My Basketball Story, Part 1: Love is Pure, Until it Isn’t
I want to tell you a story. It begins in Boston, MA in the mid-1980s, in the hallowed halls of the old Boston Garden, home of the Celtics and the place where I fell deeply, irrevocably, and passionately in love with the game of basketball.
The 80s were in some ways a very different time than what we’re living today. Back then, normal middle-class, working people like my parents could afford season tickets split with a few friends. Tickets were PRINTED! on PAPER! and there was no internet, no absurd Ticketmaster fees, and the game had yet to blow up into the global, trillion-dollar enterprise it is in 2021. This was pre-MJ (just barely), pre-Kobe (still miss you), pre-YouTube, pre-$10,000 floor seats for a first round playoff game against an 8th seed with a losing record. I’m not saying that basketball was pure back then, because no sport or really any enterprise involving people and money is pure; I’m just saying that, despite a recent very heartwarming and inspiring NBA 75th anniversary commercial, it belonged much more to the common people than it does today.
My folks grew up in Michigan but adopted the Celtics when they moved to Boston in the early 70s. How could they not? Boston is Titletown, USA (it is, haters) and they were coming off a stretch in which the Celtics, led by the great Bill Russell, had won 11 rings in 13 years – including 8 in a row! – between 1957 and 1969. Then they won again in ’74 and ’76…and ’81. Fine, the NBA was only 8 teams in the 50’s and 60’s, and the reach of the game and talent level weren’t anywhere near where they are today. Still, winning is really damn hard, and winning that much is impressive no matter what. Anyway, my parents shared a couple of season seats in the second level of the Garden, in the corner about 40 rows up, with some friends from our neighborhood. By the time I had been to my first game (1984? 1986? Another couple rings) my parents were in deep. We watched very little TV in my house; it was basically Sesame Street and hoops, with the occasional Red Sox game thrown in to keep us humble. My earliest clear memories are of the sights, sounds, smells, and energy of the old Garden when the OG super team Celtics – led by my favorite player of all time, the man whose nickname is simply “Legend” – would play the Knicks or Lakers or 76ers or Pistons.
One memory stands out in particular. Back then security was pretty lax, so if you got to the arena early enough, it was easy to walk around the lower bowl during pregame warmups. On one of these nights, there I was with my dad, maybe 5 years old strolling behind the press tables and along the sideline while the players – huge, impressive, soon to be my idols – got ready to play. I think that during the games at that age, I spent a lot of time running around the halls of the Garden with a couple of friends (you could do that back then, or maybe I just had a very long leash), but in that moment during shootaround, watching these massive, strong, graceful, beautiful human beings move as if they were put on Earth to do exactly what they were doing in that moment, basketball burrowed into and put down roots in my soul.
But ok, that’s not the story I’m trying to tell. I’m getting there. Basketball is my first love, but it’s not the only sport I played. Although I’m unbelievably grateful that I didn’t do most of my growing up in Boston, I wouldn’t trade the ’86 Celtics – or the 2004 Red Sox, or the ’08 Celtics – for anything (my folks weren’t into football, despite going to college at Michigan, so I avoided the Patriots insanity. Football to me is the Oregon Ducks, but that’s another story). Sports are, to this day, integral to our family; you would be hard-pressed to find someone who loves baseball more than my sister and most family discussions inevitably weave their way to a sports analogy.
When we moved from big-city Massachusetts to small-town Oregon when I was 8 years old, sports were one of the things that helped me orient, make friends, channel my anxiety and discomfort and shyness, and express myself in a new and unfamiliar place. Sports gave me, the extra-tall and extra-sensitive new kid who was also naturally athletic and somehow coordinated, a place where I was more likely to feel welcome and wanted. I will write at some point about the positive potential of sport participation for kids, how it sets patterns for our adulthood, and about the different coaches that I’ve had and what I learned along the way; right now, I want to fast forward to 2004 and start the story.
