It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit. Credit is something you GIVE, responsibility something you TAKE! There’s an old adage, “If it’s to be it’s up to me. If things are to change, I must change!” The great coaches, Pat Summitt and John Wooden, believed that the greatest birthright we are given is personal responsibility. We are given around 800,000 hours or so. What we do with those hours is called our life. And what we do with our life ultimately depends upon the responsibility we take for our choices and actions.
LeBron James, who deeply admired John Wooden and Pat Summitt, is one of the most recognizable, successful, and admired athletes on earth. At nearly 40-years of age, he continues to re-define what is possible in a supposed young man’s sport, having just won the MVP at the Paris Olympics for his consistent excellence in leading the USA to the gold medal. He is widely considered the greatest basketball player of his generation. But as extraordinary as his talent, work ethic, and accomplishments are, his greatest and most vital strength is his determination to accept responsibility for his decisions and actions. It is this responsibility that will continue to make his greatest impact long after his basketball days are done.
Like so many of those around him, growing up in the poorest sections of Akron, Ohio, every single day young LeBron found himself living in the midst of poverty, drugs, and violence. He knew all too well what it was to live with hunger and homelessness. As he often said as he looked back, “I’m just a kid from Akron. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be a statistic.”
In the fourth grade he missed over 80 days of school. It was at that pivotal moment in his life that a couple of coaches and teachers took responsibility to give LeBron some structure, guidance, and care. For the first time in his life, they gave him a vision that he could become more than his circumstances. They believed in LeBron more than he had ever believed in himself and demanded of him what Pat Summitt and John Wooden demanded of every one of their players—that he raise his expectations of himself athletically, academically, and as a human being. In the fifth grade LeBron didn’t miss a day of school, and he started an ascension as a student, basketball player, and leader that keeps rising ever higher.
Throughout his phenomenal career, LeBron has never stopped accepting responsibility to make a difference for kids just like him. He continues to speak out for what he believes, even when chided to “Shut up and dribble.” When you fully accept responsibility, you refuse to let naysayers and critics silence you or inhibit your passion. LeBron has an unstoppable vision to help these disadvantaged children from the streets of Akron become very different kinds of statistics. His vision is to help them become the kind of statistics that meant the most to Pat Summitt and John Wooden: College graduates, doctors, teachers, community leaders, and responsible, inspired parents who teach their children that anything is possible. He believes that as a direct result of changing the statistics of what those young people become, literacy rates will rise dramatically, drug use will diminish, crime rates and homelessness will drop, and countless lives will be improved.
In July of 2018 the LeBron James Family Foundation opened what he considers his greatest accomplishment—more than his career scoring record, more than his Championships, more than his MVP awards—the I Promise School in his hometown of Akron. This school represented a new model for helping disadvantaged children learn personal responsibility, structure, boundaries, and character. At the I Promise School the academic day is longer. School stays in session until 5 PM so the students have more time to learn, and less time on the streets. Meals and snacks are provided because LeBron understands from his own experience that hungry children have a much harder time focusing and engaging.
Everywhere the children and faculty look at the I Promise School, they see inspirational quotes, photos, and images of possibility, positive attitude, gratitude, and vision. Three hundred third and fourth graders walked through the doors of the I Promise School that first day and met a giant of a man with tears of joy in his eyes and a smile that shined with hope for each and every one of them. Accepting and exercising personal responsibility is the only way to change the world for the better.
Like LeBron James, Pat Summitt and John Wooden were not afraid to make mistakes, nor were they disappointed in their players when they made them, so long as their effort and intensity was strong. But they were determined not to repeat them. Coach Summitt expressed her philosophy of personal responsibility this way: “Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you’re never wrong? If you don’t admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you’re bound to make the same one again.”
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