Win or lose, walk off the court with the same God you walked on with.

A win makes you generous and expansive, a loss makes you short with people who had nothing to do with it, and both feel justified at the time. Steadiness is not indifference to the score, only a refusal to let it decide who you are for the next two hours.

Decide before the game what kind of person walks off, since you will not be able to decide it afterwards. Shake the hands either way, say the one decent sentence, keep the sulking or the strutting to yourself. Notice how much lighter the drive home is when the result does not get to run your evening.