Mike Yam and Tim Legler: What drives greatness?

Mike Yam and Tim Legler essentially have a conversation about finding happiness in life when discussing the greatness that drives elite NBA athletes - The balance between success and contentment and the difficulty of enjoying the moment.

NBA Today: 1/11
Mike Yam and Tim Legler discuss the fire that drives the great ones like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and LeBron James.

Download the conversation here - NBA Today: Discussing greatness

Happiness VS Greatness

MIKE YAM: ...When you're that competitive I almost feel like you'll never be happy. You can't be happy...

TIM LEGLER: You're talking about [Michael Jordan] at his Hall of Fame speech? There is no doubt it was one of the most unusual Hall-of-Fame speeches of all-time...

The sad part about that speech and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, he doesn't need to be that. That came of bitter and that came off as a guy that's angry. Directly to what you said, people that are that competitive aren't [happy] because they can't ever find that adrenalin rush or fix in anything that they do as being the best at what they did on the planet...

Being in the moment:

MIKE YAM: (quoting Bruce Lee's wife on her husband) "...He was more concerned about losing that half step than he was about being the best"

Because you're mind is already thinking about that next thing and you're not even in that moment and I gotta feel like these elite athletes are sort of like that.

TIM LEGLER: In a weird way what you're describing (and this is absolutely true) is an insecurity that exists in these people. All of us have insecurities but the general conception is these [elite] people don't have insecurities. They absolutely do.

And its more related to not so much winning or not losing a final... its more like you don't want to feel like you're losing something because you worked so hard to get to that level and all you wanna do is maintain it

This conversation dovetails with my own epiphany having had the privilege of taking the year off to travel abroad. Seeing the dichotomy between success and contentment, speaking to fellow travelers and finding how they coped with the "rat race" they left behind whether temporarily or otherwise.

In living the dream I also found the importance of 'being in the moment', which was crystalised when I read Phil Jackson's book 'Sacred Hoops' whilst Couchsurfing in Germany.