The Knicks Comeback Mindset

Why winners use setbacks as feedback and refuse to let temporary circumstances become permanent conclusions.

The whole world watched history happen this week when the Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973.

If you weren’t watching but you were anywhere near social media, you probably saw the videos. The streets of New York filled with people climbing light poles, hugging strangers, screaming at the top of their lungs. Absolute chaos, but absolute joy.

Photograph by Joe Murphy / NBAE / Getty

I’m not writing this pretending to be a sports expert: this is based on my awe of watching them in the playoffs, what I read, and what I have come to learn on just how incredible it truly was. I’ve only really gotten into basketball over the last couple of years. And funny enough, even though I’m from New York and was rooting for the Knicks this series, I live in LA now and I’m a Lakers fan. The Lakers are the reason I got into basketball in the first place, so I guess I have them to thank for this whole new obsession of mine.

But what we watched throughout this Finals series was nothing short of amazing, and what they did has a few life lessons built in that I want to share.

The Knicks spent most of the Finals losing. They were down by double digits in every single game of the series. Like EVERY-SINGLE-ONE. Across the entire playoffs, when the Knicks trailed by double digits, they won six out of eight times. The historical record for every team, going back 30 years, is something like one win for every five losses in that spot. Cue the mind blown emoji.

Stating the obvious and what we all know by now because that ending was historically-epic: in Game 4 they were down 29 points in the third quarter and won at the last second. Historically, teams in that spot lose almost every time. I know this firsthand from every Lakers game I went to this year, the second we got down bad, we stayed down. Sorry, boys… But the Knicks somehow made a habit of coming back from the dead in the playoffs.

I’m no die-hard Knicks fan, probably unlike some of you reading this, so I found it kind of fascinating that every single time they were losing, I never lost confidence in them. I wasn’t emotionally attached, wasn’t sitting there in a state of “hope”, didn’t have money on it. If they’d lost, honestly, I wouldn’t have cared. But no matter how far behind the Knicks were, I noticed my thoughts going more toward the Spurs, like, don’t get too comfortable up there. Almost like I could sense the lead wasn’t as safe as the scoreboard made it look.

I think we’re always reading energy, even when we don’t realize it. (And if you’ve been here for a while, you’ve defintiely heard me talk about this before.) The subconscious thoughts we have about ourselves are constantly being communicated, whether we realize it or not, and other people pick up on them. They just don’t always know that’s what they’re picking up on.

It’s how we can tell when someone is genuinely confident versus when they’re trying to convince us they’re confident. It’s how someone can walk into a room and immediately command attention without saying much at all. It’s how you can interview five people who all have similar resumes, similar experience, similar accomplishments, and give nearly identical answers, and yet one person walks in and you just know. It’s not what they said, it’s their own subconscious belief in themselves, coming through whether they’re aware of it or not.

What you believe about yourself, about what's possible, about whether something can happen or not, impacts everything. It impacts how you think, what you focus on, the opportunities you notice, the actions you're willing to take, how quickly you recover from setbacks, and ultimately the results you create.

Most people think confidence comes after the evidence, but confidence is often what allows you to create the evidence in the first place. Because if you believe the game is still winnable, you keep looking for solutions. If you believe it's over, you stop.

And you can feel this, I am sure you’ve watched a sports team energetically give up. You can feel when they believe they’ve lost. I called this out the entire time when the Lakers played OKC. The third quarter would roll around, OKC would gain their 20+ point lead and you could tell the Lakers felt defeated. Meanwhile, OKC would laugh when things didn't go their way. They'd miss shots, make mistakes, lose momentum, and somehow still carry themselves like they expected things to work out. This strategy works really well when who you are up against has given up.

Belief isn’t just a feeling. Belief creates behavior. And behavior creates outcomes.

To blow stats out of the water the way the Knicks did, you have to fully believe the game is yours no matter what the scoreboard says. This isn’t “being delusional” or “ignoring reality” it is understanding that the current score is simply information. It is not your destiny or the final result. And the people who create extraordinary outcomes are often the people who refuse to let a temporary circumstance become a permanent conclusion.

Of course there is hard work, talent, sacrifice, strategy, execution, and mastery behind all of this, I mean Jalen Brunson took a $100 million pay cut to help build a team around him. There are thousands of hours of practice, preparation, and discipline that nobody sees. Belief isn't a substitute for those things. Belief is what allows you to keep accessing them when the scoreboard says you shouldn't bother anymore.

