I immensely enjoyed watching the Oklahoma City Thunder win the NBA Championship last year. But, I learned more by watching them lose this year. For the last two years the Oklahoma City Thunder have been the best team in the NBA. That ended on Saturday night when they lost to San Antonio in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. I’ve decided the reason we need sports is because they teach us about success and failure. Every week we intentionally pit teams against each other in a zero sum game. One side will win and one will lose. We do this because we want to be a part of success. But we also want to learn how to fail from those we admire. We want to experience failure as a part of a community that is disappointed together. Even the most successful teams have to go through periods of failure and disappointment. The same is true of us as individuals. I do a lot of public speaking and I have come to loathe the part where I am introduced. I get it, the point is to communicate credibility so that people will actually listen to me when I speak. But when I hear my bio it isn't the full story. It is just the highlights. It is a way of telling my story that sounds like an unbroken string of success. The people who know me best know the deeper truth. For every success I’ve experienced, I can tell several stories about the setbacks that preceded it. Simple Modern has been more successful than I could have dreamed. But the startup I helped build in the years before founding Simple Modern was a failure that lost millions of dollars. Those kinds of stories don’t show up in newspaper articles. They should because they are essential. Success is like a cake and you cannot bake without the ingredients of failure, difficulty and hardship. Without these challenges, It is impossible to develop the skill and perseverance needed to achieve anything worthwhile. The Thunder failed to reach their goal this year, but as I have listened to their reactions following game 7 I have heard individuals who are: Owning the failure Avoiding excuses Taking personal responsibility Choosing to trust their teammates Looking for ways to grow and improve In my estimation, someone is a “winner” based on their mindset and not the scoreboard. Winners eventually win on the scoreboard because they have a mindset that makes it inevitable. I’ve been fortunate to have a front-row seat, both literally and figuratively, to the Thunder’s ascension. I’ve learned that the foundation of their success was built when they weren't winning basketball games. Because the foundation is their mindset and culture. Over the last two years they’ve experienced more success than a fan like me could reasonably hope for. But since their season ended, I realized something surprising. I appreciate the team in defeat even more than I have in victory. They have shown me, and many other people in this community, how winners approach failure.