By Graham Betchart | Mental Skills Coach & Co-Founder, Palms Down
Palms Down family — what a game last night.
The Knicks came back from 29 points down to beat the Spurs in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. The largest comeback in Finals history. No team had ever climbed out of a hole that deep on this stage.
And of course, everyone’s talking about the Knicks’ next play speed — and they should. No matter what the scoreboard said, they kept bouncing back, kept coming, kept trusting. That’s next play speed at the highest level.
But I want you to look at the other side of this game. I want you to look at the Spurs.
Because there’s a lesson in both teams — and it’s the exact thing we train every Sunday at Palms Down.
The Score That Actually Matters: 300 TAP
At Palms Down, we don’t just watch the scoreboard. We train a different score entirely.
300 TAP.
- 100 Trust
- 100 Acceptance
- 100 Presence
That’s a perfect mental game. 300 out of 300.
TAP is the score you check inside yourself, in this present moment. It asks one question: Am I fully going right now, with everything I’ve got, regardless of what the scoreboard says?
And here’s why it matters so much — 300 TAP protects you from getting caught up in results and outcomes.
Because results and outcomes are the thing that quietly steals your juice in the moment.
What Happened to the Spurs
The Spurs were up by nearly 30 points. They were playing incredible basketball.
And somewhere in there — and this happens to every team, every player, every human — the mind can start to drift toward the outcome. We’ve got this. We’re up 30. It’s over.
The moment your mind goes to the result, you stop fully going in the present. You stop competing play by play. You relax your grip just slightly. And at the highest level, that’s all it takes.
I’m not saying that’s exactly what happened in any one player’s head — I can’t see inside anybody’s mind. But the pattern is one we all know. When you focus on the outcome instead of the moment, you give the present away.
What the Knicks Did Instead
The Knicks, down 29, had every reason to check out. The outcome looked decided. The win probability models had them at less than 1%.
But a mind locked into 300 TAP doesn’t read the scoreboard that way.
Trust: I trust my game and my training. Acceptance: I accept exactly where we are — down 29 — without panic. Presence: I’m going to fully go, this possession, right now.
When you stack those three, the deficit stops being a verdict and becomes just… the current situation. Something to compete inside of, one play at a time. That’s how a 29-point mountain gets climbed — not in one leap, but one fully-present possession after another.
This Is What We Train
300 TAP isn’t a slogan. It’s a practice.
It’s a way of checking yourself in the middle of competition — not “what’s the score on the board” but “what’s my score inside? Am I trusting? Am I accepting? Am I present?”
Get those three to 100 and the outcome takes care of itself. Whether you’re up 30 or down 30, the assignment never changes: fully go, right now.
Every other Sunday at 12 noon PST, we train exactly this inside the Palms Down Mental Gym — live, virtual sessions for players, coaches, and parents who want to build a mental game that holds up when it matters most.
Last night was a reminder of what’s possible when you stay locked into the only score you can actually control.
Join the Mental Gym → palmsdown.us
Let’s go.
Graham Betchart is a mental skills coach and co-founder of Palms Down. He has worked with the Utah Jazz, Sacramento Kings (2023 NBA Playoffs), and UConn’s back-to-back NCAA Championship teams (2023 & 2024).