As Brunson put it, “I do my best to stay present in the moment and do everything I can to make sure my mind is right — be mentally and physically ready every day and trusting my work. That’s what’s gotten me here.”

The Knicks never seemed to act like they were losing. Even when they were. And eventually reality caught up with the identity they had already chosen. But belief alone isn't enough. Belief keeps you in the game. Belief keeps you from quitting. Belief keeps you looking for possibilities when everyone else is looking at the scoreboard. What you do with that belief is what matters.

Most people treat “it’s not working” as information about the outcome. Winners treat it as information about the strategy.

When you're winning, when the business is working, the launch is working, the relationship is working, there honestly isn't much to do. Your instruction is simple: keep going. Stay the course. Don't touch anything. Don’t look too closely. The classic line that I HATE, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

On the surface it sounds logical. Why would you change something that is working? But underneath that phrase is often a fear of rocking the boat. A fear of losing what you’ve built. A fear that if things change, you won’t be able to create the same outcome again. It’s not always wisdom. Sometimes it’s a lack of trust in yourself.

I’ve seen people stay in jobs they hate because the paycheck is coming in. Stay in relationships they’ve outgrown because they’re afraid of being alone. Stay in businesses that are slowly dying because they’re too attached to what worked five years ago.

We choose the devil we know over the possibility of something better. The irony is that growth requires the very thing that comfort tries to avoid: change.

I’ve seen businesses fail because they stopped evolving. They became attached to what worked before. They kept running the same play while the game around them changed.

The best teams, the best companies, and the best leaders are constantly adjusting. They’re paying attention. They’re evolving. They’re willing to question their own success before success turns into complacency. Iteration isn’t something you only do when you’re losing. Iteration is what prevents you from losing in the first place.

Most people think growth only becomes necessary when something breaks. But the reality is that growth is necessary even when things are working. Especially when things are working. Success has a way of creating comfort, and comfort has a way of creating blind spots. We become attached to what worked, convinced that because something got us here, it will get us there. But the game is always changing. And what worked yesterday, or last game, isn't always what will work tomorrow.

And watch what happens after every single game, win or lose. The reporter asks “how do you think you played?” and the answer is almost always some version of: we did some good things, we did it together, and we want to go back and watch the tape so we can be better next time.

They don’t just watch the tape after they lose. They watch the tape after they win too. They’re looking for what worked, what didn’t, where they got lucky, where they got sloppy, where they can improve, and how they can become a better team the next time they step on the court.

Imagine if we applied that same thinking to our own lives.

When was the last time you reviewed the tape after a win in your business? Or did you just exhale and move on, hoping the momentum would hold? When was the last time you looked at a great month and asked yourself why it was great? When was the last time you looked at a healthy relationship and asked what you were doing that helped create it? When was the last time you reviewed your own thoughts, your own emotions, your own reactions, and got curious about what was actually creating the results you wanted?

Most people only stop to evaluate when something goes wrong. But the highest performers evaluate everything. The goal isn’t to get lucky once. The goal is to understand yourself well enough to create the result again.

Most people are holding their breath, hoping things continue to work out. The people who consistently create extraordinary results are paying attention. They’re watching the tape.

Growth requires enough self-trust to believe that even if the current strategy stops working, you'll be able to find another one. It requires trusting yourself more than you're attached to the current result. People who trust themselves aren't attached to the scoreboard because they trust their ability to adjust. They trust their ability to learn. They trust their ability to evolve. They trust their ability to figure it out.

The people who struggle most with change are often the people who don’t trust themselves to navigate what comes next. So they hold on tighter. They protect what’s familiar. They stay with what’s known, even when they’ve outgrown it. They become attached to the score, attached to the outcome, attached to what has worked before because underneath it all they’re afraid they won’t be able to create another result.

But the Knicks didn’t seem attached to the score. They were attached to the next play. The next adjustment. The next opportunity. And maybe that’s the deeper lesson underneath all of this. The goal isn’t to become attached to winning. The goal is to become so adaptable, so resilient, and so trusting in yourself that no matter what the scoreboard says, you know you’ll find a way to respond.

This isn’t about never facing adversity, it’s about building enough trust within yourself for when you do.

In some ways, being down almost feels easier. When you’re down 20 points, you don’t have the luxury of pretending everything is working. You can’t just stay the course and hope for the best. You’re forced to adapt. You’re forced to pay attention. You’re forced to get mentally stronger. You’re forced to ask harder questions.

Now I've never played professional sports, so I can't tell you exactly what was being said in those huddles, but I do know how this translates to life.

