Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
7 min read
Owning and learning from our failures is essential for propelling us forward.
Last week, the Milwaukee Bucks, who finished with the best record in the NBA regular season, were eliminated from the playoffs by the Miami Heat, the 8th seed who barely snuck in. The Bucks’ star player, Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked following the game whether he viewed the season as a "failure." His refreshingly raw answer went instantly viral.
Giannis’ full answer to the reporter:
Do you get a promotion every year on your job? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something—toward a goal, right? — which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able to … provide a house for them or take care of your parents. You work toward 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. The other nine years was a failure? … Exactly, so 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 are not, some days it is your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other group is gonna win and this year someone else is gonna win. Simple as that. We’re gonna come back next year and try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better … and hopefully we can win a championship. So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 [the Bucks] didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No it was not. There were steps to it. And we were able to win one and hopefully we can win another one."
While I admire and appreciate Giannis’s sentiment and understand the attraction to his encouragement, I believe his failure to label his season a failure is damaging.
Failures needn’t define us. The most accomplished people of our history were not above failure. They became who they were because they learned how to fail forward, how to see the particular moment, event, or act as a failure while not seeing themselves as failures.
Failures generate success when we take responsibility for them, hold ourselves accountable for them, and use them to motivate ourselves.
Failing forward begins by recognizing and admitting failure. Failures are steps to success only if we pause to honestly assess them as failures, address how they occurred, ask what we can learn from them, and determine how we can avoid them happening again. Failures generate success when we take responsibility for them, hold ourselves accountable for them, and use them to motivate ourselves.
When we whitewash them, downplay and minimize them, we fail to take responsibility for them; we cannot fix them or avoid them. Minimizing and diluting failures by refusing to acknowledge them and instead describing them as part of a process, as steps on a journey, constitutes a failure to be honest, accurate, or accountable.
To be clear, Giannis's life has been anything but a failure. He was born in Greece to Nigerian immigrants, overcame incredible obstacles including poverty, and against all odds, got drafted into the NBA at a young age. He doesn't only compete, he has emerged to be one of the best players in the NBA and someone described by his peers as a not only a great ball player, but a great person.
The question from the reporter wasn't, you were eliminated from the playoffs, is your life a failure. It was, you have been eliminated from the playoffs, would you call this season a failure. His comments are understandable taken in the greater context of his remarkable life story, but they are still wrong regarding the specific question about the season.
The Bucks had the best record in the NBA this season. When the playoffs started they were given the best odds to win the championship, and they were overwhelming favorites to beat the Heat. The city, owners and fans expected the team to do much more than have fun, do their best, and just win one game in the playoffs. The players, coaches and management were paid to win, to take home a championship, certainly to get past the first round. Anything short of these goals was, objectively, a failure.
Identifying something as a failure doesn’t mean beating ourselves up, being debilitated by guilt or shame, or staying stuck in the past. It means being honest with ourselves, taking ownership, and holding ourselves accountable.
Repentance, teshuva, and reproach begin with Viduy, an admission of what went wrong and a declaration of a commitment to improve. It starts with an honest look at ourselves.
We live in a time where there is growing intolerance for pain, discomfort, or failure. Giving everyone a participation trophy won’t inoculate them from the harsh reality that life will teach them one way or another that in competition, there are winners and there are those crowned champions. There will come a time they may not get into the school they want, they may not get the job they want. When we give all children a literal or metaphorical participation trophy, when we try to protect and save them from feelings of failure, pain, disappointment, we stifle their growth, squash their drive, and set them up for unrealistic expectations of how life and the real world will treat them.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, saw the people worshipping the calf and smashed the two tablets, the broken and shattered pieces were gathered, collected, and carefully placed in the Ark to sit beside the unbroken, complete, second set of tablets. The broken pieces are saved to remind us that our failures and mistakes are not to be discarded, eliminated, and forgotten from our memories. We can only succeed when we remember the broken experiences and use the lessons learned as springboards to success.
A healthier and more Jewish approach to the question Giannis was posed might have sounded something like: “Yes, given our record, our talent, and our potential, being eliminated in the first round makes this season a failure. We are sorry to the fans and the owners, but we assure you, we won’t be defined by this loss or elimination. Life is a journey, it is made up of many seasons, and while they include failures, we are committed more than ever to learning what went wrong, to working harder than ever to improve, and we hope and plan to come back and succeed in our goal of bringing this city another championship.”
Michael Jordan said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Giannis rhetorically asked if the nine seasons Michael Jordan didn’t win a championship were a failure. We don’t have to speculate how Jordan would answer. In a famous commercial from years ago, Jordan said the following monologue about his career: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
It is not a failure to acknowledge, recognize, and call out failure by its name. Giannis is objectively wrong: there are failures in sports, just like there are failures in life. Not all failures are bad, and we shouldn’t be afraid to experience them or to name them. On the contrary, by properly naming them, owning them, and learning from them, we can use them to propel ourselves to greater successes than we ever thought possible.
