Criticism – Random Thoughts Of A Nigerian Youth

June 16, 2017June 16, 2017

Ode to Kevin Durant by Ejiro

As one of the Neanderthals who waits for the Olympics every four years for the 100 metres dash final and the superstar NBA players humiliate the competition from the rest of the world playing with FIBA rules which are a bit different from the NBA rules, I was looking forward to the 2012 London Olympics with great fervour. The chance to see the inimitable Usain Bolt attempt to go for the world record and Lebron/his cohorts (headlined by one Kobe Bryant and Kevin Wayne Durant) destroy everyone wasn’t gonna pass me by without the customary ohhhs and ahhs from yours truly.

Now Lebron James was widely regarded as the best player in the world at the time and proved it somewhat in the 2012 NBA finals months earlier beating the Oklahoma City Thunder in 5 games. I hadn’t at that time watched the finals but followed it online.I hadn’t, prior to that moment, seen Durant play a full game in the NBA. Yea I knew he played in the league and put up great numbers but I’d never assessed his skill set up close.

After losing the first game of the finals to the 23 year old Durant and his team of neonates, the Heat were on the verge of losing the second one after the thunder recovered a major deficit in the 2nd half. It came down to a huge play at the end where Durant attacked James in the low post and James went on to foul him on his attempted shot which wasn’t called by the officials.

It was a huge and potential series deciding mistake by the refs. Lebron went on to hit two clutch free throws to win the game and won the next three to win the series.

The London Olympics arrived and I’m just watching highlights of the basketball games (after swearing I was going to see all the Team USA games) and loving myself. First full game I watched was the Spain/USA Gold Medal Game and something became painfully glaring to me. Kevin Durant, not Lebron, was the best player on Team USA.

This man was 7ft tall with guard skills. He was ambidextrous, could take the ball to the rim, could post up, could shoot the midrange,the three in many ways. The catch and shoot, the pull up three, this man had it all. He was simply an Basketball scoring savant!!

Every time Spain and Pau would get close, the Americans and KD had a shot to stop their run. That was the moment i realised Kevin Durant was the most talented basketball player in the world and all he had to do to become the universally recognised best player in the game was improve his defense. That of course was not to be as he only started playing noteworthy defense in the Playoffs in his last season with OKC.

Fast forward to May 2016, he and Russell Westbrook blew 3-1 lead in the western conference finals to the Steph Curry-led Golden state warriors, who had just set the regular season record for most wins in an NBA season with 73. It was heart breaking for us OKC fans as we’d believed we were going back to the finals to avenge our 2012 loss to Lebron. Even worse we were dead worried about Durant’s impending free agency decision.

A series of unfortunate events(injuries to both Westbrook and Durant in 2013 & 2015 respectively) and some self inflicted wounds by our front office (like refusing to pay James Harden a luxury tax of 4 mil), Westbrook’s ball dominant style of play at the 1, the teams heavy reliance on Isolation basketball, along with Lebron stacking the deck of cards in his favour, just felt like ominous signs he was going to leave and on the 4th of July 2016, Kevin Durant took his talents to the Bay area. He agreed to sign with Golden State who had just lost a heart breaking game 7 to the Cavs in the final minutes to a great Kyrie Irving isolation play. He agreed to sign for the team that just beat us in the Western conference finals sparking memories of Lebron’s decision in 2010.

Naturally, OKC fans, NBA followers and enthusiasts were irate. Chants of Snake! Traitor! Cupcake! soon emerged. ESPN First Take anchor, Stephen A Smith, called it “The weakest move by any superstar in history” but anyhow ESPN had some thick analyst called Cari Champion go on air in 2016 and leave KD off the list of top 5 players to build a franchise around citing “He doesn’t have heart.” She was duly put in her place by Damian Lillard on twitter as a know nothing.

Ex-players were incredulous! Saying stuff like how they would never do such a weak thing. They would never hop on a bandwagon, join a team that didn’t need him to basically chase a ring conveniently forgetting Lebron had already wisely rigged the game in his favour. The naysayers were quick to say “There’s only one ball” “They are too small and lost all of their interior defense/rim protection to acquire Durant “ “KD a choker anyways and Bron would handle him and his new superteam.”