When things aren't working, you're forced to ask better questions. What’s working right now, even a little? What’s not working? What do we need to change immediately? What are we missing? What am I not seeing? What assumptions am I making? What would I do differently if I truly believed this was still possible?

I just watched an interview of Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, and she said: failure gives you a treasure trove of data that success never will. When you’re winning, the feedback loop is simple. Do that again. When you’re losing, the feedback loop becomes incredibly specific. Here’s what isn’t working. Here’s what needs to change. Here’s what you haven’t seen yet.

One of the things I appreciate most about basketball is the timeout. The ability to stop the other team's momentum. To regroup. To reset. To look at what is actually happening instead of emotionally reacting to it. Short bursts where you get to pause for a minute, level set, and get your head back in the game.

And halftime is an even better example because sometimes a team walks into the locker room looking one way and a completely different team comes back out. That's the power of addressing what is in front of you without letting it dictate what happens next. Most people push this to the side and never address what is actually in front of them. They think if they just ignore it, it will somehow go away.

In any given moment we all have this ability. We can choose a new thought. A new perspective. A new belief. A new action. We can stop the momentum of where our mind has been heading and decide where we want it to go next.

It is never too late. You are never too far gone. And the Knicks proved that to us all postseason long.

The other reason it felt possible to me (and I'm sure to them) was that I'd already seen what they were capable of. I'd watched them in the playoffs come back from being down 22 points against Cleveland. Once you've seen something happen, the possibility expands. The mind can no longer argue that it's impossible because there is now evidence sitting right in front of it.

Confidence is often nothing more than accumulated evidence. The problem is that most people are waiting for evidence from their own lives before they allow themselves to believe. But if that's the requirement, you'll often quit long before you ever get enough proof. Sometimes your evidence comes from your own experience, but sometimes it comes from watching someone else do what everyone said couldn't be done. Sometimes it comes from a story, a mentor, a company, an athlete, a friend, or a complete stranger. The point is that evidence exists everywhere if you're willing to look for it.

The world is full of examples of impossible things becoming possible. Miracle comebacks. Last-second wins. Companies that were days away from shutting down before becoming billion-dollar businesses. People finding love after years of believing they wouldn't. People getting healthy after being told they couldn't. People succeeding after hundreds of failures. The evidence is everywhere. The question is whether you're looking for proof of possibility or proof of limitation because you'll find whichever one you're searching for.

To me, that's one of the biggest lessons from this championship. It's a lesson in not letting current reality determine what you believe is possible. Most people allow reality to become the meter for their belief. Things are going well, so they believe. Things aren't going well, so they stop believing. The scoreboard says they're down, so they assume they're losing.

But belief was never supposed to come from reality. Reality is constantly changing. If your belief rises and falls with every result, you'll never stay with anything long enough to create something extraordinary. Belief has to come from you. It has to exist before the evidence fully arrives. This isn’t hope and delusion. It is deep felt belief and trust in self. A deeper knowing that the current circumstance is not the final outcome, that you don’t let reality convince you of something that isn’t even true.

The reason most people lose belief isn't because something is impossible. It's because they haven't seen enough proof yet. They lose steam. They get discouraged. They let the current reality convince them that the future has already been decided. They start treating where they are as evidence of where they're going.

But the Knicks never seemed to let being down mean they were losing. And that's hard for most people because we treat the current circumstance as the final outcome. The scoreboard says you're down. The launch isn't working. The sale didn't close. The relationship is struggling. The investment hasn't paid off. And almost immediately we start writing the ending of the story. We assume that where we are is where we're headed. We mistake the current chapter for the entire book. We let the meaning get to us, we give up, we let the illusion of “failure” take us out.

The Knicks seemed to understand something most people forget: the score only tells you where you are, it doesn't tell you what's possible. They kept finding themselves behind yet they never allowed the scoreboard to become a prediction. It was simply information. And there is a massive difference between using reality as information and using reality as a conclusion. One keeps you in possibility. The other guarantees you'll stop playing before the game is actually over.

The lesson isn’t just “never give up” like every other motivational poster you have ever read. The lesson is: the moment things start going sideways is exactly the moment you have the most information you’ve ever had. The question is whether you’re willing to call timeout, look at it honestly, and come back out as a different team or whether you’re going to spend that time protecting the story that you’re losing.

It’s still anybody’s game. It always is, until the clock says otherwise.

With love & gratitude,

Stephanie

Own it × Shift it × Become it.