National Basketball Association

LeBron could learn from McIlroy

Published Jun. 16, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Prior to his arrival here for the US Open, Rory McIlroy had sent 16 tweets this month to his more than 328,000 followers. Only three of those talked about his golf game. Four referenced being a fan of the Miami Heat.

McIlroy, it turns out, has become text buddies with LeBron James. They are connected by Audemars Piguet, a fancy Swiss watchmaker that sponsors both of them. While McIlroy spent his days finishing 10th at the Doral tournament in March, he used his nights to go watch the Heat, who were in the middle of a five-game homestand.

“We’ve gone back and forth a bit,” he said.

The kinship between McIlroy, the 22-year-old golfer from Northern Ireland, and James, the 26-year-old NBA star, actually makes a lot of sense. Both emerged from modest backgrounds to be identified as athletic prodigies during their teenage years and touted as the new faces of their respective sports. Both know what it’s like to be promoted as a global icon before really winning anything. And perhaps most relevant to this week, no two athletes in the world have had more trouble finishing off championships.

“If people keep talking about having a bad last quarter all the time, it’s going to sort of get to you,” said McIlroy, who has met James.

While James’ fourth-quarter struggles in the NBA finals continue to be scrutinized, criticized and parodied — he might now be the most disliked athlete on the planet — McIlroy emerged from his Sunday meltdown at the Masters as a sympathetic figure with more fans than ever.

What James should have learned from his Irish buddy is that failure, handled correctly, offers opportunity. With a few humble, introspective words coming off the 18th green, McIlroy grabbed it and is now a sentimental favorite to win the US Open this week. For James, who threw his disappointment back in the face of hateful fans who he felt needed to “get back to the real world” after Miami was eliminated, he may have slammed the door on likeability for a long time.

“Sometimes in the heat of the moment, after a game is played, you say things and you don’t mean them," said Noeleen McGrath, a Chicago-based media training specialist who has coached several NBA and NFL players in how to handle interviews. “But it’s hard to give (James) the benefit of the doubt again. You just want to say, ‘Please get back in touch with reality.’”

Like many casual golf fans, McGrath said she was “captivated” by the Masters this year as McIlroy unraveled on the biggest stage possible, carding an 80 after holding a four-shot lead as the final round began.

Before the Masters, McIlroy was perhaps best known as the cocky young kid with a lot of flair to his game and a small habit of rubbing people the wrong way. Whether it was saying the Ryder Cup is “not that important an event for me” in 2009 or calling Tiger Woods “an ordinary golfer” in March, his confidence could have easily been interpreted as hubris.

Though McIlroy didn’t necessarily have millions rooting against him, nothing makes for better sport in these times of Twitter snark and reality TV than witnessing a public meltdown. Had McIlroy handled it the way James did — with a condescending, out-of-touch screed about the commonness of his critics — he would have been forever branded as just another spoiled athlete lacking self-awareness.

Instead, as McIlroy came off the 18th green, a short interview with CBS changed the entire narrative. Still trying to process how it all fell apart, McIlroy showed maturity, honesty and regret, all while remaining positive about the experience. He couldn’t have handled it any better.

“Hopefully it will build a little bit of character in me as well,” he said.

The response to McIlroy was instantly positive — especially compared to Tiger Woods, who came off as terse and defiant a few minutes earlier. But Woods has been doing that for years. For McIlroy, here was a moment where people would get to see him at an emotional nadir, to see him perhaps for the first time as a human being. And he wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

“I think there’s a little bit of that in there, that millions of people are going to watch that interview and sort of see what you have to say for yourself,” McIlroy said Monday. “But I’ve said to a lot of people, I had five or six holes to think about what I was going to say. I was pretty prepared.”

So he’s self-deprecating, too.

James’ problem is nobody has gotten through to him that the way you handle failure can be almost as redeeming as success. Instead, he dug the hole even deeper Sunday night, and you wonder now if he’s destined for a lifetime of backtracking and apologizing.

“A lot of athletes I work with don’t have the right attitude,” McGrath said. “You have to have the right frame of mind, you have to look for opportunities to change the narrative.

“Someone like Rory McIlroy strikes me as a natural. How does someone, who is 21, have the presence of mind to say ‘I’m going to sit there and answer these questions, be patient, gracious and on top of that, reflect on what I’ve done wrong and bare my soul to my fans?’ It’s unheard of.”

Will McIlroy be in position to win this tournament? Who knows. But he’s been in contention for three straight major championships and finished fifth two weeks ago at the Memorial, suggesting that he’ll be part of the story this weekend. Either way, LeBron would be wise to pay careful attention to how his buddy handles it. There might be something more valuable for James than another apology that came too late.