After a season where almost everything that could go wrong, went wrong, Dallas Mavericks players reflected on what happened in the locker room and what they learned.
Dallas native, power forward P.J. Washington, as well as second-year center Dereck Lively, opened up a little about what happened behind the scenes and how they tried to handle a tough situation in their exit interviews last week.
As Washington explained, the hardship of the trade and the surrounding noise quickly made the team connection stronger:
“It brought us closer, everybody started playing harder, playing for each other… The trade made us closer, as a unit.”
The group staying together and getting closer through hardship helps explain why the team kept winning more games than expected after the trade – and despite an extreme amount of injuries.
The psychology behind this group dynamic is simply put that adversity can either tear a group apart or bring it closer together, all depending on its leadership and the individuals’ willingness to buy in.
What we’ve seen in Dallas is a team continuously being willing to buy in, and the leadership (in coach Jason Kidd and/or vets like Kyrie Irving and Washington) having enough authority to motivate the team to keep fighting for each other, and at the same time help the players trust the process and stay connected.
Dereck Lively, despite his young age at 21, has experienced a lot of hardship and adversity already in his young life, and he eloquently put words on the team’s thinking when things got tough:
“It really just came down to how we looked at it… there were a lot of things that we couldn’t control and we were just focused on what we could control. And that’s how we were able to stay mentally positive, which was hard to do.”
Focusing on what you can control is a well-known tool in how to handle adversity and increase resilience. Lively clearly understands how big a role the mental aspect and mindset play in a person’s well-being and quality of life – as well as in an athlete’s ability to fulfill their potential.
Lively has been through incredible highs and lows through his two years in the NBA: the NBA Finals, superstar lob partner setting him up for success from day one traded overnight – and then there’s the devastating real life struggle of his mom passing just before the playoffs last season. Maybe that’s why he speaks on hardship with such authority:
“Going through all this adversity is going to make us stronger. You can’t continuously succeed without failing. You got to be able to fail to succeed.”
Lively trying to make the best out of a difficult situation by keeping perspective speaks volumes about his maturity.
Whether it was mismanagement and dysfunction from the leadership, or just pure bad luck that led to this injury-riddled season, the Mavs players have to find a way to stay engaged in order to remain motivated through a hard season, and to start the next.
After everything this team has been through recently, the group dynamics look to be in good shape. And that’s a pretty impressive achievement in itself.
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