They Never See It Coming

AN ESSAY ON PURPOSE, PERSEVERANCE & BEING OVERLOOKED

On being underestimated: by the world, by the room, and sometimes by the people who love you most.

PART ONE: THE GARDEN IS LOUD AGAIN

New York, New York: Nobody Believed Them

2026 NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS
NEW YORK Knicks 3 WINS	CLEVELAND Cavaliers 0 WINS
Knicks lead 3-0  ·  10-game playoff win streak  ·  Franchise record

There is a particular kind of beauty that arrives only after someone has been told they are not enough. The New York Knicks know this. Anyone who has walked through fire and come out burning even brighter knows this.

For decades, the Knicks were the punchline. The dysfunctional franchise. The circus act in the world’s most famous arena. Every summer, hope. Every winter, heartbreak. And every year, the analysts, the talking heads, the experts in their comfortable chairs would remind the faithful that New York simply did not have what it took.

Then came 2026.

Entering the playoffs as a third seed, not the favorite, never the clear favorite, the Knicks did something remarkable: they stopped listening. They swept the Philadelphia 76ers. They clawed past the Atlanta Hawks. And now, in the Eastern Conference Finals, Jalen Brunson and company are rolling through the Cleveland Cavaliers, up 3–0 in a series many expected to be a heavyweight battle. Their ten-game playoff win streak is a franchise record, placing them in just the seventh company in NBA history to win at least ten straight during a postseason run.

“I’m at a loss for words,” said Jalen Brunson after Game 3, having just dropped 30 points on the Cavaliers in Cleveland. Some moments don’t need analysis. They just need witnessing.

But here is what is worth sitting with: nobody handed them this. The doubters were real. The warnings were real. Pundits spent the entire regular season pointing to their losses against the Detroit Pistons, fretting over matchups, cataloging their flaws. Even when the Knicks were winning, the conversation was about who they hadn’t beaten yet.

This is what happens to those who are underestimated. The narrative always runs ahead of the evidence. Even when you win, someone is already building the case for why the win doesn’t count.

The Knicks didn’t argue. They played.

And that is the first lesson of being underestimated: the answer is never in the argument. It’s always in the work.

—  ✦  —

PART TWO: A FIELD IN BETHLEHEM

David: The One Who Wasn’t Even Invited

Before the giant, before the throne, before the psalms that would echo across three thousand years of human longing, there was a boy in a field. Nobody’s pick. Nobody’s first thought. Not even his own father’s.

The prophet Samuel arrived at the house of Jesse with a divine assignment: one of Jesse’s sons would be the next king of Israel. Jesse, a man of standing and pride, did what any father would do. He lined up his finest. He called his eldest, Eliab, tall, striking, the kind of man who looks like a king. Samuel looked at him and felt the pull of assumption. Surely this is the one.

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

1 SAMUEL 16:7

Son after son came before Samuel. Seven of them. Seven times the prophet shook his head. Seven times Jesse presented a son he considered worthy, and seven times God said no.

It was only then, only after the lineup was exhausted, that someone thought to ask: is there anyone else? Jesse’s answer is one of the quietest devastations in all of scripture. There is still the youngest. He is keeping the sheep.

He didn’t even bring him in. He left his youngest son in the field. Not out of cruelty, perhaps, but out of assumption. David simply wasn’t in the category of consideration. Too young. Too small. Too unpolished. The family saw a shepherd boy. God saw a king.

But David’s story doesn’t end there; it deepens. When young David arrived at the camp of Israel, full of fire at the sight of Goliath’s daily mockery, it was his own brother Eliab who cut him down first. “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your insolence and the wickedness of your heart; you came down to watch the battle.” The dismissal was so complete it had a specific charge: Eliab called his little brother arrogant just for showing up.

The cruelest underestimation often comes not from strangers, but from those who watched you grow up and decided, somewhere along the way, that they already knew the whole of who you are.