This was new territory for Durant as he was previously a universally loved athlete but now, he was more hated than Lebron James. This was a guy who delivered the most heartfelt speech in all of sports in 2014 when he dedicated his MVP to his mother in tears on National TV and called her THE REAL MVP but was now the most hated sportsman in America and 2nd most hated man in America behind Donald Trump. The Warriors would go on to win 67 games in the season, with KD, Curry, Klay and Draymond having stellar season.

The team did survive a medial cruciate ligament injury to Durant that caused him to miss 20 games/his shot at regular season MVP. He however recovered before the end of the regular season and they breezed through the Western Conference in the playoffs going 12-0 sweeping their biggest scare in the West (Kawhi and his San Antonio Spurs) thus setting up a rubber match with the defending champions, The Cleveland Cavaliers.

This was the moment of truth for Durant. If he lost, he’d definitely be killed in the media – print, tv, social media – and almost everyone outside the Bay wanted him to lose badly but something else was happening.

Most of the pundits were saying the Cavs would win in 6 or 7, and basically comparing Lebron to Michael Jordan. That ultimately meant no one playing today compares to him seeing the experts were comparing him to The GOAT. I could imagine KD watching all that and feeling insulted and would in return, go supernova on Lebron and the Cavaliers in the finals. I was not wrong. Kevin Durant went berserk in the NBA finals. He was simply a matchup disaster for the Cavs as no one could defend him and he wasn’t ball dominant in the Golden State offense. He was a killer. If you were too small, he’d just shoot it over you, too strong, he’d take you to the bucket or shoot it over you, slack off him on the perimeter, Three! Defend the 3, he is going to the cup.

It was an ultra efficient display of offensive wizardry that has not been seen in the history of the finals. The man shot almost 50% from 3Pt range. He was giving lessons in art of scoring in the NBA finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers led by the great Lebron James through 5 games 5 years after crying off the finals stage against the heat. The moment of the series came in the final moments of Game 3 where he hit a dagger 3 that sucked the life out of the Quickens loans Arena.. IT WAS COLDBLOODED!! It was almost like it was scripted. He averaged 35ppg/5asg/7rpg with a 56% FG% and TS% of almost 70% (otherworldly) in the NBA finals and most notably played 1st team all NBA defense type of defense and was rightly named the MVP of the finals. LeBron had a triple double, averaged 33PPG with a far higher usage rate, more FGA/Game and played 6 minutes more than Durant per contest.

This man had come into his own, finally realised he was the best player in the league and wasn’t there for all the Lebron adulation. He’s now an NBA champion, Finals MVP, THE BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD and i believe he’d be back at the peak in 4 years for the one that matters with OKC.

September 26, 2015September 27, 2015

Keep Your Head Up

I was in Junior Secondary School the first time I watched the music video “Baby Don’t Cry” by Outlaws featuring then recently deceased Tupac Shakur. Tupac Shakur was one of the most influential hip hop artists and poets of all time. So many years later, the lyrics of that song “Baby don’t cry, I hope you got your head up even when the road is hard, never give up“ have come to mean so much to me in this torrid journey of life.

The world is awesome when things are going to plan. We feel on top of the world, get comfortable and possibly criticise others. After all, it is easy to criticise others when you are comfortable. We assume nothing could ever bring us down.

But what do you do when the tables turn? When you try your best but you don’t succeed. When you lose something you can’t replace. When you love someone, but it goes to waste.

You feel so tired but you can’t sleep because you feel trapped by something or somebody. The tears come streaming down your face; you feel stuck in reverse, leaving your vision blurrier than it was before. You start questioning if you can take another step without falling on your face.

When faced with problems, take a deep breath and keep your head up. Believe in yourself and understand that failure prepares you for success. Without failure, we wouldn’t know how gleeful and exhilarating success is.

