It isn’t that he doesn’t have the killer instinct, it is that he doesn’t have the resilience – and why… well because he never had a chance to develop it. When you go from being a phenom in junior high, to one in high school to one in the NBA, how do you ever learn to reach, to push? Answer – clearly you do not. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to win as badly as MJ ever did. It is that when the going gets rough, he doesn’t know what to do. In other words, he buckles under the pressure.

You could see it on his face Thursday night – not in the fourth quarter but in the first five minutes. You could “hear” it in his tweet – “it’s now or never”. He wants it so bad he was filled with anxiety. He wants it so bad, he was all in his head. He wants it so bad that yes, he choked. And the psychological odds are that he will choke again.

MJ had failed – if only in 10th grade. Although I lived in NC when he was at UNC, I can’t remember if he failed there but my instinct tells me yes. He also failed a time or two in Chicago (where I also was … stalking him…. (kidding again). LeBron clearly and visibly gives up. Last year, my company – the one I am writing this blog under – contacted Danny Ferry to offer our special brand of mental coaching to Shaq and Antawn. We knew we could fix their problem. Mr. Ferry politely declined in deference to the sports psychology team at the Cleveland Clinic but it caused me to watch the Cavs very closely. And LeBron gave up in the Boston series.

He thought he needed out of Cleveland. He thought he needed Wade and Bosh … but what he needed was to lose – and learn to turn the hurt and anger and disappointment into motivation. Right now, all he knows how to do is panic or quit. Call it immature … maybe that is what it is. But hey – whose fault exactly is that? It might not be his. 17 and 18 year olds make a LOT of bad decisions when it comes to the rest of their lives. Most of them get to retool and start again. That is a bit hard to do in the NBA.

UPDATE: Well well… I never knew that Kobe Bryant also went directly from high school to the NBA. In this case, as an analyst of sports psyches I am going to go to what always turns out to be the case – the player’s underlying self-perception. In other words, note Ron Artest’s comment after last year’s finals…. versus his earlier antics. It ALWAYS comes down to knowing how to leverage – as opposed to buckle – under the internal pressure of anxiety and frustration.

These are all critical elements in any sport – even where the player is you, yourself and I -  like golf.

Working out anger in particular – even if it is just the frustration of a teammate and a missed rebound, free-throw or clutch shot – is key to team success. Yet most players – and even psychologists – aren’t really aware of how to deal with feelings induced – and the counter-feelings. Typically, the gig is in the same as trading – try to use the intellect to overcome the feelings when in reality is you have to use feelings to work with feelings.

On one hand this is groundbreaking work – on the other, we all intuitively understand why the study reported on here would be true.

Unfortunately, you can’t fake high-fives and make it work… the whole kissing your sister thingy.

The question is where is the sports psychology that works? How do teams get caught up in downward spirals? (We could even ask the same things about upward spirals but we attribute that purely to skill and a touch of luck (and an occasional good call from the ref).)

The vast majority of conventional wisdom has a cognitive behavioral bent - put it behind you, don’t mope, move on…

But what happens to the player, of any level, who can’t do that in the time-frame their coach, team or parent wants from them? They simply PRETEND – which is the worst outcome of all. The frustration and disappointment get bigger and bigger -like some character out of a nightmare. And in the envelope of overwhelmingly negative feelings the only usual solution is time.

What if there were another one? What if it were based on the new psychology of risk, performance and body-mind integration?

Well there is… and it has to do with methodically and systematically using all of the feelings and emotions in an effort towards success. It requires re-learning (or forgetting) most of what you think is correct about athletic performance. It requires bringing the body-brain-mind back into full and reciprocal participation. But it can be done… to amazing results.

It’s Britain’s version of the Tiger Woods scandal. Wayne Rooney, the premier English footballer who is perhaps the most revered footballer in the world, has been caught paying for sex from a prostitute numerous times, including during his wife’s pregnancy.  Media outlets throughout the UK have issued public threnodies of Rooney and called for many of Rooney’s sponsors to pull their endorsements of the troubled athlete.

Rooney, however, unlike Tiger, seems to be indifferent to the fans’ and media’s opinion of him.  Rooney has also managed to keep all of his sponsors amidst public disapproval. Rooney, like Tiger was to the golf world, has always been the golden boy of soccer, starting his professional career at 18 in a country that lives and dies with their soccer teams.  Rooney’s image, now tarnished, has not taken nearly the hit that Tiger’s hit, despite his similar international fame.

Soccer pundits claim that the surrounding media circus has dramatically diminished Rooney’s confidence, leading to only one goal in his last five games, far from his usual star-striker pace. There are also physical signs of reduced confidence documented in Rooney’s game play, and a recent ankle injury certainly isn’t helping him regain his former swagger.

