Here’s To You Tamir Goodman

Last week I read a very inspiring story about a man that about a decade ago was dubbed the “Jewish Jordan” (his real name is Tamir Goodman) during his high school basketball career. During his junior year in high school he averaged 38 points a game.

It was during this time that he committed to play for the University of Maryland, which at the time had a fantastic basketball program. But there was a problem, Tamir is a practicing Orthodox Jew and playing for Maryland would mean playing on his Sabbath Day. So, he said goodbye to Maryland and the glory it may have brought him. He ended up playing for Towson, where the head coach was willing to rearrange the team’s schedule to accommodate Tamir’s Sabbath day observance. Unfortunately for Tamir, that arrangement only lasted one season. Towson replaced the head coach with a man that didn’t have the same flexibility as the previous coach. Tamir, at this point, was broken; he was left without a team to play for, or even a desire to keep on playing. Thankfully, his desire was renewed and he ended up playing professionally for Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv. Of course, the story didn’t end there. His time playing professional ball was riddled with injuries and setbacks.

At this point you may be asking yourself why I felt this story was inspiring and why the heck I’m writing about sports when this is a marketing blog. Here is why:

Here we have a guy that has been plagued by numerous setbacks and injuries that have left him permanently weakened. But here is what he has to say about all of it-

“All my injuries were my biggest blessings because the first part of my career, I only knew success. I had tremendous amounts of success… How can you inspire someone if you’ve never felt struggle before, if you’ve never felt adversity before? Society tends to, for basketball players, define success as, ‘Where do you play?’ or, ‘How many points do you score a game?’ For me, I learned that success is what good you can do for someone else through basketball.”

Do not his words ring true? This story has so many great lessons we can incorporate into our professional lives. Here is my list:

1. Never lower your standards!
2. Be creative and flexible- just like the Towson’s head coach (the first one in the story).
3. Don’t give up!
4. Learn from your failures and then move on.
5. Inspire others and give back.
6. Change the way you look at and measure success. Success does not have to be all or nothing.

So, here’s to you Tamir! You have definitely inspired this blogger!

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