One of the greatest basketball dynasties in the 1990s was the Chicago Bulls. Phil Jackson, the team’s head coach, led the Bulls to six NBA championships during the decade, including two three-peat championships (1991-1993 and 1996-1998). Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were key figures in both three-peats.
In the first three-peat, the Bulls defeated the L.A. Lakers, led by Magic Johnson, in five games to win their first NBA Championship. The next year, they bested the Portland Trail Blazers in six games. In 1993, they closed out their first three-peat by defeating the Phoenix Suns in six games, cementing their place in history.
At the end of each championship season, the Team gathered at center court with their Coach, hoisted the trophy over their heads, and celebrated the win. Then, it was back to work.
In 1996, the Bulls made another run at the NBA Championship, defeating the Seattle Supersonics in six games. The next year, they overcame the Utah Jazz in six games to win two Championships in a row. History was made once again when the Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz again to complete their second three-peat.
In the Chicago Bulls stadium, each NBA Championship was memorialized by a banner that was hung from the ceiling. It served as a reminder to the fans and the players of the victories that had been achieved and the history that had been made. The banner was a constant reminder of the dramatic wins that established the Bulls as one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history.
The banner was a memorial to the past.
A similar story could also be told about the Boston Celtics, who won eight consecutive championships, including two three-peats, or the L.A. Lakers who also completed the coveted NBA three-peat. While the players and coaches were different, the storyline was effectively the same.
At the end of each championship season, the Team gathered at center court with their Coach, hoisted the trophy over their heads, and celebrated the win. Then, it was back to work, preparing for what’s next.
Professional sports teams, after the Championship win, hoist the trophy, don the swag, put on the ring, enjoy the parade, hang the banner, and then they get back to work. All the trappings of success serve as a reminder of what was, but nothing more.
It was a memorial to the past.
The banner reminds us of the win. It’s a symbol of victory. It’s a reminder of what was.
In 1944, the Green Bay Packers won the NFL Championship. They were the dominant force in the Western Conference during the 1940s, with multiple playoff appearances and championships. The next year, the Packers began a period of decline and losing seasons that continued until 1958.
What happened?
This is a team whose owners gave them everything they needed to be successful. They recruited the best players, hired the best coaches, and hired the best staff. Despite having the best of everything available to them, the team simply couldn’t turn things around.
In 1958, they had one win, ten losses, and one tie.
The owners announced they were bringing in a former NY Giants offensive coordinator named Vince Lombardi. Lombardi had started as an assistant coach, and later head coach, at St. Cecillia High School, then coached at Fordham University, and later at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Lombardi came to the Packers with a reputation for meticulous preparation and demanding standards. That showed up on the practice field, where he focused on fundamentals. Believing in the importance of preparation and simplicity, he preached efficiency and the relentless pursuit of excellence above all else. He was gruff, tough, and showed no favoritism. Prior leadership had coddled the stars. Not so with Lombardi. He insisted on everyone giving their all, pushing the players to the point of physical and mental breaking.
Lombardi lived by a very simple, but powerful principle:
“Remember your past, but don’t live there.”
The Packers had lost their way. After the Championship win in 1945, they didn’t look beyond the banner. Once they started losing, they saw themselves no longer as winners, but as losers who couldn’t catch a break. Lombardi knew that to turn the team around, they had to stop living in the past and look to the future.
His unwavering belief in his players and his ability started to show up on the practice field. As they began to execute the fundamentals at an ever higher level, it started to show up during the scrimmages, and later in the pre-season and regular-season games.
Lombardi continued to preach to his players, “See yourselves as the winners you are.”
The results speak for themselves.
Under Vince Lombardi, the Green Bay Packers experienced a period of unprecedented success, winning five NFL Championships in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls. The era from 1959 to 1967 is often referred to as the “Lombardi era” and is considered one of the greatest dynasties in NFL history.
What’s the takeaway from these stories?
Remember your past, but don’t live there.
