My friend, who was murder police, used to make fun of our colleagues, especially the one from an entitled background.  He said that none of then had ever played a team sport in their lives.  It really showed – many had no idea how to work together, backstabbing, shifting blame, taking undeserved credit.  A former high school teacher also made the same remark about many of my magnet school classmates, that they focused on individual sports, insinuating a me-first selfish attitude.

Individual sports are great – they still require and teach hard work, perseverance, dedication, etc.  but nothing like team sports to teach leadership, working together, learning, optimizing, compensating for your teammates’ strengths and weaknesses.

My undergraduate and law school alma maters once played each other in the NCAA basketball championship game.  Rare instance aside, both teams were hard-working and likable.  There weren’t any real standout stars on either – those considered “stars”  were just supremely hard workers and tenacious players.  The Indiana point guard was undersized, relatively slow, but  a tough, competent one.  They knew how to play together.

I knew I was in trouble at work when my direct supervisor (Princeton, Harvard, I did respect and like her very much) told me after some setbacks that I was still a star.  That was never my game or motivation.

It took so long to get my unit to work together.  And I could only get half of them to do so.  At the end, the entitled one took credit for it.  All good, they know who their general was.