Sunday Pick: How to Survive a Losing Team | Good Sport

**Elise Hue** (0:04)
Happy Sunday, y'all, Elise Hue here, and today we're bringing you a Sunday pick, where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us, for you.
No one loves to lose. With the World Cup just ending, every soccer or football fan around the world is feeling mixed emotions about the wins and losses of their favorite teams. But the truth is, even if you are a goat on a great and lucky team, no one wins every single time. So how do people who face loss after loss keep fighting to win? To reflect on these questions, we dug into our archive and returned to a beloved episode of our show from 2023, Good Sport. In this episode, host Jody Avergan speaks with Nikky McCray, a retired WNBA player who played on three all-star teams and now coaches at Rutgers about the secrets to perseverance. Then he chats with psychologist and neuroscientist Ian Robertson to discuss what losing can teach us about winning. If you want more sports content from TED or just want to see the world through a new lens, check out Good Sport wherever you get your podcasts. Learn all about TED podcasts at podcasts.ted.com.
Now on to the episode.

**Jody Avrigin** (1:22)
Some of the deepest thoughts I've ever had, biggest emotions, have been in a post-game team circle, especially after a loss.
Sitting on the grass, exhausted, slowly taking off the cleats, trying not to look your teammates in the eye, or you might just start crying. Someone has to say something in these moments. I once had a coach tell me after a brutal season ending loss, don't replay this game over and over in your head. You can't fix the past. You can try and learn from it. But you can't fix the past.
Yeah, I know, wise words, great coach. And really hard to do.
I've always been one of those people who hates to lose more than I love to win. I think a lot of top athletes are that way. That might be why I'm so fascinated by losing, because it's an inevitable part of loving sports, but it never gets easier, at least not for me. And I'm particularly fascinated by losing streaks. I've been lucky enough to never have been on a truly hard luck team, but sometimes I look at a college or pro team with an awful record, and I wonder, how do they deal with it, loss after loss? How do they keep going? That's how I ended up talking to Nikky McCray, Women's Basketball Hall of Famer.

**Nikky McCray** (2:43)
When you're a pro, your job is to perform, you know, and it's a short season, so there's a lot of expectation.

**Jody Avrigin** (2:53)
She knows what it's like to be on a losing team. For most of her career in the WNBA, she played on teams with losing records. It started with her season on the Washington Mystics, which was then a new WNBA expansion team. Their record in 1998 was 3-27.
Three wins, 27 losses.

**Nikky McCray** (3:15)
Winning had followed me up until that point. That year, we only won three games. That was very hard for someone like me who...
Everywhere I've gone, I've won.

**Jody Avrigin** (3:29)
Up to that point, winning really did follow Nikky. She grew up in a small town just outside of Memphis, where she'd play basketball outside until the streetlights came on around 9 or 10 p.m. She played for Collierville High School, where she set four state records.

**Nikky McCray** (3:43)
I started all four years on the varsity team. By the time I was a junior and senior, our team was making it to state.

**Jody Avrigin** (3:52)
Then Nikky spent four years at the University of Tennessee, one of the greatest college programs ever. She was SEC Player of the Year in 94 and 95
Olympic gold followed in 1996 Years and years of winning.

**Nikky McCray** (4:06)
I think where I hit a little bump on the road was with the Washington Mystics.

**Jody Avrigin** (4:13)
Nikky spent four seasons with the Mystics, and every season they lost more games than they won. And then she went on to play for the Indiana Fever, another losing season.

**Nikky McCray** (4:22)
You know, we just, we didn't win.

**Jody Avrigin** (4:25)
Nearly every WNBA team Nikky played on struggled. Even if she personally was making all-star teams, I had to ask her, how did it not get to her? How did it not get to the team?
And that's when Nikky said something that really surprised me.

**Nikky McCray** (4:41)
Even though we were three and whatever in DC, every night the expectation was to win.