Wisconsin basketball Coach Greg Gard is an exceedingly rare breed; a sports personality who understands the meaning of the word adversity. Losing IS NOT adversity. Losing playing time IS NOT ADVERSITY. It’s amazing how almost the entire sports-industrial complex and media-industrial complex can’t seem to understand a simple definition to this one single word.
You know what adversity really is? Losing your health; in a serious manner.
It’s losing a loved one, and knowing that they’re never coming back. That’s adversity and Greg Gard gets that. Kudos to him, as he’s apparently the only coach, player or announcer in the sporting world who seems to.
Gard explained the true meaning of adversity, and how he arrived to a much deeper understanding of it, over a year ago in a January 2016 press conference (embedded below).
This week, following a blowout win at Illinois, he was asked if more people, now over a year later, are actually understanding the meaning of the word adversity. His response
“I think people that are around our program, fans, media, they understand what I’m about. What’s important to me, what my priorities are and how important our players are to me. When we were scuffling along at 1-4 (in the league) and 9-9 during the transition last year I got asked about adversity- was the team going to be able to respond?
I had gone through a few months earlier losing my dad to cancer- that put everything in perspective, I knew that there was nothing I was going to see as a coach that was more adverse and more trying than what I watched him go through during his six month battle.
It simplified and put things in life into proper categories, gave me perspective and made me a better coach, it allowed me to focus on our guys and make it about them. They rallied around me during that trying time as well.
It’s a special place with special people.”
Last year, Greg Gard made the most important point about adversity that an individual possibly can-
If you’re a person who’s never been through real adversity, eventually you will. At some point in your life, it’s coming. If you’re someone who hasn’t seen those that you love deal with true, genuine adversity, it’s inevitable. It will happen.
Have a watch below:
Kudos to you Wisconsin basketball coach Greg Gard, I wish more people could understand life and have the perspective that you do.
Adversity is the most horrifyingly misused word in all of sports. You see this, in egregious fashion, by announcers, media, coaches and players everywhere. All of these clueless individuals believe that adversity is something along the lines of trailing in a game, getting benched or having to transfer.
Even worse, in some cases, people take problems brought on by themselves, by their own poor, self-destructive decisions as “adversity.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, Bold and the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication, appears regularly as a guest on CGTN America, WGN CLTV News and KOZN.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud and YouTube
