Fall2020

Great competitors in basketball history, Übermensches like Michael Jordan
and Kobe Bryant would seize upon injuries in their opponents in order to
create an advantage for their team. There is a ‘bird of prey’ attitude that a
superior coach does not ‘yoke’ or ‘harness’ in any religious sense of heilige.
Compassion and pity had no place in the athletic arena, not to try and end
the others life, but to win the game. The only sort of compassion allowed,
would be through Jnana yoga, the compassion of self-knowledge, to ‘know
thyself’ is to have a tactical advantage.
A theme throughout Nietzsche’s work is the decadence of Christian “compassion”
seeping into all aspects of life:
Certainly one of the purest revelations of the impulse of culture
and especially of the impulse to the ever-renewed production of the
saint; but since it has been employed in a hundred ways to propel the
mills of state power it has gradually become sick to the very marrow,
hypocritical and untruthful, and degenerated into a contradiction of
its original goal. 10
The problem, stated throughout all of Nietzsche’s writings, is that cultures
that accept the virtues of compassion, pity, and humility are in a status of
decline for many reasons. One of which is that it weakens the power of the
strong who are the driving force behind creative and transformative values.
In application to how this would affect a philosophy of sports, it is clear that
a thriving society must place a high value upon competition in all areas of
life, sports give us exemplary indications of how a society valorizes the performative
aspects of those with exceptional abilities, those who are in the
game, the political arena, the center-stage of life.
10 Friedrich Nietzsche. Untimely Meditations. Schopenhauer as Educator, translated
by R.J. Hollingdale, 1983, Cambridge University Press: New York, pg. 166.
Phil Jackson on Coaching an Übermensch
When I teach Nietzsche, I often use Phil Jackson as the exemplary coaching
style of the ‘will to power’ as described by Nietzsche. Phil Jackson utilized
eastern philosophy and Lakota philosophy in his coaching methods.
Nietzschean themes may be interspersed throughout his writings. Jackson
has written several books about his coaching philosophy. 11 He coached
Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant sometimes pitting rivalries
within the team through his knowledge of each player’s personality as
a way of executing the goal of winning games and maximizing the potential
within each player. He claimed that his biggest challenge was how he motivated
the team around the star players to develop a competitive spirit among
the role players on the team and he knew that each season presented new
challenges. There was no such thing as a one size fits all winning template.
A great coach would have to adapt along with the team in accordance with
creating motivational tactics depending on the needs of the team. These
might be constructed as long term goals to set the tone for the month leading
into the playoffs, he might start practice with a set of drills to create an atmosphere
of amplified seriousness, or in a particularly critical game situation
he might intentionally avoid calling a time out to teach the team that they
would have to learn resilience in tough situations as a way to avoid panic the
next time the game started to slip away. In despair, the coach would not bail
out the players, they would have to be their own deux ex machina so to speak.
11 Notably, Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops, Eleven Rings, The Last Season, and in this
I will not have time to go into full detail about every aspect of his philosophy while
addressing Nietzsche, but this will give you an idea of how successful “I” and “we” concepts
can be used to inspire athletes to reach their fullest potential, and more importantly,
how the rest of the team can stay involved while the Uber-human is performing at the
highest level, and motivate a collective ‘will to power’ that creates a winning culture.
64 65