As I have revealed before, I have become - and more or less against my natural instincts - an "Authentic Warriors' Fan." This title references, for those out of touch with professional sports, and with the National Basketball Association in particular, my admiration for the Golden State Warriors professional basketball team.
As those who are not out of touch know, the Warriors, based in San Francisco, are now playing in the 2025 NBA Playoffs, having just barely made the playoffs at the end of their regular season. In the early games in the "first round" of the playoffs, the Warriors were matched against the Houston Rockets, and the Warriors beat the Rockets, four games to three. This "first round" victory is what allowed the Warriors to move to the "second round." The Warriors will be playing the first game of that "second round" this evening, against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
For each round in the playoffs, a team must win four out of seven games to advance to the next round, and the Warriors, having won three of the first four games against the Rockets, were thought to be certain of a fourth win. However... after having been ahead 3-1, the Warriors then lost the next two games, so the two teams were tied, 3-3. To stay in the playoffs, the Warriors had to beat the Houston Rockets, in Houston, in a game that took place last Sunday evening. As already indicated, the Warriors did win that seventh game, advancing to round number two.
Sports columnist Dieter Kurtenbach, who writes about sports for the Bay Area News Group (and who is pictured below), published a column that appeared in the Sunday, May 4, 2025, edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, just prior to the final "seventh game" that would decide which team would advance to "round two". The title on Kurtenbach's column was as follows: "Warriors' Title Hopes Are Lost Baggage Now." The picture at the top of this blog posting was the picture chosen to accompany Kurtenbach's column. It was intended, I am sure, to depict the state of the Warriors' hopes to advance against the Rockets.
As it turns out, Kurtenbach's dyspeptic evaluation of the Warriors' ability to win against the Rockets was in error, as I have already said. The Warriors did win that seventh game, contrary to Kurtenbach's prediction. The team may, or may not, win four out of their next seven games against the Timberwolves, and thus advance to the "third round" of the playoffs. Be advised, though, that Kurtenbach has already predicted that they will fail, just as he predicted that they would lose to the Rockets in that seventh game of "round one." Whether the Warriors do, or do not, advance to the "third round," Kurtenbach's May 4th column reminded me of one of the most powerful perrsonal experiences I have had in my entire life. It is an experience which I have chronicled in this blog, in a blog posting on June 21, 2020, titled, "Father's Day Stories."
I invite you (and Kurtenbach) to read what I have written. Click the link in the last line of the paragraph above, and then search out the section of that blog posting that is titled, ""POSSIBILITY IS MY CATEGORY - THANKS TO MY DAD."
In summary, my personal experience has convinced me that we are absolutely capable of ensuring our failure when we tell ourselves that we will fail.
Telling ourselves that we will not fail does not guarantee that we will accomplish what we hope to accomplish, but telling ourselves that we will fail virtually guarantees the failure we predict.
Think about it! This is true not just in sports, but in every aspect of our lives. It's true in politics, for instance. Thus, those political commentators who tell us that "Democracy Is Done" must not be believed - any more than the Warriors, or anyone else, should have believed Kurtenbach's announcement of the Warriors' predicted failure.
I hope you do read that story of mine. It is totally true, and my life would have been completely different had I continued to believe that I could accurately know when I was going to fail.
Telling ourselves that we will fail is like a guarantee that we will. Maybe think of that as something like the "Curse of Kurtenbach."
Let's not make that mistake!
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| Dieter Kurtenbach |
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