12 Lessons From The Knicks Championship Run

1:51 The first lesson, again, in no specific order, but I think the first lesson is this: hustle back on defense. That's the first lesson. Hustle back on defense. There were two iconic plays that happened back to back. One was in game four. They're both in game four. They happened back to back. One was when De'Aaron Fox had a breakaway layup, and don't be a hater. Let it go. It's the playoffs. It's the championship. We don't call fouls. The Knicks got very few calls, and let it go, man. So the Aaron Fox, rather than running out the clock, he goes for the layup, and OG is hustling back and makes this iconic block, followed by his unbelievable tip-in, which we'll get to in a moment. So that image of OG blocking.

2:43 Fox on the breakaway. I heard from one of the pundits on television that has to be the statue. There's a machlokes. What has to be the statue that they make outside of Madison Square Garden? Is it OG's block, which they were comparing to LeBron's chase down block, or is it the tipping? So this one pundit said it's really both. They have to make one statue that somehow encompasses both of those moments because they go together. But there's a big lesson here. The issue is not whether you hit or miss. It's what happens after you make your mistake. There's a big tirah, especially in our generation, when guys make a mistake, especially when they make a mistake in inyane kedusha, because there's a certain shame that comes along with I did that thing, and I promised myself so many times that I wasn't going to do it, and I was on a streak, and I was doing better.

3:37 And now we find ourselves, as one of my rabbis used to say, in a funny place doing a funny thing. I ended up somewhere that Pasha didn't mean to be. So the question is, what do you do next? That's always the question. What do you do next? Do you miss the shot? The Baal Shem Tov says it's not the bite of the snake that kills you; it's the venom. The bite of the snake is just a pinch. It's just a second. It's momentary. That's not what kills you. But the venom that the snake inserts in your body—that's when you die. The avera is a minute. Why is it avera gararas avera? Because after we make the mistake, the venom is in believing that this is my identity. That's what happens when we start to fall into the loophole of shame. Because once I say, 'Oh, I'm a mushlas,' once I say, 'I'm a disgusting person,' now the game is over. Mameila avera gararas avera. Since I did it, now I'm going to do it more. Since I did it, I'm going to do it again, and then because I did it again, I feel even worse about myself. There's such a thing called getting back on defense.

4:33 A mistake is only a failure if you stop running after it happens. It's a big turtle like that. I think they say in the world of stock markets, you only lose when you pull your money. As long as you're still going, it's possible that the stock can make a comeback. Once you stop running back on defense, that's when the show's over. You guys, especially as you're finishing up your shanabet. Which I hold this is a hemshuk of shanabed. I hold people like is this like there's a lundus here? Is machlokes like is this an addendum to shanabed? Is it a hemshuk of shanabed? Maybe shanabed never really ended. What's the pshat and steeks? Why does it have a whole new halayshem? I'm sure Rabbi Safa worked out the lundus with you guys. You can tell that I used to learn by R' Parnes. I also know these fancy words. It projects. It projects shanabed. All the fancy words. Booster pshat means you're already holding in the world of serious lundus.

5:27 I think there's a fundamental question that we all have at this stage of my life. I'm and I can't believe I'm still falling. So must be that this is my identity. We're working. We're always falling. We're always getting back up. The question is that game saving play might be because you hustled back on defense because you still believed there was a chance that I was still going to get back up. That's a big tire. That's number one. Number two. Sometimes a victory is a question of inches. If you go back to that OG Tippin and you really look at the picture, it's unbelievable. He flew in. Nobody picked him up. Nobody boxed out. It's true. But if you look at how high his hand was above everybody else's, it's not that much. It's not that much, which means that it's that extra tiny little extension, that extra how much was that extra bounce that he had? It's one more second of effort that makes all of the difference. We often think we make a very big mistake in our Yiddishkeit that greatness is dramatic, that that's what it takes to be great, that I have to have this like dramatic moment in order to be great, and if I don't have that, and it's like that's when my dramatic moment is, and that no, just because.