Madness
Ok, so it’s March Madness 2004, and I’m living in a basement studio apartment in Mammoth Lakes, CA with a high school buddy. I’ve spent the winter skiing, working at the mountain, and generally enjoying being a college dropout (I called it “taking some time off from school”; now it’s called a Gap Year). My beloved Oregon Ducks are in the Dance. So, I’m basically glued to the TV, watching Aaron Brooks and Luke Jackson and Co. do their thing. And, being 21 years old and not knowing really anything about what it takes to be a student-athlete other than what my sometimes-party-addled brain assumes, I’m noticing that a lot of the guys playing “aren’t that great,” and thinking I could do better. Yeah, right. But ok, I can play ball; I bet I can walk on somewhere.
The decision to take myself from “good recreational player” who had basically lived in the rec gym at U of O for three years to “college player” came from seemingly out of nowhere, and it came at the right time; I was doing nothing productive with my life (not that taking time off to ski when you don’t have a professional direction is a bad thing; I recommend it) and had more than enough ego to fuel myself. So, just like that, I started smoking a lot less weed, drinking a lot less, working out a lot more, and not just playing ball every chance I got; I also began studying the game instead of just watching it. Mammoth Lakes had this little rec center where guys played a couple nights a week, and when there were no games, I spent most of my free time in there working on my game. Could I walk on at Oregon? Unlikely; I was cocky, but not an idiot. So, I decided to move back to my hometown, where there’s an NAIA school, and get to the grind.
I want to point out here for the young athletes and for the parents of young athletes that there are good athletics at all levels. In this age of commercialized sports and huge money, we are fed the idea that the only way to “make it” as an athlete is to be awarded a D1 athletic scholarship and to play “big time” college sports, followed by a career in the “big” leagues. I have to tell you that this is not only simply untrue, but also a limiting and potentially damaging belief on a good day; on a normal day, it’s a flat-out lie. It is limiting because if your goal is to continue to play the game that you love – which is the point, isn’t it? – there are many excellent ways to do so and many programs and leagues where you’ll get the opportunity to play against great competition while also getting an education. It sounds like the NCAA party line, I know; although they’re a corrupt cartel being dragged kicking and screaming into a more equitable future, they’re right about this one thing.
Beyond that limitation, the damage caused when dreams run headlong into the realm of cripplingly unrealistic expectations can be severe; overspecialization too young can exponentially increase the probability of injury by narrowing and unbalancing training regimens, and the pressure applied not only by society but also by parents (who often just think they’re “supporting [their] kids’ dreams”) and by the athlete themselves can lead to burnout and the misery of unfulfilled expectations. More than 70% of children burn out of not just sport, but physical activity altogether before the age of 13, and many of them never come back. The point is, not many of us (like less than 1% of athletes) are good enough, athletic enough, dedicated enough, talented enough, lucky enough, or privileged enough to play big time sports; that doesn’t mean we can’t get the most out of what’s in front of us.
I felt like walking on to an NAIA basketball team was a realistic goal, and I dove into it with everything I had. It became my Holy Grail. I changed my sleep habits and what I put into my body. I worked out and/or had a basketball in my hands for hours every day. I got in touch with coaches, hired a personal trainer, kept my partying to a minimum. I was in training. When tryouts rolled around in the late summer of 2004, I felt ready, and so it was discouraging to say the least when I didn’t make the cut. However, I was unwilling to take no for an answer so readily and as my family will tell you, I’m extremely stubborn. When Coach told me I needed to get stronger, I doubled down. More efficient and vigorous workouts and I even started running a few times a week (which if you know me, you know is a big deal). Sprints, stairs, and plyometrics at the track; weights for days. And, for the most part, I was doing this on my own. Impressive? On the surface, certainly. Decisive and dedicated? Undoubtedly. But also a cautionary tale.