Rooney seems to be taking the worst possible approach–showing indifference to his personal life on and off the field. Emotions can be extremely detrimental to an athlete’s performance if simply ignored and put to the side of one’s mind. Rooney needs to be vocal about what’s going on in his head. He needs to search, recognize, acknowledge and process what can only be extremely complex and competing feelings in a direct way.

Then and only then can he regain the competitive edge that made him one of the world’s most dangerous strikers.

He was one of many shining stars of the American team. Tiger as well as the other Americans faced a sharp European team this past weekend at The Ryder Cup. In the face of a raucous European audience, the American team was poised for a massive comeback on Monday. At the head of the charge was Tiger Woods and with his eagle-from-the-fairway shot on the 12^th hole, he put an exclamation point on a 3-1-0 record at the 2010 Ryder Cup. Our predictions about Tiger Woods in Whales have been proven.

Tiger was able to focus on one thing and one thing only, beating his opponents. It has been a few weeks since he’s played competitive golf since he dropped out of the Fedex Cup Playoffs so he has presumably had time to reflect and invoke some of the direct emotional work he certainly must have been taught during his time off.

He did not show much outward emotion. What he did show that helped us realize how well he was externalizing his emotion was the determined look on his face. It was as if all the events of this past year and the emotions surrounding them were focused through his determination.

There is even more evidence with his performance between matches. His last match was the only singles match he played and he absolutely destroyed his opponent Francesco Molinari. His skills were honed in and his emotions were evidently directed to accomplish a dominating victory over one European counterpart. This apparent strategy for his mental game led to his best Ryder Cup performance ever.

The perfect end to a hectic year for Tiger Woods is set.

Corey Pavin, the US team captain for the Ryder Cup, used one of his captain’s picks to select Tiger to the Ryder Cup team.  The Ryder Cup team is comprised of eight spots that are statistically ranked and then four spots that are filled at the Captains discretion. Corey Pavin said of Tiger, “he made it easy for me…his game has come around, he is playing much better…He is the number one player in the world and it was hard to leave him off.”

I think Corey Pavin knows something that most of the golf world doesn’t: the Ryder Cup will be the perfect environment for Tiger Woods to end a tumultuous year on a good note. The divorce, the poor play, comments by McIlroy, endless media accusations, etc. have built up an emotional whirlwind in Tiger’s head. This whirlwind has been pent up for so long since Tiger has been muted in his emotional outbursts and his new G-rated composure on the golf course. The matches are in 2v2 and 1v1 formats and are played up close and personal so that his focus can be on one thing and one thing only.

If he is able to take the turmoil in his head and aim it at something like this, he will succeed with flying colors or at least put up a worthy fight.

By Toby Nathan

At the climactic moment of the last NBA season, Kobe Bryant, the game’s ultimate closer, deferred to Ron Artest when the game was on the line.  After hitting the game’s most important shot and helping Bryant win his fifth NBA title and tasting his first, Artest yelled in exuberance and thanked his therapist.

At long last, it seemed Artest would be able to play to his potential without any questions about when his next mental blowup would be.

This coming week, according to reports in the Orange County Register, Artest will be travelling to schools throughout California along with Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano to try and preach the importance of seeking mental coaching in addition to physical and in an attempt to break down the stigma associated with getting help for the mental dimension of performance and life in general.

If Artest, who not so long ago was considered the biggest headcase in the league, seeing the importance of mental strength isn’t enough to convince athletes of its importance, what will be?  Artest was a different player on the court last season and a different man off of it.  It resulted in an NBA championship.  What better argument is there than that? He hit the biggest shot of the season in the biggest game of the season in the most pressure packed moment of his career with the most demanding player and coach in the league scrutinizing his every move, and then put his head down and played the staunch defense he’s been known for throughout his career.  This wasn’t the Ron Artest we’d seen running into stands assaulting fans or the Ron Artest we’d seen speaking out about his new rap album—it was a focused, precise, new Ron Artest.

Now, if only we could sit him down with Tiger…

Having followed him for 2 holes on Friday I had a chance to see his composure first hand. After a tee shot on the 16th hole, Woods kind of held his follow through and did a little twirl of the club almost like he was posing for a picture. When he turned around to Steve (his long time caddy), I could see a little smirk/smile type facial expression and at that point, I felt like he was back.

Well, I guess I was half right. He quickly gave those strokes back on the front nine (he started on the back nine) and triple bogeyed the first hole of Saturday’s round (ouch!) Even though he was able to get a few strokes back later in the third round, he put himself out of the tournament as the players on top crept up the leaderboard, farther out of reach.

But I believe that this is a step forward for his emotional psyche, not another mis-step. He is not superman but I prediect he will get better and the more he stays competitive and is able to externalize his emotions, his natural top notch ability will rise to the top.

I also predict The Ryder Cup will provide the perfect opportunity to externalize his emotions into a competitive channel when he takes on the challenge from Rory McIlroy.

J. Clayton Berry