6:49 The moment is not dramatic. Doesn't mean that extra little bit of effort is not what is going to propel you upwards, right? And if you think about that, right? Like everyone else stopped here, but I pushed myself that little extra bit. I wanted to share with you something I learned from my rebbe of Parnas many years ago. I asked my rebbe when he prepared sheer. That's the one he prepared sheer. So he told me he prepared sheer seven to ten hours a day. Seven to ten hours a day. And I want you to know about my rebbe that he never prepared shiur from his notes. He taught for 59 years. He never went back to the recordings. He never went back to his old notes. Every time he prepared shiur, it was totally fresh. So I asked my rebbe. I said, "When does rebbe have seven to ten hours a day?" When I was learning with him, he was in his 70s. So seven to ten hours a day is a massive undertaking. So you know what he told me? He said.

7:44 When I'm walking to the car, I'm thinking and learning. When I'm in the car, he had a driver because otherwise it would also be to learn be'ian while you're driving. In fact, one time I was in a car accident, and the first question my rabbi asked me was, "Mordechai, were you thinking and learning?" And I was like, "No." He was so excited that maybe the possibility that I got into a car accident because he said, "Because the halacha is you're not allowed to learn be'ian when you're driving because maybe you're going to get into a car accident." I was like, "No, just I'm a bad driver in that moment." Happens to be, I was driving in Borough Park. I was making fun of Chassidim, and then boom, crashed my car. Like different lesson from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Seven says seven to ten hours a day. On the way to the car, in the car, on the way from the car to the office, on the way from the office to the Beis Medrash, he was consumed in his learning. He was consumed by it. In fact, I remember when he was discussing Hasmoda, he used the term ferocious.

8:40 And I wrote it down in my notes because it was such. I'd never heard the term 'ferocious hashmada' before. He had single-minded focus, that level of dedication. I believe. I don't think it's a chutzpah for me to say this. I believe about my rebbe that he was brilliant. There's no doubt. But I don't think he was a genius. I don't think he was a genius. There's such a thing called a genius. A genius, a guy. People that just know massive amounts of shas and pesukim on their fingertips. I don't think that's what my rabbi was. I don't think he was a genius. I think there were certainly bigger geniuses, but I'm not sure if there were bigger lamdanim. He was a great lamdan because he always went that extra mile. He pushed himself tremendously, and that's where the win is. The win, and I've seen it many times in yeshiva. You see these guys that are of average intelligence, but from them comes greatness.

9:28 Because why? If they were willing to go the extra mile, you can actually outperform your level of intelligence. It's an interesting thing we see it in yeshiva all the time, especially in the long term. The masmid becomes the tamochachim, the genius, not necessarily the genius, not necessarily. We had a guy in our shir who was a genius. Used to show up fifteen minutes before Parnas. Used to show up at eleven. Used to show up at ten forty five. 10:45. He would fly through the Ma'ariv Kamos. He was my mashgiach. He would fly through the Ma'ariv Kamos. He was a natural landing. Whenever Parnas would show up at 11, he would walk around checking on the various chabrusas, and then he would go sit with this guy in his chabrusa. And it was like he was able to do what took me three hours, he was able to do in 15 minutes. I have to tell you, it was so frustrating. My mashgiach hated him. I loved him as a friend. I hated him as a person. Because he was awesome. He was a rock star.

10:21 I was so frustrated because he highlighted my weaknesses. Not only that, if Parnas used to give only one A, he would grade us. He would only give one A, so everybody else got an A minus every year. I would get an A minus one time. I finally asked him, Rebbe, I wrote the paper because we didn't have a test, we had a paper that we had to write, you had to write out a whole sugya. I wrote the sugya perfectly, and I said to Reuven, "I'm like Rebi, like wasn't deserving of an A." And he goes, "We call him Reuven." He goes, "Reuven gets the A. Everybody else gets an A minus." It bothered me so much. I was like, "Really?" I just, I'm not like I thought I was doing well. The truth is, in the long term, I don't know if he's a talmud cham. I don't know. He's a genius. I don't know if he's a talmud cham. The guys in the she'er like Reuven's who were masmidim.