You see, when I decided that I was GOING TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN, and that I had to do it in order to prove that I could or that I was strong enough or tough enough or just…enough, my relationship to basketball changed. I was of course too blinded by my own single-mindedness to see this at the time, and in some ways I needed that hyper-focus; I didn’t play organized ball in high school, and was already older than most of the guys on the team; I was running on talent and athleticism and determination and pure willpower. So, I just assumed that I would have to outwork and out-care everyone. The problem is that the slope between caring and obsession is slippery, and well…I slipped and slid headfirst. Basketball crossed over from something that I did and loved to do by choice, to something that I was and needed for validation. This overidentification with one’s sport is common among athletes and is taught to us by a culture that does one thing better than anything else: Extremes.
No Middle Ground
We can see it in the way athletes are treated when they show that they are human by misspeaking or making a mistake or failing to “come through in the clutch” when we expect it of them. One minute, they are a HERO, and the next they are a TOTAL FAILURE, and there’s no middle ground. We participate in this paradigm by glorifying those who “sacrifice everything” for their sport, who “eat, sleep, and breathe” their job, who “win at all costs.” We see it in the disbelief and judgement we fling at those same athletes when they literally do whatever it takes – even cheat – to win because God forbid they let us and our unimpeachable morals down…you see the lose-lose situation we put them in, I hope. We – including many athletes – have created and work to sustain a culture in which there is only one way to be. We frame it as simple, but really it is reductive, limiting, and dehumanizing. It’s not just “shut up and dribble,” it is also “shut up and dribble your way to a championship because that’s the only way you’ll receive our love.”
Another place we see the imposition of the narrow athletic identity is in the righteous indignation of fans when an athlete dares to choose to prioritize their own well-being over their “responsibility” to us, the Monday morning quarterbacks glued to our screens. We see it in atrocious fan behavior in arenas around the world, in the projection of our own (culturally celebrated) obsessive fandom onto players, sometimes in the form of actual projectiles. We also see it in the way that we talk about sports, in the language we use. I’ve even done it here, a lot; am I an Athlete, or am I someone who plays sports? Am I a Basketball Player, or a person who enjoys basketball? Is an athlete only one thing, narrowing their view while also placing undue and unrealistic expectation on their sport? If I’m giving everything to my sport, then my sport has to be my everything. I hope you see the difference. We have a strong and mostly unconscious tendency to put our idols in a lonely, glass box on top of a pedestal, where all who choose to can see them and where only perfection is tolerated; in the case of my story here, I did it to myself.
As a Basketball Player, I bought into this narrative because I didn’t know any better, and basketball began to make a subtle shift from fun and sweaty and social and inspiring activity to identity-consuming, desperate vehicle for external validation. The very thing that embedded itself so beautifully in my soul began to slowly suck it dry, and because I was so caught up in the needs of my own ego, I projected that slow extraction onto everything around me; the refs sucked (Apologies to the refs out there, I know your job is hard), my teammates didn’t work hard enough on defense or didn’t recognize that the best way to win was to give me the ball…dude, calm down because this is literally open gym at the YMCA and we’re just trying to have fun on a Saturday morning. But don’t you understand that I’m trying to DO SOMETHING here?! I was blinded by my own ambition, by my socially-conditioned and widely celebrated and deeply accepted need to WIN, which itself was at least partly an expression of a deep insecurity and the same need to feel accepted and valued that had helped draw me to sports in the first place. A simple, joyful relationship had become complicated and fraught with emotional anguish.
It wasn’t all bad. I began to change some unhealthy habits, learned how to really and truly work hard towards a goal, transformed my body, unlocked my latent athleticism. I felt for the first time like I had some of that life direction I kept hearing about. I got really good at basketball. I learned to appreciate running! I also know that it may seem like I’ve harped on the dangers of the athletic identity, but it’s not all bad; being a basketball player, and the work required to be good at it, gave me a way to relate to the world that I hadn’t understood before, and today, the experience that I’m describing helps me immeasurably in my work with athletes. Speaking of the story…
Originally published on October 11, 2021