For the first time in 27 years, the New York Knicks made it to the NBA Finals, leaving the nation pulsing with excitement. But for Black America—navigating a relentless barrage of systemic, financial, and societal targets—this revival feels like something deeper than just NBA history. It feels familiar. Our community knows what it means to be down, to be counted out, and to have to fight our way back from the brink. As folks applaud the team for their legendary comeback, the Knicks’ rise actually offers a vital science lesson on psychological survival and resilience that we can apply to our own daily fights. Let’s get into it.
Neurologist and TikTok creator Dr. Bing (@doctor.bing) recently took to the social media app to explain the important neuroscience lesson we can take from the Knicks rising from the ashes.
“When you’re losing badly in life, whether that’s your health or your finances or your career or your relationship, your brain actually starts to change,” he said. “Every setback you have in life actually changes your brain dopamine system.”
Clarifying how dopamine, the brain’s chemical that processes and motivates us to achieve rewards, works, Dr. Bing noted that dopamine is less about pleasure and more about motivation. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are two kinds of dopamine neurons: motivational value, which helps us evaluate and seek out the things we love, and motivational salience, which helps our brains focus and act on a specific situation.
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Per Dr. Bing, when we experience continuous failure, these dopamine levels begin to drop drastically.
“You don’t feel just discouraged, you actually feel less driven to keep trying, and this is actually why comebacks are so hard. But for people who do come back from huge setbacks, like the Knicks, for example, they don’t ignore the scoreboard, but they do stop staring at it,” he said.
Continuing, Dr. Bing added that when you begin thinking about how badly you’re failing at a specific goal, you’ll get stuck in a harsh cycle of rumination.
“But when you focus on the next step, you re-engage the brain’s networks which are responsible for action and control,” he added. “If you watched the game or the highlights, you saw that the Knicks didn’t overcome a 29-point deficit all at once, but they won one possession, then the next one, then the next one.”
So what’s the lesson to take from the Knicks? Dr. Bing laid it out very simply: “Your brain is constantly asking, ‘Is this effort worth it?’ And big goals can make that answer feel like no, but small goals can change that equation. So if you’re losing badly in life right now, just don’t focus on the comeback; focus on your next possession. Because every time you keep showing up, you are strengthening the very brain circuits that make a comeback possible.”