Failure is an important part of life – it is the rate-limiting step in life. Scientifically, rate-limiting steps are the slowest steps in a metabolic pathway or series of chemical reactions, which require the greatest activation energy. They determine the overall rate of the other reactions in the pathway.

29-year-old Kenyan marathon sprinter, Hyvon Ngetich exhibited this energy on Sunday 15th February 2015. Competiting at the Austin marathon, Ngetich raced into an early lead and seemed destined to win the race at a point. However, with two-tenths of a mile to go, disaster struck. She collapsed.

Unable to walk, not to talk of run, she was offered a wheelchair by the organisers to take some respite and/or throw in the towel but she refused. She crawled on all fours finishing third the race just three seconds shy of second place and ten minutes after the winner Cynthia Jerop (of Kenya) had crossed the line. When asked about the race afterwards, she said she doesn’t recall the final two kilometres of the marrathon or the crossing line. “Running, always, you have to keep going going,” she said.

Life is like a marathon with hurdles along the way. These hurdles can make or mar you depending on how the approach you adopt. You may choose to adopt the Ngetich approach – refuse to succumb to self-pity, apathy and depression – or wave the white flag.

Whatever you are going through that has made you question your existence, always remember there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The moment will definitely hurt but don’t give in to its pain. Focus on your dreams. Never give up and keep your head up!

August 19, 2015September 13, 2015

Pay Attention To Your Feedback

As a Nigerian, I have come to realise that one of the things we, as a people, are often afraid of is people’s criticisms/negative feedback. No one likes to be criticised so we tend to develop strong resistance and reluctance to it.

Critiques often trigger strong emotions in us all. We tend to get bitter, angry or try to hurt people who have offered their critiques. We create a defensive stance to protect our self-worth which we feel is under vicious attack.

As a result, we try to disconnect from our social environment and prefer to live in our heads or associate with people who share our ideas and values. We develop an intemperate dislike for other people’s values/opinions and grow insensitive to people’s differences.

Our environment encompasses people from different cultures and backgrounds who we interact with on a daily basis. We fail to understand that paying attention to our environment is necessary for human survival.

Almost everything we do is for the public – large or small. For instance, an entrepreneur develops his/her products for public consumption, a teacher/lecturer does his job for his students (public), the students do their school work to impress their teachers (public), the public office holders serve the poor masses etc. Thus, no matter what you do, we depend on people’s feedback to forge ahead.

Your ideas/work may seem brilliant to you but without feedback from people, our ideas/endeavours become especial and illusions. Hear American Rapper 50 Cent, “The public is never wrong. When people don’t respond to what you do, they are telling you something loud and clear. You’re just not listening.

I remember when I presented a scientific paper about a year ago. In my head, I did pretty Ok amid the response from the audience but the examiners thought otherwise. Although they commended my delivery, they critiqued the information. I was disappointed at first but after meeting with them privately, areas of the presentation that were flawed and needed to be worked on became magnified/clearer to me.

Just as I had thought, we often deceive ourselves into thinking we have an insight into how the public feels about us/our work but this information is often tainted and false. This is because we prefer to surround ourselves with friends/family or sycophants who may envy or praise our every move thereby creating a distance between us and the real information out there (the public).

For example, our politicians/leaders/public office holders distance themselves from the people they represent, lecturers distance themselves from the students they teach, employers/superiors distance themselves from the employees/subordinates thereby creating a huge communication gap and thence false feedback from the public. Distancing yourself from the public can be tragic because feedback is so crucial to success. By bridging this gap, we encourage direct interaction with the public and allow them to voice their criticisms and feedback.

It is impossible to please everyone or control what other people will say, whether they’ll approve or share their opinions but the strength of interacting with the public does not come from the quantity but the quality of your feedback. If you have little or no access to the public, then how do you learn from your mistakes? How do you improve? How do you know you are ignorant? How do you know what the people want?

Criticisms and critiques are never easy to receive/accept but they give you an idea how people see you. Pay attention to your feedback, the most important information in the world, and transform it into an opportunity for personal growth, emotional development, time efficiency, improved relationships, and self-confidence.

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