11:09 They were masmiedim. Those guys became the talmidei chachamim. In fact, I'll share with you that there's a guy who, as a decent likelihood, will be one of the gedolei adar. His name is Rav Shmuel Belsh. This is J C. Boy. Skipped eleventh grade. Went to Eretz Israel. Learned in Eretz Israel for two years, and then he learned in Landers for a couple of years. Then he today he's in Lakewood. He's a dayan in Lakewood. You're going to hear of him one day. He's from Edison, New Jersey. Edison, that's not nice. He's from Edis and many great people have come out of Elizabeth. For sure, Rabbi Sauber. No doubt about it. He's a dyan in Lakewood today. His hasmoda is unbelievable. He's smart. I would even say brilliant, but he's not a genius. But his hasmoda we learned together with B'chavrusa. He was a couple years younger than me. In fact, when he first came to yeshiva, I didn't want to learn with him B'chavrusa. Parnas made me because he said because I was learning with Parnas B'chavrusa. Parnas said to me, goes listen.

12:06 Mordechai, for you learning with him, it's like me learning with you. Maybe that was like the gap. So he's like, if I'm doing this chessed learning with you, you have to do me this chessed and learn with him. In a short amount of time, he outpaced me, six months to a year, and he was unbelievable. He would learn, and I'm not encouraging this. This is he's chad b'dayray. Don't do this. It's not normal for him. It's normal for you. It's not normal. His regular staram were 22 hours a day. And without Batalla, and if you think I'm exaggerating, Avi, I put, I, we call, we called up one of the, a guy today who supports him. He's like, got a Yisachar's woolen contract. I could verify the story a million times over. I could call any. I used to get text messages from him back in the day of text messages. I used to get text messages from this guy at four o'clock in the morning. I founder of the Kiva Eger that argues on your pshat. I used to wake up pretty early in the morning. Even back then, I used to wake up early in the morning. I would like message him back. Go to sleep.

12:58 I don't have time to think about Yeravichkev Ager at five o'clock in the morning. Guy was an unbelievable mazman. You go that extra mile. That's what gets you the win. Another one, another lesson. You don't need to be perfect to win, but you do need to learn from your mistakes. And if you learn from your mistakes, that's where greatness is. If you think about this next season up until the playoffs, I would say it was a very average season. They lost to almost every good team, and they beat the teams they were supposed to win. And then, if you remember, in the very beginning of the playoffs, they're playing the Hawks, and all of a sudden, Mike Brown shifted their offense completely. And now, instead of Jalen Brunson having the ball, Karl Anthony Towns had the ball. It changed the nature of their offense. And since that game, they went 15 and one. They lost one game since that entire time. They finished off the Hawks. They swept the 76ers. They swept the Cavs, and then they had the gentleman sweep of San Antonio.

13:56 The key is you have to learn from your mistakes. The difference between San Antonio and the Knicks was San Antonio kept making the same mistakes over and over again. Get the ball out of Fox's hands. Put the ball in Dylan Harper's hands. This is not that hard. He's only twenty years old. He might be the second best player on your team. There might be a time where he's the best player on the Spurs. But the coach kept making the same mistake over and over again. The problem is not when you make a mistake. The problem is when you keep repeating the mistakes. What does tshuva mean? Tshuva doesn't mean that you have to pretend that the mistake never happened. How does the Rambam define tshuva? The Rambam defines tshuva that you come to the same place, same circumstance, same time, everything is the same, and this time you do it different. Is a kasha on the Rambam? How do you know that's going to happen? It's like a good kasha, right? And what happens if it never happens again? What happens if I never find myself in a similar situation? Does that mean that I can't do tshuva? You know what the answer is.

14:53 It's pretty clear from the Rambam that you could. This is one of those lamdas where you turn the question mark into an exclamation point. There's no such thing as not finding yourself in the same situation. Life has this repetitive cycle to it. Have you guys noticed this? It keeps bringing you back to the same moment of failure over and over again until you figure out how to do it differently. I hate to do this, but in business, doesn't it Who wins in business? Who's matzliach in business? Eventually, I got to realize I got to stop making that mistake. Once you correct that one thing, it's like all of a sudden everything works. I can tell you in yeshiva, one of the highlights for me about working in yeshiva is learning from rishis, learning from the rishima. Every single summer, we spend an enormous amount of time, almost like a foolish amount of time, unpacking every single mistake we made over the years.

