Decisions

Decisions

By

Leonard Zwelling

We all make them all day long. What should I wear today? What shall I eat? Who do I need to contact and how—email, text, Zoom or, can you imagine, talking face-to-face in person?

Most of our decisions are rather mindless and we certainly don’t dwell on them. If we did, we couldn’t get anything done. However, some decisions, both instinctual and pondered, can have great consequences.

It was probably in the fall of 1965 that I was sitting outside the office of my high school guidance counselor awaiting our scheduled meeting. I was there to discuss my choices for college applications. I had had my heart set on going to Yale for no good reason other than I was born in New Haven and thought the bulldog was cool. I was allowed to apply to five other schools. I had selected a list of four others, none of which I cared all that much about, but I still needed to choose a “safety school” should all of these five applications be rejected. As I sat next to an end table in the anteroom, I saw a catalogue for a school I knew nothing about—Duke University. I thumbed through the pages. It looked good. Football games with men in jackets and ties and women in dresses. At that time, Southern schools were seeking northern student applications. I added Duke to my list as a safety school.

I ranked very high in my high school class. I thought I would surely be going to Yale, so didn’t ruminate on the Duke decision.

Flash forward to April 15, 1966 when my parents drove me to the post office to retrieve all of the college response letters that arrived exactly then in 1966.

I was rejected from all the schools other than Yale and Duke. Yale wait listed me. Duke accepted me. It was, indeed, my safety school.

As you can imagine, I was terminally depressed, but that was one of the most important days of my life and the decision to add Duke to my list on a whim had great consequences affecting who I would marry, who else I would meet, the diversity of my education and who would be in my classes, and, last but not least, my lifelong love of Duke basketball. To be honest, whatever good I have done as a physician, investigator, administrator, father, and husband started down a new path on April 15, 1966. All of my high school friends stayed in the north east for college. They all still live there. Not I.

That was some decision, even as it was somewhat spur-of-the-moment.

On Sunday, March 29, in Washington, DC, a young man with Duke across his chest also made a spur-of-the-moment decision that worked out less well.

Caydon Boozer is a guard on the then, number one ranked Duke men’s basketball team. Duke was playing the University of Connecticut for the right to join three other teams as the final participant in the Final Four, college basketball’s championship. Duke had dominated UConn in the first half and was way ahead, but Connecticut came out of the locker room ablaze and whittled the Duke lead down to two points with ten seconds remaining, but Duke had possession of the ball.

Duke passed the ball in bounds. All Duke had to do was hold the ball and wait to get fouled, which UConn would have done. Instead, Cayden Boozer made an errant pass to a teammate. The pass was knocked down by UConn and their guard Braylon Mullins made a long, buzzer-beating three-point shot to win the game. Duke was sent home for the second year in a row without getting to the championship game that they had been predicted to reach.

This was a mistake by a freshman guard. They happen all the time, but rarely on such a huge stage. My hope is that the young man can put this behind him and that Duke world will rally around him both on campus and everywhere else. In truth, two critical players for Duke were injured and playing in pain. It was fairly obvious that neither man could perform at his best. It was unlikely that Duke was going to win the whole tournament, even without the Boozer error. They were a shadow of the team they had been a month before.

It is very critical that both present Duke Coach John Scheyer and Hall of Fame Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski as well as Cayden’s father, Duke 2001 NCAA champion Carlos Boozer, and his fraternal twin brother Cameron who is likely to be NCAA player of the year, talk to Cayden so he can work through this and become a better player and person. I am sure that they all have. That’s what mentoring is all about.

The final decision on my mind was one that, like the other two above seemed rather precipitous, but should not have been. That was President Trump’s decision to join Israel and attack Iran. The great former Marquette Coach and the best basketball analyst ever, Al McGuire, said, “winning only counts in war and surgery.” Note that basketball did not make his list. I believe that he was right. Thus, decisions to go to war must be very considered and must result in winning.

As of this writing on April 2, I have no idea why we went to war, what we expect to gain, and what winning even looks like. It cannot be that Iranian death and rubble, destroyed infrastructure throughout the Middle East, and the continued existence of an ayatollah backed by the Republican Guard as the leadership of Iran can be considered winning although I am sure that Trump will try to spin it that way.

My decision to apply to Duke was lucky. It paid off like no other decision I have ever made beyond the one to marry Genie who, as if by a miracle, I met at the Duke Medical School Library.

Cayden Boozer’s decision to pass that ball was an error. The consequences were not significant. After all, it was only a game—not war or surgery.

Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran has led to sky high gas prices, a declining stock market, death and destruction, and the blockade of the waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil passes. I hope this decision was not spur-of-the-moment. It definitely appeared impetuous. Above all, it was stupid, not because Iran isn’t evil. It is. It was stupid because the likely consequences predicted by many experts were not considered or even given credence by Trump or his Department of War team.

So, perhaps the worst decisions of all were those of the 77 million who voted for a vengeful game show host for president.

I didn’t love Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I liked neither, but I am quite sure gas would be a dollar lower per gallon in price had either been elected. Admittedly, at the end of his term, Biden was not thinking all that well. But Harris was and perhaps she would have given a bit more thought to the consequences of the decision to go to war without an articulated plan, a clear goal, and a definition of winning. We cannot win this one now. Frankly, Trump has pissed off everybody except the Israelis who played him and the Gulf States that want him to keep bombing, thus doing their dirty work.

Perhaps Trump should try his hand at surgery. He has about as much experience with it as he has with war. He won’t win at that either.