This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The underdog Miami Heat pulled off the upset of the NBA basketball season last week, bouncing the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks from the playoffs in a stunning five-game romp.

Playoff tornado Jimmy Butler will now pivot to rowdy Madison Square Garden to face off with another unexpected surprise, the Cleveland-thumping New York Knicks. 

But the basketball result was not what lasted.

What did were the comments Antetokounmpo made after the game.  If I could pronounce his name, I’d be brilliant.  But, even more so if I had been able to say what he said after a sports loss.

Hours afterward, it felt like the entire  planet – or at least the online portion of the planet – was still obsessing about how Antetokounmpo addressed the topic of failure.

Here is a summary of what he said:

“Do you get a promotion every year, in your job?” Antetokounmpo answered, after a long pause in which he placed his head in his hands. “No, right?  So every year you work is a failure?  Yes or no.  No?

“Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents.  You work towards a goal – it’s not a failure.  It’s steps to success.”

“There’s always steps to it.  Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships.  Were the other nine years a failure?  That’s what you’re telling me…why do you ask me that question?  It’s the wrong question.

“There’s no failure in sports.  There’s good days, bad days.  Some days you are able to be successful, some days you’re not.  Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn.  And that’s what sports is about.  You don’t always win.  Some other people are going to win.

“And this year, somebody else is going to win. We’re going to come back next year and try to be better.”

In this answer, some sportswriters applauded him for not taking the easy way out. The easy way to feed the beast would be to say, Yes, absolutely the 2022-23 season was a failure.

That’s what our best professional athletes and teams are conditioned and expected to do – accept the terms of a false binary and declare anything short of a season-ending trophy hoist to be an unmitigated disaster.

Another writer:

“Life doesn’t work this way, of course, and Antetokounmpo is wise to point that out.  Failures can be abrupt and sudden, but successes are incremental, their gestation and development often hidden from sight.  As a zillion self-help books have lectured us, success is often born from our lowest moments, so the idea that an experience can be brightly labeled and tossed away is absurd.” So, onward and upward, Antetokounmpo!  Great answer – for sports and for life