Game 4 and the Stories We Tell About Athletes

Last night my wife and I woke from a short, unsatisfying nap to watch Game 4. We had barely sat down when a series of extreme mistakes by the New York players allowed San Antonio to build a lead that quickly grew to 29 points. By the middle of the second quarter the game already felt over. The famous New York crowd fell silent. On the television the commentator — the one everyone knows supports the Knicks — sounded as if he were watching a dream collapse in real time. We hadn’t even properly entered the game, and it already seemed finished.

I felt ambivalent. The meteoric rise of this San Antonio team — from missing the playoffs last year to dominating a Game 4 like this — had something impressive about it. A well organized, professionally managed franchise doing exactly what it is built to do. At the same time I stayed skeptical. Had this glory arrived too fast? As the blowout continued, my wife and I began to disengage. Our eyes drifted from the screen. We wondered whether the commentator would soon use his familiar line — that the ceremony was over — even though many minutes still remained. The game felt finished before we even really arrived.

It was in that half-present state, while the game on the screen was “dead,” that my thoughts turned to LeBron James. I have been watching basketball for nearly thirty years. I remember the first videos of that skinny kid from Akron. I was skeptical then too; I was a Kobe and Duncan guy. But LeBron quickly became impossible to ignore — not only for his talent, but because he was one of the first athletes who tried, consciously and publicly, to take some control over the story being told about him. “The Decision” in 2010 was clumsy, yet it was an attempt to stop being merely a screen onto which everyone projected their hopes and frustrations.

We fused him to ready-made roles — savior, traitor, king, villain, activist — and he fused himself to the need to be seen as the greatest and most complete. I knew something about that gap from my own playing days — on the court I could be ruthless and competitive; off it, people experienced me as calm and reserved. LeBron lived that gap on a global scale for more than twenty years. We spoke about him with total certainty while knowing almost nothing about the real person behind the myth. Over time he learned to hold many roles at once — athlete, father, businessman, activist, mentor — without being completely defined by any single one. That breadth of self is what allowed him to survive the wild swings in public perception.

While I was thinking about LeBron, the game remained quiet. But then, in the third quarter, something small began to shift. New York started chipping away — not dramatically at first, but steadily. I remembered how in recent weeks they had already come back from very large deficits. Suddenly there was an improbable sliver of possibility — maybe they could actually close a 25- or 30-point gap. No one seemed to fully believe it yet, but the game stopped feeling completely dead.

That moment brought my thoughts to Victor Wembanyama. Unlike LeBron, who rose from the specific pain of one city, Wembanyama arrived as a fully global product — scouted early, algorithmically amplified, and branded from day one. The pressure is faster and more fragmented. Last summer he went to the Shaolin Temple, shaved his head, woke at 4 a.m., trained in kung fu and endured long, painful meditation sessions. For a 2.24 meter high professional athlete in a hyper-commercial league, that search for inner discipline stands out.

As someone who coaches with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I see both players through the lens of psychological flexibility. LeBron eventually developed a broader sense of self that could contain many narratives without being trapped by any of them. Wembanyama, facing even faster and more intense fusion — with highlight reels, instant judgments, commercial expectations and the sudden weight of a meteoric rise — will need similar inner resources if he is not to be reduced to a single story of inevitable dominance.

By the fourth quarter I was standing. The improbable was happening. New York kept coming, possession after possession. Brunson — the small guard who wasn’t blessed with extreme physical gifts — kept attacking, creating, refusing to let the game die. Towns stepped up when it mattered. Even Anunoby, who had been quiet for most of the night, found ways to contribute to the effort. The gap that had seemed unreachable began to shrink. And that’s probably why, despite everything, I found myself pulling for New York in that moment — because of the small guy who keeps winning anyway.

San Antonio, professional and organized as ever — with that Spurs DNA still visible, Duncan’s presence still felt on the bench — responded when it mattered, but they could not stop the surge. New York completed the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, and in the final seconds it was Anunoby who tipped in the winning basket. The explosion, the madness, the amazement. Anything can happen in sport. That is its power.

Yet it is precisely in these moments of pure drama that it becomes easy to forget something important — these athletes are still ordinary human beings. They are not saving lives. They are not doctors, nurses, firefighters or scientists whose work creates tangible, lasting improvements in human welfare. Their success is measured in championships, contracts and viral moments inside a highly commercial ecosystem. And yet, beneath all the money and spectacle, they carry an enormous weight — created by money, global hype, relentless scrutiny and the stories we fuse onto them.

And still, last night gave us moments of genuine beauty, tactical adjustments under pressure, mental resilience, team chemistry that cuts through the noise. Watching that fourth quarter surge — the fight to make the impossible possible — still reminded me of the stillness and effortlessness I felt sitting with my beloved grandparents. I miss them tremendously. Basketball is still, after all, home.

ACT reminds us of the power of defusion — the ability to notice the stories we tell about others (and ourselves) without becoming trapped inside them. Perhaps the healthiest way to watch figures like LeBron, Wembanyama, or the players on the court last night is to let them be complex, contradictory, and fully human — not flattened symbols serving our need for overnight sensations or inevitable champions.

And so I continue watching, as Wembanyama reaches his first true peak. It is still worth the tiredness, still worth catching these moments as they happen, and it still pushes me to pick up a ball and go play.

This piece is a personal reflection inspired by Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals. All rights to player names, team names, and league branding belong to their respective owners.