15:47 Our most vicious critic is the Rosh Yeshiva. There's nothing you could say to us that Rav Isaacson hasn't already said to us, and he's not. It doesn't come from a bad place. He says we're going to do it better. We're going to learn from our mistakes. I remember when we were first starting rebuilding the yeshiva 18 years ago. You guys know how it goes. We go into New Jersey, we go into Long Island, we have to talk to the parents about what's going on in the yeshiva. Back then, the yeshiva wasn't doing so well. And parents would ask the rosh. They would go, "I heard that in Mevasserah X is happening." Usually, what do people do? They give some sort of political answer. They Brian Cashman it. You know what I mean? It's the Brian Cashman question. Brian Cashman always gives an answer that doesn't sound like anything. You always ask him like, "When's Aaron Judge coming back?"

16:33 Obviously, we're putting our best people on the case and we're going to do what's best for the team and obviously what's best for Aaron. Our doctors are working with his doctor. You have no idea what he's talking about. By the end of it, you're just writing stuff. It's like in the paper the next day. Nobody knows what he said. That's how you're supposed to answer a question politically. You say nothing. Reb Isaacson, this is how we would answer the question. You go, you're right. I keep making that mistake. I'm going to get better at it. And I'm sitting there going, Rebbe, that's the wrong answer. You're trying to engender people's trust. Over time, it actually worked. Over time, when we started doing better and it was on the tipping point of whether kids were going to choose to come to Mivasyar or not, a fascinating thing happened. We were getting feedback from parents that they spoke to other parents in the neighborhood and they were going, I really wanted to send my son a couple years ago to Mivasyar, but the yeshiva wasn't ready. But we really liked Rav Isaac, and he was really honest.

17:23 So I heard the yeshiva is doing much better now. And over time, because we learned from our mistakes, and Rav Isaacson just kept having the integrity to say this is the mistake we're making. Let's not make the same mistake again. That's how the yeshiva got incrementally better. If you don't have enough seichel to say it's not working the whole season, it wasn't working. The team was average. But once they figured out what worked, once he flipped the script, all of a sudden everything clicked into place. Another lesson: you have to be built for the end of the season. Teams that look amazing in November and have nothing left in June don't win the championship. You have to have enough legs to win the championship. Wemby looked ghast at the end of the games. The end of the games, it was no doubt he was going to miss those free throws. Not only because he looked petrified, but also the man is physically exhausted. You have to be built not just for the beginning of the season, the middle of the season, or the beginning of the playoffs. You have to have legs in the seventh game.

18:21 Of the championship, otherwise your shots are going to fall short. Kobe learned that lesson when he airballed those four. When he, if you guys are holding in Kobe at all, you guys are too young for this. Kobe airballed four shots. Remember that Steve? Kobe airballed four shots. I think in his rookie career in the playoffs. It was like in an overtime game, and everyone was like saying, are you okay? He's like, yeah, I'm fine. I just have to learn the lesson that I need to have legs at the end of the season in order to be successful. It's the same thing when it comes to avodah shem. There's something about this whole time in Israel that's always bothered me, which is this like I'm living off the hype, like I'm in yeshiva, it's hype, and I'm growing, it's hype. There's a lot of excitement. Excitement doesn't last. Excitement won't get you when nobody's around and the excitement fades. What's going to keep you as an Eved Hashem? That's the difference in excitement and inspiration. People conflate these terms. They're not the same thing. You have to know that they're not the same thing.

19:16 Excitement doesn't last. You might feel great at the end of a tish, at the end of a brayin, at the end of a mishmar. You might feel amazing. What happens two weeks later? What happens three weeks later? Excitement doesn't last. Inspiration lasts a lifetime. Inspiration has legs, because inspiration, real inspiration, is that you think differently about the world. Inspiration is that you changed your glasses. Once you change your glasses, you see things differently. That's why the only true inspiration is education. That's why you ever have a moment where you learn something, where you go like. And then everything clicks into place, and now you can't unsee it. I remember there are certain things that I learned, like once I learned that vulnerability was the birthplace of connection. Once I heard that, one line, it reframed everything that I did in my relationships, because I was like, you're not going to have a relationship unless you're vulnerable. See, that's real inspiration. Inspiration is that it's so clear to you that it's not about emotion. It's not about emotion.

