Two Kinds of Luck
When one is surrounded by talents, it is easy to dismiss his greatness as "watered down" because his team members are also great, as if their excellence subtracts from his. I believe that this gets the physics backwards as being embedded among greats does not just prop him up; it changes what is even being tested. Carrying a team and complementing one is not the same event, run under different rules with the scoreboard pretending it's identical. There is another kind of luck that produces the hardworking underdog himself. We like to imagine effort as the one variable a person fully owns, the pure, uncontaminated proof of character. But even grit has a backstory. The discipline forged by carrying a struggling team, the resilience built by absorbing repeated setbacks and still showing up, these are not simply chosen. They are, most times, what circumstance manufactures in a person who had no alternative. I ask this honest question, if you swapped these two situati...