My son Mark just put me on to part of a stirring speech by retired quarterback Tom Brady. The clip is less than two minutes and worth it:

Click the photo: “Everyone should play football…it’s hard.”

Here are some snippets:

I urge everyone to play football for the simple reason that it is hard. It’s hard when you’re young to wake up in the off season at 6am to go train and work out knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes…It’s hard to throw, catch, block and tackle and hit kids when they’re way bigger and way more developed than you. You go home that night bruised and battered and strained but knowing you have to show up again the next day for just the chance to try again. But understand this: life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and hits and bruises along the way. And my advice is to prepare yourself because football’s lessons teach us that success and achievement come from overcoming adversity…To be successful at anything, the truth is you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t. Consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. No shortcuts. If you look at all my teammates here tonight, it would be impossible to find better examples of men who embody that work ethic, integrity, purpose, determination, and discipline that it takes to be a champion in life.

Good words, but I offer them with a perspective: the great basketball player Jerry West passed away this year at the age of 86. Jerry did everything that Tom Brady talked about: consistent, determined, willing to work for it, integrity, purpose, determination, discipline. However, Jerry West’s Lakers lost to Bill Russell’s Celtics six times in the NBA finals. Jerry was “champion” of the NBA only one time as a player.

Here are a few snippets from Jason Gay’s tribute in the Wall Street Journal.

He was basketball’s superstar survivor. Jerry West, who died Wednesday morning at age 86, is unquestionably one of the greatest NBA players ever, a 14-time All-Star in 14 seasons, an Olympic gold medal winner and champion, with performances that still strike awe today. (Averaging 40.6 points in the 1965 playoffs—how?) He excelled so much as an executive that the game is about to induct him again into the Hall of Fame, his third installation. (He was also elected as a player and an Olympian.) West’s drive is so indelible it is immortalized in the NBA logo—that’s a silhouette of the 6-foot-3 West blazing to the basket, a sinewy figure blasting between the blue and red. 

The NBA logo “is considered to be” a  silhouette of Jerry West (the NBA won’t confirm that officially)

[continuing Jason Gay’s snippets] He won often, but his losses were far more epic. West’s Lakers had the misfortune of sharing an era with Bill Russell and Red Auerbach; six times West and Los Angeles lost a title to the Green. West remains the only player to ever win a Finals MVP in a losing effort, doing so in 1969 against Boston. He endured brutal defeats and repeated injuries—a rough count of nine broken noses, his face taped like H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man. He played through the pain, because everyone did…

In 2011 West released a memoir entitled “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life” in which he detailed a chronic depression, a harsh upbringing and a father so abusive that young Jerry slept with a shotgun under his bed. West had an older brother, David, killed in the Korean War, and his death also haunted Jerry as his basketball profile rose, from high school to a stirring career at his home state West Virginia, where he led the Mountaineers to the 1959 national title game—but fell by one point. The losses ate at him…. 

The article closes with this:

…West’s signature accomplishment may be his inner journey. He was a poor kid dealt a horrible hand, somehow blessed with outrageous talent and competitiveness to escape—and yet he was rarely fulfilled by the results. Riddled by torment, he kept searching for something to chase the sadness away, and it wasn’t until later in life he began to appreciate all he had. Entering his 70s, Jerry West described himself as “the luckiest person in the world.” His liberation offered hope to the struggling. 

That sort of honesty takes courage, and changes lives. His basketball contributions are stunning—but in the life of Jerry West, the survivor proved to be as important as the superstar. 

In short, Jerry West was a champion in life, just as Tom Brady’s discipline speech promises.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Corinthians 9.24 – 27, NIV)

…train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4.7, ESV)