20:14 The legs to go the distance—that's inspiration, and that's why learning Torah is so critical. Because what learning Torah does is it actually inspires you to see the world the way that Hashem sees the world. Who's the guy that three weeks later, four weeks later, ten years later, twenty years later, after Yeshiva is way over? Who's the guy that's still going to an Iyun Chaburah at night, still going to Minyan, still working on himself? Those are the legs to go the distance. Wembi didn't have the legs. Inspiration is the legs, not excitement. Another big one. Jalen Brunson said in his press conference, he said, "How do I have the confidence in these big moments?" He said, "Confidence comes from work ethic." I saw when I heard him say that, I was like, "That is a brilliant line." Most people think of confidence as something you're born with, right? Something you magically turn on. They think it's like a mindset. It's not true.

21:11 Confidence is in an empty gym in the summer when you're sitting there shooting your thousand free throws, your thousand three pointers. You're relying on your habits, and I think it's the same thing also when it comes to our avodas Hashem. I remember my mother told me this when I was very young. It bothered me very much when I was younger. Eventually, I chapped what she was saying. She said, "If you want to have Hakadosh Baruch Hu in your life, and you want to daven to Hashem when things are not going well, you have to daven to Him when things are going well." It bothered me very much. The whole reason I'm davening is so that when things don't go well, I should have a relationship that I can come to Hashem and rely on it. I got a little bit older. I realized what she was saying. She wasn't saying, like in a narcissistic way of using Hashem. Talk to Hashem when it's good. This way, Hashem will be there when it's not good.

22:01 You tell little kids to share your toys so that other people will share their toys with you. That's basically just teaching your kids to be selfish. But that's all a five-year-old can understand. The five-year-old can understand I should play, I should help him play with, I should give him my toys so that one day he'll give me my toys. I thought that's what it was. Speak to Hashem now when it's going well. So then, when it's not going well, you could take a withdrawal from the account. It's much deeper than that. Build the habit of having a relationship with Hashem. So that you'll have the relationship with Hashem as your baseline. It's the confidence that you've built up because I've been learning and I've been davening and I've been doing chesed and I've been giving tzedakah. These things are the baseline of my life. So when the going gets tough, I'm ready for it. I want you to know I see it tremendously. I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say it. I'm the spal. I've been hanging out a lot with Rehersal over the last eight plus weeks. I'm the spal from Rehersal.

22:56 I'm the spall from Reb Hershel. He's going through. We all know he's going through Gehenna. None of us can imagine what he's going through. Halavai, none of us should ever have to imagine what he's going through. But I see all the work. If you want to know who Reb Hershel really is, I see all the work that he's put into himself in his life. I could see it right now. His relationship with Hashem is so strong that it's the bedrock that he's relying on right now. And so there are other things that are challenging for him. But he said to me, he said, "It's interesting. I have no tainas on Hashem." Your wife is in a coma. You have no tainas on Hashem. That doesn't come by accident. That comes from years and years of working on your relations with Hashem. I was talking to a shanalph guy at the end of the year, and he said to me a very interesting thing. He's not a guy who performed as much as we would have wanted in the base measure. He's coming back shanabet. He's looking to up his performance.

23:49 He spent a lot of time this year, in his words, working on his relationship with Hashem. He was having a conversation with a boy from another yeshiva, and this boy from the other yeshiva was highly critical of him. You worked on your relationship with Hashem, you didn't spend as much time in the base majors as I did. Our guy responded. He said, "I want you to know, if the going gets tough, I believe about myself." He said, "Halavayit should never happen." But I believe about myself. I've worked on the relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I feel like I'm ready. He said, "You learned many more block gemara than I did." But I wonder what would happen to you if the going got tough. And the guy responded to him. At least this is what he reported to me. He goes, "Yeah, I don't know." There's a big difference between just performing and actually having the bedrock of your relationship rock solid, so that you could rely upon it. Confidence is what happens when no one is looking. Another mussar.

24:43 Championship teams are constructed, not collected. There's a big tired out there. I noticed that for you'll like this one. You can't just throw talent together and assume that it's going to work. How do you know this? Because the Knicks proved it for 53 years. For 53 years, we're going to trade this and we're going to get Carmelo and we're going to sign this one and we're going to tank in order to get LeBron. And everyone just assumes. You're going to put this team together, and all of a sudden it's not going to work. It's not true. Every piece of a team has to fit perfectly in order to win a championship. You need defense. You need chemistry. You need team leadership. You need shooting. You need a good bench. You need the right coach. Everything has to come together. If you think about this mixed team, everything came together perfectly in order to win the championship. No superstar on this team. Even though you'll say Brunson scored 45 in the championship.

