Letting Go Quote by Lenny Wilkens

Wilkens is selling a survival skill dressed up as humility: triage your attention or it will triage you. The line splits the world into two bins - what you can affect and what you cant - then makes a quiet demand that you behave differently in each. Worry becomes almost utilitarian, not a free-floating anxiety but a kind of fuel reserved for problems with handles. Everything else? You move by it, like a defender sliding past a screen instead of colliding with it.

The phrasing matters. He doesnt say he ignores what he cant control; he says he moves by it. That small verb choice keeps the speaker from sounding naive or numb. It admits the uncontrollable still exists, still crowds the lane, still tries to slow you down. The discipline is kinetic, not philosophical: keep going, adjust your angle, dont waste a possession.

In the context of a life in pro basketball - where Wilkens built a Hall of Fame career as both player and coach - the quote reads like locker-room stoicism sharpened by experience. Games are chaos machines: bad calls, hot shooting nights, injuries, momentum, media noise. You can plan, teach, and compete; you cannot script. The subtext is leadership: a coach who models this mindset gives players permission to drop the grievance, reset, and execute. Its also a quietly American ethic of agency, but without the corny promise that effort guarantees outcomes. Control is the only thing he is willing to dramatize; everything else gets the brisk courtesy of being passed.