What if I could tell you that the biggest impact that you can make happens outside the spotlight? Not by sitting at the head of the table or leading the parade. What if I told you that you could influence an entire symphony without ever picking up the conductor's wand? Or, in my case, what if I told you you could have the most powerful change in a basketball game, not when the ball is in your hands but by what you do when it’s not?
Is that an absurd question to ask? You see, on the road to the NBA, where I was a starter for the back-to-back world champion Miami Heat, just down the road --
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Yes.
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Do you know how many hours I practiced? Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. I'd make Malcolm Gladwell blush with all the practice I had with the basketball. I spent 1,000 hours dribbling the basketball, passing the basketball, shooting the basketball. I wanted to become one with that pumpkin. But, you know, when I played as a starter with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Ray Allen, all Hall of Famers, do you know how often I actually touched the ball? Two percent of the time. Two. So it begs the question, what did I do in the other 98 percent of the time, when I didn’t have the ball, to justify starting on the best team in the world, playing at the highest level on the planet Earth? That's a crazy question. What did I do?
Well to understand that, you have to go back to when I grew up. I grew up in a small town outside of Detroit, and I had the pleasure of being a misfit. Everywhere I looked. I was the only kid in town that had a Black dad and a white mom. I had patches on my jeans. When it rained, my roof leaked. I had to carry a birth certificate with me to every Little League game. You know why? Because I was so tall, no one believed I was the age I said I was. I was a misfit in every way at a time when I just wanted to fit in. I grew up mixed, poor and tall.
But during the chaotic beauty of playground time on recess when I was in first and second grade, that was my time playing basketball. Football, sandlot baseball. Kick the can, dodgeball. Ghost in the graveyard. To me, those weren't just games. Those were opportunities to belong. And that's when I learned the most powerful lesson in my life, the power of "we" over "me." The power of "we" over "me." And I realized, during these games, when I helped my friends win, I wasn't the mixed kid. I wasn't the poor kid, I wasn't the freakishly tall kid. I was just a teammate. I belonged. And so I became obsessed with: “How can I help my friends win? How can I help my friends look good?” For love. I was seeking love. When's the last time ... you had to win in the name of being loved?
And that became the entire hallmark of my basketball career, ironically, what I learned in kindergarten, on the playground. And I took that with me through my entire NBA career, through two final fours at Duke University, a national championship, two NBA titles, just down the road here in Miami. I was obsessed with what can I do to help my friends and my team win. And let me tell you, it wasn't always glorious. I wasn’t a big scorer, alright? I didn't have 50-point games. But I was like the LeBron James of diving on the ball, diving on the floor for loose balls. I wasn't a fancy dribbler like Dwyane Wade. But what I was, I was like the Steph Curry of running back on defense. I wasn't a crazy passer, but I was a solid inbound passer in end-of-game situations.
Now those are not sexy plays at all, OK? Those are not plays that make someone run into the team store and say, "Battier leads our team in floor burns. I want his jersey." Those are the plays that I made in the 98 percent of the time that I didn't have the ball in my hands, that impacted winning.
In fact, I impacted winning at such a high level that when I retired, I saw a stat about my career. And on the teams that I played for in my career, when I was on the floor, we consistently outscored the opponent by five points a game versus when I was on the bench. OK, that puts me, in the last three decades, the last 30 years, in the top 97th percentile of every player that played in the NBA ... right next to guys like Tracy McGrady and the late, great Kobe Bryant. Now if you ask the average NBA fan, they'd say there's no way that Battier should be with T-Mac and Kobe. But there I was, for my impact.
You see, it's all about the unseen ... the immeasurable, the intangible that matters. See today we are driven by so many what I call “spotlight metrics.” We’re always chasing grade point average and salary, and, you know, we're concerned about the cost of the purse that we carry or the car that we drive. We're concerned about likes, mentions, follows, reposts. Right? Yes. Nod your head. Yes we’re all guilty. Well those are all what I call “spotlight metrics.” They happen when the light's on us. But those factors, those figures, they miss the most important thing. How do we elevate others?
Michael Lewis wrote a great profile on me called “The No-Stats All-Star,” about how my impact on the basketball court went far beyond the box score. You know what the crux of that was? I lived to make the small plays for others.
So how does that work in the real life? Simple, small, out-of-the-spotlight actions, like mentoring a young person, helping them on their journey. Something as simple as bending over and picking up a piece of trash and putting it into the garbage, so that everyone can enjoy the natural beauty of a park. It might be lending a shoulder or an ear to a colleague, a friend or a family member that's going through a tough time. You see, those are unbelievably powerful actions. They will never show up in any scorecard, any scoreboard, right? But those are the winning plays that we have to make, that create championship teams, whatever your team is. And so when you're doing that, you are not just participating. Right? You have a huge role in winning. And that's the fun part. We all want to win.
And so my friends at the Butler University business school wanted to find people like me, who lived to elevate others across industries. And what they found was that, in every winning team and across industries, there were teams rife with people who lived to elevate others. And they named this -- I didn't come up with this -- they called it the “Battier effect.” And the Battier effect is very simple. It's asking yourself the question, every single day, "How can I make others better? What am I doing to increase the collective potential of the group around me? My business, my family, my friends?" Right? Because the irony of this is when you elevate others, that is how you create legacy for yourself. People want to be around you and say, “There’s something about you, but whatever you’re connected to just wins.” And isn't that the fun part of all this?
So as we go back to our normal lives after the TED Talk tonight and hear all of our inspiring speakers, I want you to ask yourself, "What am I doing in my 98 percent outside the spotlight? How am I spending my time, my energy, my talents ... to elevate others?" Because if you do that, you will realize it is not about being the star, but the value is in being the glue guy, the glue girl, the glue person that makes it all work, and you win together. And it's an amazing feeling.
So my friends, that is how you change outcomes. That is how you change lives. And that is how you create legacy.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
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