25:39 He's a mid-level superstar. He's no Giannis. He's no Joker. He's no. He might not even be Anthony Edwards. He's six-two, right? There's no particular move that he has that's devastating. How does a team win a championship like this? Because they're good across the board. They're a team of excellent players, but nobody's a superstar. Same thing in our Avodas Hashem. I think he's right. Everyone has their role. I think it's true on a yeshiva level. I would say even more, it's true in the way the yeshiva construct is constructed to build a bentayr. In other words, the yeshiva is not built just to build you as a lamdan. That's for sure true.

26:28 It's building you as a lamdan. It's Rabbi Glanz's tefilasheir. It's Rav Ben's mussar. It's the rosh's integrity. A yid is somebody who is the total. It's the total package. It can't just be one thing. I want to share with you. Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, my rosh yeshiva was Rav Yaakov Ben Dershalita. Rabbi Bender used to give us shmooz in the same shmooz over and over again, but I know these shmooz by heart because he gave the same ten shmooz and over again. One of the shmooz that he gave us was "Don't be a menuvel berishus hatayra," quoting from the Remban. Don't be somebody who's disgusting, but you can't find anywhere that it's aser. I remember the shmooz that he gave back then was about playing ball on Shabbos. He said you might not be able to find me an iser about playing ball on Shabbos. He said, but it's a menuvel berishus hatayra. How do you avoid that?

27:19 How do you avoid creating a minhagul Bereshos Hatayra? The way to avoid creating a minhagul Bereshos Hatayra is somebody has to be well-rounded. I'm having this conversation with a guy in the neighborhood, and I think he's right. If a boy just learns Gemara, he might become because of that. If he's especially if he's doing it shalol l'shem Shamayim, he might be a bad husband. Because what do you do? You're learning in a certain way how to outthink another person. You ever see like, and this is going to be a thing that happens, especially once you're trained to think like a London. You should know you're going to be ten steps ahead of other people when they're saying something, because basically what you'll start to do naturally is you go define it, define what you're saying. Once they define it, you can start to pick apart their definition and show their flaws. Might be very helpful in business. I think Rebbe used to produce plenty of lawyers, used to come from Rebbe Sheir, but I'm not convinced that you'll be a good husband that way.

28:14 You like your wife says something to you, and she's like, "I feel like you're not listening," and you go, "Define listening?" Because I'm right here, and I've heard every word you've said. And here's the reason I think you're making a mistake in what you say. This is like a bad, slippery slope to be on. But a guy who's learning mussar, a guy who's working on his davening, a guy who's working on his general relationship with Hashem, he's well-rounded. If you only learn Gemara and you don't learn the rest of those things, as Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said, it's harder to change a midah than it is to learn all of Shas. A yid has to be well-rounded. A team has to be constructed in a broad way. Same thing when it comes to us. Another one: you do not need to be the best at everything, but you do need to play to your strengths. So many of our challenges come from when we try to be somebody that we're not.

29:10 That's a very big Torah. Jalen Brunson is not the best at anything, but he does what he does perfectly. He executes what he executes perfectly. I think a lot of times in our avodas Hashem, we start like you'll see this a lot in yeshiva. There's a certain competition. Benja's the best guy in she'er. He's the biggest lamb. Then naturally, I got to be as good as Benja. Basil can beat anybody in Torah ball. I got to become like the ultimate bakius guy. Fights the biggest masmud. I gotta be the biggest masmud. Play to your strengths. You don't need to be like them. That's their thing. Do your thing. The more you do your thing, and Ravulba speaks about this in Aliy Shor. The more you do your thing, the more you pour like gasoline on the fire of your own greatness. You'll see. You'll naturally start to let go of other things.

