given a glimpse into the grind, the lonely times, or the difficulties necessary to achieve extraordinary success. As the soccer superstar Lionel Messi once said, “It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success."
It is easy to wrongly think that the madness of March is created through miracles when it is actually created in the mundane. For the guard who hits the game winning shot on the world’s greatest stage, his preparation didn’t start in the arena that night. His story likely began in a cement driveway with a few poorly executed shots made below an old, rusty rim hung above a garage door. It was followed by learned fundamentals, developed technique, physical training, and thousands and thousands of hours spent shooting and playing pick-up games in the never-setting sun of a gym’s fluorescent lights.
In sum, possibility is limited by capability, and the latter is never achieved instantly. Capability can only come with practice and process.
So whether you appreciate or like basketball at all, I believe this time of year is an incredible reminder that greatness generally doesn’t begin with the cheers of a crowd: it starts in the silent steps of a common man with the will to keep walking long enough down a narrow road until he achieves something extraordinary.