The Bulls, Lakers, and Celtics all shared one thing in common. During their dynastic periods, they looked beyond the banner and continually asked themselves, “What’s next?” They understood the quality of thinking and performance that won the Championship in the prior year was insufficient to repeat in the year that followed.
All three of these teams were hallmarked by a return to the fundamentals after each NBA Championship win. They reviewed the film, taking note of where they executed well as well as what they didn’t. They took note of where opposing teams were able to gain a tactical advantage so they could devise a strategy to thwart that in the future.
They were not content to stay where they were, resting on yesterday’s wins.
These teams chose instead to look beyond the banner, focus on improving their individual performance, as well as honing how well they collaborated and coordinated as a team.
They chose to look beyond the banner.
“Remember your past, but don’t live there.”
On the other hand, the Packers went from seeing themselves as winners who couldn’t be beaten to losers who couldn’t win. Once they became comfortable with this view of themselves, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Try as they might, they couldn’t win.
They forgot the banner that reminded them of how good they had been. Instead, they accepted a banner of defeat, a trophy of inferiority, and held that image in their thoughts.
Remember, as you think, you become.
The Packers, as a team, had crafted an image of mediocrity, and they chose to hold it tightly. As they couldn’t outperform the quality of their thinking, they could not perform in such a way that gave them even a shot at success. The power of belief cannot be understated.
They failed to see themselves as the winners they once were.
The talent was there. The coaching staff was top-notch. Everything the team needed was provided to them by the owners. But the one thing the owners couldn’t provide them was a belief in themselves. As the losses mounted, so did the belief in each of the players that they had not only failed, they were failures.
They had forgotten that failure, like success, is only a moment in time. We may have failed, but we are not failures unless we choose to stay there. That’s what the Packers did. They chose to relive that moment of failure over and over again.
They chose to remember the self-imposed banner of defeat, but not to look past it.
When you can’t see a way to win, all you can do is lose.
Look again at how Vince Lombardi turned the Packers franchise around. He implemented three simple changes that transformed the team into an NFL powerhouse.
More importantly, here’s how we apply these three principles to our lives.
First, remember the past, but don’t live there.
Sometimes, in life, we win. Other times, we don’t. It’s important that we examine the wins and the losses and learn the lessons each is trying to teach us. From the wins, we can learn what worked well we need to keep doing. We can also learn what worked okay that we need to improve upon so it works better the next time. But, it’s also important to pay attention to what didn’t work so we can either fix that or stop doing it so we don’t repeat that again.
Every day, life wants to reveal lessons to us that will empower us to learn, grow, and improve. Reflecting on each experience helps us recognize thoughts and behaviors that aren’t serving us well so we can replace them with those that do.
We remember the past, apply the lessons learned, but we don’t stay there.
Second, we strive for excellence, focusing on mastering the fundamentals.
One of the things that made Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Tiger Woods such exceptional athletes is the fact that they continually focused on the fundamentals. For each of them, this wasn’t the pursuit of perfection (which is a myth), but the relentless pursuit of Black Belt Excellence in the performance of the fundamentals.
Vince Lombardi proved to the Packers that fundamentals matter. Doing even the little things with excellence compounds success over time. It’s why basketball players shoot hundreds of free throws, golfers practice hundreds of putts, and quarterbacks and receivers run the same routes hundreds of times.
In martial arts, when we master the fundamentals, we master the Art.
The same is true in life.
Lastly, we must see ourselves as the winners we are.
It is important that we pay attention to the thoughts we are thinking and what we are saying to ourselves. If our inner voice is constantly reminding us of all the things we can’t do, over time, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We must replace the thoughts that aren’t serving us well with thoughts that do.
Remember, we cannot achieve what we do not believe.
One of the best ways to do this is to practice daily affirmations. Rather than telling ourselves we can’t do something, we tell ourselves we are more than capable. Instead of telling ourselves we’re not good enough, we constantly remind ourselves we are getting better in every way, every single day.
What we continually say to ourselves, we believe.
What we believe, we can do.
Celebrate the win. Learn from the losses. Get back to work.
This is how we repeat, and three-peat, seeing beyond the banner.