30:01 A guy is struggling in certain areas of his yiddishkeit. If he Reb Volber writes, just focus on what you do really well, and you'll see it like pushes it away. And that's what he means. Sore meirav the ase tov. Sometimes the ase tov is the sore meirav. Just do play to your strengths. Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky used to say that in his shir, he asked halts in akashus, not eyes in akashus. You guys know what an eyes in akasha is. Remember, Brach Spiegel says that the Vachu used to say Eisenakasha, and Eisenakasha is an iron question, and a Holznakasha is like a wooden question. An Eisenakasha is a sharp lamedish question. A Holznakasha is a wooden kasha. It's not so. It's not so sharp. RYakov used to say. But from those Holznakashes, that's how I built my shear. He had his Derech Halimah. In fact, in Slabodka, I don't know if you guys know this.

30:52 In Slabodka, where both Rav Aaron Kotler and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky learned, and you could argue that Slabodka is responsible for almost all the Torah in the world today, they had unbelievable magidei shir, but they weren't. The Alter didn't let them give shir for more than twenty minutes because he was afraid that they would become replicas. He wanted them to learn to think for themselves. Your unique creativity, I hold, that was the godless of my Rebbe. The godless of my Rebbe was not his pshat. It was he gave us the process through which we could use our own creative talents to understand the sugya, and that's what was so geshmack about learning by him. It's like all of a sudden, instead of being a spectator, you were a participant. And even if Rebbe showed you why what you said was really stupid, and even if he made you feel really stupid for saying it, but you accessed your own creativity, and that's when learning came alive. Another lesson. I know we only have no minutes left, so there's a couple lessons left. I'll try to go as fast as possible.

31:48 Don't be afraid to take a timeout. If you look at all the Knicks runs, they all came with the same mistake. The other coach didn't call timeout. You call timeout, you stop the spiral. You're up 29 points. How do you blow that lead? 29 points. How do you allow that comeback to happen? Call a timeout. Stop the momentum. Same thing when it comes to us. There's an urgency sometimes when we're going through life. There's such urgency we don't know how to hit pause, and because we don't know how to hit pause, we're making mistakes. You can stop. You can say I need to take a time out. Things are not going well. Step out. There's nothing wrong with stepping out. There's nothing wrong with saying I need to step out of the base manager for a second. I need to go to the hotel today just to get my head right.

32:33 You don't do it often, right? You want to keep the momentum of the game going, but you have to know when it's time to take a timeout. I'm slipping. I got to catch myself before it gets really bad. Sometimes, because we don't take a timeout, we end up in very foolish places. We're sitting there going, how in the world did I get here? You got there. You just didn't stop long enough to say, how can I slow this process down? I'm making these mistakes. What do I need to do it differently? Another one. And I guess it's like sort of along these lines.

33:04 Believe in the impossible comeback. You get older and you realize one basic truth about being in chenoch. Guys who you'd think like this is who they are at eighteen. Slow down, be patient. Let's see what that guy looks like at forty. Let's see what he looks like at sixty. I don't want to give too many details of this story away because I don't think it speaks highly of any of the people in the story. But there was a certain big gevir that was honored at a yeshiva dinner. The rosh yeshiva is known to be a sharp, sharp sort of fellow, and he often gives very stark mussar. This big gevir that he honored at the dinner decided that he was going to make a siyum on a mesecta for the dinner. Isn't that so nice? It was the first siyum he ever made, and he got up at the dinner and he made the siyum. And the rosh yeshiva spoke afterwards. He tore the guys to shreds. He managed to tear his own gevir to shreds. The guy he's honoring at the dinner.

33:59 He said, "You should know we had no nachas from you for so many years." Everyone in the audience is cracking up because it's classic. This Rashi Shiva is ripping his own honoree. He said, "But we had unbelievable patience with you, and look, it paid off. It's a tremendous mussar. You think you know who a guy is—18 years old, 20 years old, 25 years old—guys off the derech. You don't know he's married to a guy living in the Czech Republic. I'm not talking about anyone specific, right? If you know. If you don't know, you don't know. Happens to be a very close friend of mine, one of my best friends in the world." Believe in the impossible comeback. It doesn't matter. A very close friend of mine, married to a guy living in the Czech Republic, one of my closest friends in the world. Believe anyway, the Talmud of I don't actually know if he was a Talmud of yours. We were in high school, certainly overlapped a little bit. Comeback? Not yet. Not yet. What's weird? The Czech Republic is probably the more interesting part. He lives in Brno.

