They were supposed to be a juggernaut.
The 2012-2013 version of the Los Angeles Lakers had it all, from a professional basketball context. An all-time great in Kobe Bryant. A former Most Valuable Player in Steve Nash. A former Defensive Player of the Year in Dwight Howard. And a supporting cast of players that were mostly in the prime of their careers.
It was an accumulation of talent that many considered among the best of all-time in the National Basketball Association.
While another ballyhooed superteam across the country — the Miami Heat — was still celebrating their championship run from the season prior, the Lakers seemed poised to win the next title. All they had to do is show up.
Or so everyone thought.
The team lost four of its first five games, costing the head coach his job. But the coaching change did little to change the team’s fortunes, as the Lakers continued to lose more games than they won for several more months.
It took a late-season surge to push the team’s record over the breakeven mark. Los Angeles didn’t clinch a playoff spot until the last day of the season. And the San Antonio Spurs made quick work of them in the postseason — winning four straight lopsided games.
What on earth happened to the Los Angeles Lakers?
There are plenty of explanations. The team struggled to learn a new offensive system, which led directly to the coaching change. Many of the team’s best players — who were on the wrong side of 30 years old — battled through injuries.
But less talented teams than the Lakers had encountered these setbacks before. And they’d persevered anyway. So why did the Lakers fold like a paper tent in a breeze?
The answer can be summed up in one word: Ego.
Too many members of the 2012-2013 Lakers were in it for themselves. They sought to play their game, rather than buy into the team dynamic. Tension built in the locker room, most notably between Bryant and Howard. And the Lakers never seemed to be all that cohesive on the basketball court as a result.
Yes, the Lakers suffered from a crisis of consideration that doomed their season. But they weren’t alone.
There’s a scourge on our society. A pervasive ailment that festers.
Coast to coast, in big cities and small towns, we must deal with people being wholly inconsiderate.
This takes many forms. It might be a driver who clogs the left lane while keeping their vehicle at a snail’s pace. Or a self-anointed VIP who cuts the line to get served first. Or a biker who revs his Harley engine in a residential neighborhood at 11 PM on a weeknight.
In all cases, the offender is thinking me, not we. They zone in on their own wants and needs, without a single thought to the disruption they cause others.
For a long time, this crisis went unaddressed. The inconsiderate continued with their shenanigans, while those aggrieved by their actions quietly fumed.
But recently, things have started to change.
Going through a public health crisis has raised the stakes of inconsideration. Now, one self-serving action can put countless lives in the balance.
With so much on the line, we feel emboldened to call out inconsiderate behavior. And laying out the dire consequences helps us demand change.
Sometimes, this leads to tangible improvements. Sometimes, the targets of our ire see shame in their oversight and vow to be better.
But other times, there is blowback. Those who act boorishly respond with aggression instead of change. And the intense backlash only helps to deepen the fissures omnipresent in our society.
Of course, we’d prefer the first outcome to the second one. But either result is better than the status quo.
You see, inconsideration is about more than bucking rules and customs. It also represents a failure of common understanding. A gap between perceptions of the world around us.
To emerge from this quagmire, we need to bridge that gap. But how?
I lay in bed in the middle of the night, unable to sleep.
Insomnia wasn’t the culprit. Neither was anxiety.
No, the cause of my sleeplessness was a constant barrage of death metal cascading through the wall from the apartment next door. The music was persistent, and it was unavoidable.
Enraged, I marched out to the hallway and knocked on my neighbor’s door. After getting no response, I called the apartment’s courtesy officer and alerted them to the issue. Finally, I abandoned my bedroom, resigning myself to a night on the couch.
After this hellacious night, all was well for a while. As the days went by, I nearly forgot that the incident even happened.
But about a month later, it returned. I once again woke up in the middle of the night, tortured by the angry tones of death metal.
This time, I emailed the apartment’s community administrator to alert them of the situation. I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, but I knew my neighbor was flouting the community’s noise rules. I wanted that neighbor to get fined.
I never did hear back from the administrator. But the death metal once again went away the following evening. Normalcy seemed to have taken over.
But then, a few weeks after this, the music returned. By now, I was at my wits end. I took out a pen and a Post-It note, and wrote:
Please be a good neighbor and stop playing death metal at 11 PM on a Monday night. Some of us are trying to sleep.
I taped the note to my neighbor’s door, retreated to my apartment, and slept on the couch again.
The next day, I was greeted with the following note on my door:
Sorry, fell asleep while it was playing. Moving out next month, so it won’t be me next time.
I can’t verify if my neighbor did, indeed move out in the subsequent month. But I never was woken up by death metal again.
This whole saga was unpleasant. No one likes to see their sleep patterns disrupted.
But its resolution shows the way out of the crisis of consideration.
That way out is through communication.
Now, Post-It notes are admittedly a clunky way of achieving that objective. But regardless of style points, they did the trick.
Maybe we can all take a page from this book. Maybe we can focus on communicating, instead of fuming about the behavior of others. Maybe we can stop pining for the end outcome and start thinking about the journey needed to get there.
It’s the considerate thing to do. So let’s get it done.