Think about what David was carrying in that moment. No armor. No military rank. No co-sign from the commanding officers. His own family had already written his ceiling. And yet somewhere inside him burned a knowing that none of them could touch, the memory of a lion, the memory of a bear, both killed in the field while he was supposedly just tending sheep.

His preparation had happened in private. His anointing had happened in private. While everyone else was watching Eliab and waiting for the obvious candidate to emerge, God had been doing something extraordinary in secret.

David turned away from Eliab’s words. He turned away, and kept asking questions. He found Goliath. He picked up five smooth stones. He walked into the valley.

—  ✦  —

PART THREE: WHAT THE FIELD TEACHES

What Every Overlooked Person Needs to Know

There is a sacred thread connecting a shepherd boy in ancient Israel to a basketball team in New York City, and it runs through every person who has ever sat in a room and known, quietly, stubbornly, certainly, that they were more than what the room could see.

Being underestimated is not a weakness in your story. In most of the greatest stories ever told, it is the precondition for the miracle.

This is what the field teaches, if you’re willing to learn it:

Your preparation does not require an audience. David didn’t kill the lion for anyone’s applause. He killed it because it was threatening his flock. The Knicks didn’t log those practice hours for the approval of Skip Bayless. The work happens in the dark, and that is exactly the point. If you need the crowd to validate the preparation, you will shrink every time the crowd turns away.

The loudest skeptics are often the closest ones. Jesse didn’t bring David in from the field. Eliab mocked him at the battlefront. Some of the people most invested in your smallness will be people who share your name, your zip code, your dinner table. This is not a reason for bitterness. It is simply a warning: do not outsource your self-understanding to the people who have only seen your past.

Underestimation is not rejection; it is redirection. When Samuel looked past Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah, it wasn’t a failure of those sons. It was a signal that the assignment wasn’t for them. When the experts picked other teams over the Knicks, it didn’t mean New York was broken. It meant the validation was going to have to come from somewhere deeper than a prediction. Sometimes the only person who can truly see your assignment is the One who gave it to you.

Your response to being overlooked is your character in concentrated form. David didn’t crumble when Eliab dismissed him. He turned away. He didn’t rage, didn’t campaign, didn’t demand respect before stepping forward. He simply moved toward what he knew he was called to do. The Knicks didn’t hold press conferences to respond to every critic. They ran plays, guarded their man, and let the scoreboard do the talking. You will be tested not just by the giant, but by the brother who sneers before you even reach the valley. The question is whether you can absorb the dismissal without being defined by it.

No one who has ever done something meaningful did it because the world told them they could. They did it in spite of a world that told them they couldn’t.

The call was placed before the applause was earned. David was anointed king long before anyone called him one. He spent years serving a king who wanted him dead, playing the harp in the dark, running from caves. The crown was real before it was visible. If you are carrying something you know you were built for, the absence of recognition does not make the call less true. It just means you’re still in the formation phase.

And formation, as anyone who has been through it will tell you, is where the real work happens; not in the stadium, not on the throne, but in the fields no one is watching.

—  ✦  —

A CLOSING WORD

The Valley Needs You Anyway

As of this writing, the New York Knicks are three wins away from their first NBA Finals in 27 years. Jalen Brunson, a player many franchises passed on, a player who never fit the mold of a superstar, a player built in practice and pressure rather than hype, is at the center of it all.

And somewhere, a version of David is reading this in a field. Maybe it’s a literal field. Maybe it’s a cubicle, a classroom, a kitchen, a small apartment where the dreams are far larger than the square footage. Maybe it’s you, looking around at the people who were ushered into the room first, wondering if your name will ever be called.

Here is what I want to leave you with: the valley doesn’t require your family’s blessing. It doesn’t need your critics’ silence. It doesn’t wait for the moment the room finally agrees you’re ready.

The giant is there. The stone is in your hand. The only thing left is whether you walk into the valley anyway. They never see it coming. That has always been the point.

Go be underestimated. ~ Tatum Monique

◆  Written for those who were ever told no  ◆