34:56 But you should know you have to believe in the impossible comeback. If you look at Chazal, it's clear tshuva is accessible to even the people that are the most farthest away, and that's like every Meimor Chazal. If you look at tshuva, it's like ainadaver omei b'fnei tshuva. You have to believe in the impossible comeback. You have to believe it about others. You have to believe it about yourself. Give yourself the gift of patience. Another one. The celebration of this championship is built on years that nobody ever saw. 53 years is a long drought. You think that this championship was built overnight? It wasn't. When they brought in Leon Rose and they brought in Worldwide Wes, it was one incremental move after another. It doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes. There were certainly mistakes. You don't sign Gershon Yabaseli, apparently.

35:50 But you do trade him to get Jose Alvarado, who gives you critical minutes in that final quarter of that fourth game, right? You have to know. Nobody ever sees the becoming; they only see the end result. Rav Huttner writes this in a letter. He says, 'We speak about our gedolim, and we see like the gedolim have achieved this.' He goes, 'Yeah, but you didn't see what the gadol went through. He didn't see what he went through. You know how many setbacks a person has to go through in life? How many incremental moves? That's a big one.' If you don't want to say, one last lesson. Humility. For sure, we're gonna post it on Most Dot Steve. Then why you turn up? Absolutely. This way, whatever hate I get, it could be public. But I'm doing it consciously. I know exactly what I'm doing. Last lesson. This is a lesson in humility.

36:47 Championship basketball is built on no ego. That's the MS. You have to be willing to play together as a team. The great players who play by themselves never win. It's the bittle. It's to take out your ego to say I'm part of something larger than myself. That's when victories happen. That's the keyisode. It's the same thing with us. When we think like, This is my tafkid, and we hold on to it. Like, no, I have to be in this position. Love dafka. Who says? I remember many years ago, I was when I was learning with Rezucker, back when Rezucker was in Mabasaret, and I was a bacher. So I asked him. I said, How come it's not? How come it's not fair? Like, how come I wasn't born with the neshama of a tzaddik? I also want to be a tzaddik. Why wasn't I born with the neshama of a tzaddik? So I remember Rezucker looked at me and he goes, Why weren't you born a kohen?

37:43 I don't know, because my dad's not a kohen. Why wasn't I a kohen? He goes, Your job is not to be a tzaddik. Your job is to be Mordechai Berg. You have to be mevatel yourself to be Mordechai Berg, because just because we have a desire to be something that we're not doesn't make it right. And in life, this is a fundamental question. Somebody asked me this question recently, and I think it's a beautiful question. What happens when I could put myself in one place, and maybe that would be better for me? Or I could put myself where the tzibur needs me. So the yisod is be mevatel yourself to the will of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Don't ask yourself what's best for you. Ask yourself what does Hakadosh Baruch Hu want from me right now, and you'll see the entire equation starts to shift. Because once you start asking what does the Rebbeinu Shalom want from me, then the question is different. You frame the question differently, and the answer will be different. I'll leave you with this.

38:37 When I was in yeshiva and already married, I had a job opportunity. I was learning in kollel, but I had a job opportunity to go teach, and I was seriously considering it. I didn't know whether to take it or not. I called Rav Zucker and asked him, if I go to teach now, what's going to be with my learning? I remember Rav Zucker gave me big mussar. He said, 'Are you asking what's going to be with your learning because you want to learn? Are you asking what's going to be with your learning because that's what the Rebbeinu Shalom wants from you in this moment? So if the Rebbeinu Shalom wants you to learn, then continue learning. If the Rebbeinu Shalom wants you to teach, if this is that time, then your obligation is to go teach.' Happens to be, I stayed in Kyiv three more years because whatever things moved around a little bit, and I was able to see that for me, the right move at that time was to continue learning. But when I left Kyiv, you should know I didn't leave feeling like I was leaving b'diavad.

39:31 Because I had that rubric of that question, be mevatel yourself to the will of Hashem. What does Hashem want from me right now? Do we care about the Knicks? It's gishmak a little bit. It's fun, but the lessons that we're meant to learn, like the Bal Shem Tov says, we learn a lesson from everything that's happening in the world. These are, I think, some of the fundamental lessons. Perhaps there are more that you'll add, but I think these are some of the fundamental lessons that we're meant to learn in our service to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Boys, have a wonderful evening.