TOUGHEN THE COMPETITION

Competitiveness is one of the traits that we human beings pick up through cognition.
As kids we were exposed to activities that employed competition and fun, but I dare say, the competition part of these activities outweighed the fun because as I recall, no kid fancied being pulled to the other side of the center line in tug of war. I remember all of us actually wanting to be the fastest in every race and couldn’t wait to be the extender in hop step and jump.
Whether competition is natural or it’s nurtured in us is a story for another day, but it’s a fact that competition is an inherent part of most of our interpersonal engagements.

Does anyone really lose ?

In biology, competition between organisms is what naturally results to evolution. All organisms must compete for a limited number of resources, such as food, shelter, or mating partners hence making evolution necessary so as to be able to compete well for these resources. Our tendency to compete may be a natural outgrowth of this biological competition.

In sports, especially basketball we are encouraged to be intentional about learning from our loses. We often say that the ‘L’ does not stand for “Loss” the ‘L’ is for “Lesson”. In most instances, players and coaches on the team that loses a game are compelled by necessity to be analytical about the factors that contributed to their loss and adjust accordingly.
Coaches and players often resort to methods like studying film and scouting so as to know how to adjust and be better than their opponents.

Usually, we lose because our opponents are indeed better than us in a specific or several skill sets. For us to acquire, hone and develop a skill we need in order to compete well, atleast two things are constant; repetition and failure, but in the long haul, does anyone really lose or fail if part of competing is striving to be better than we are right now?

Everyone gets better

Consider two brands offering similar products or services. For each of the brands to be able to compete with each other, they both have to avail quality products or services hence making each a better brand owing to competition. If either brand fails to produce quality, then there’s no competition.
In basketball, competition pushes us to put in the work and become better players and teams. It also makes it necessary for organizations and leagues to up their game and be better hosts of competition which is nothing but a tool of making all of us better.
So if we as a balling nation want better players, better coaches, better teams and leagues we all have to toughen the competition because in doing so, everyone gets better.