In 2016, LeBron James's Cavaliers met the 73 Wins Cosmic Battleship Warriors in the Finals.
After the first four games, the Cavaliers were down 1–3.
At that point, fans around the world thought the Cavaliers were bound to lose.
Even many Cavaliers fans thought their chances of winning were slim.
Bookmakers gave the Cavaliers only a 3% chance of winning the championship. In other words, the Warriors' odds stood at a whopping 97%.
Only a handful of die-hard Cavaliers and James fans believed the team still had a chance to pull off a miracle.
Despair hung over the team, too.
After all, no team in NBA history had ever come back from a 1–3 deficit in the Finals.
Not one.
To be honest, James had felt more than a little despair himself.
He had faced plenty of adversity before.
But nothing had ever been this discouraging.
Still, he understood that as the team's leader, he couldn't falter.
The whole world was watching him, and so were all his teammates. If he showed even the slightest hint of despair, the media would blow it out of proportion, and the whole world would see it.
His teammates spent every day with him, too. If he showed even the slightest hint of despair, they would surely notice.
Then the Cavaliers wouldn't even have that 3% chance.
So before Game 5, he kept using psychological suggestion on himself.
"We're going to win this game. We're going to win the championship!"
"I'm going to win this game. I'm going to win the championship!"
He repeated those words to himself countless times.
Psychological suggestion could be incredibly powerful.
You've probably heard of the famous experiment.
They found a death-row inmate and told him he would be executed at a certain time.
When the time came,