GAME DAY

by

Posted:

Lights, cameras, Twitter banter, Carmelo Anthony Trade rumors and the like make the day of a game tumultuous if not exhilarating. One city is on the brink of mourning while another salivates at the possibility of landing the missing piece vital to that title run. Fan and athlete alike seem to share the same adrenaline. But the game is probably most exciting when it’s easily defined.

I just ran into the parent of a middle-school student who said that “game day is her favorite day.” Her daughter plays basketball and will probably play in high school as well. On this 24th day of January in the year 2011, my team has a game as well. And believe me, we need the win and the confidence boost. As a rule, I’d have to agree with that parent. Nothing beats a game day. Game Day means a lot of things. It’s chock full of emotions and anticipation. Game day is a chance to test what you’ve attempted to master, to compare and contrast performances. Game day is electric if you’re involved and it’s just another day if you’re not.

Injury, a change of schools or ineligibility eliminates dozens of kids from playing their respective sports every year. My best all-around player tore his Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in the third quarter of our season opener this year. To a guy like him, game day may have lost its luster. But maybe game days are not thwarted by the unforeseen mishaps; rather the game itself just gets redefined. Another player I’ve known for about five years came into my office today and retold how she transferred from one university to another leaving an athletic scholarship behind. The social pressures and amoral lifestyles surrounding her were so imposing she had to leave one school and find the right fit. She moved schools and is now coaching a high school team while deciding whether or not she’ll continue her own career at the university she now attends. In so many words, she described how there was an emptiness on game day until she found coaching. She loves influencing young women to honor God and be the best athletes they can be. The game has changed but for her, the invigoration is the same. I thought that was cool.

OFFENSIVE EXECUTION

by

Posted:

People say that defense wins basketball games but I disagree. On the real, if you don’t score points you won’t win. In the NBA, the athletes are so athletic, so talented that you have to have a strategy for getting around guys, isolating situations that present an advantage. When the Denver Nuggets play the Lakers, the plan is to prevent the Lakers from dominating inside the paint with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. On the other side, you know what the Lakers are trying to do and it all starts with the “Mamba” (#24).

But an old rap song called “Everyday Struggle” reminded me of something yesterday as it depicted the hardship of growing up poor in the inner city. It’s no secret that a sordid array of menacing pollutants plague our communities. And in every community resides sages admonishing the young people to straighten up and fly right. Enter the offensive execution parallel. The revelation from the song for me was that my job with all this character mumbo jumbo is to help people hear their own voice advising themselves. In other words, Mrs. Simpson up the street could have told you a million times to be honest, stop running with those miscreants, to leave those drugs alone, etc. Nevertheless, a quick nod and “Okay, Mrs. Simpson” and the kid is right back at the shenanigans.

If people are going to transform who they are, who better to speak the words of wisdom than themselves. There’s much to be said for helping people acquire their own voice. Prescribing and demanding that people change doesn’t seem to be working, likely because of how OFFENSIVE prescription can be. But what if Mrs. Simpson asked that young fella some questions that reveal motive? What if she asked, “Are you afraid of being poor for the rest of your life? Afraid of the gangs? Afraid of being laughed at?” I’m always amazed at how much can be revealed by a well EXECUTED question. And there’s something about hearing your own voice speak truth about your own life that makes it resonate. The truth is always offensive; that’s a truth in and of itself and I’m fine with it. But if it can be executed through God’s gift of reflection so that we hear ourselves speaking it, fly right we will.

VERTICAL

by

Posted:

 

THE TRUEST COMPETITOR leads self first.I used to want a vertical leap like Dee Brown’s. Oh wait, who remembers him? Seriously, I wanted a vertical like Giannis Antetokounmpo. I wanted to jump high, put plainly, to dunk with ease, to bounce off the bus ride. I wanted to have the kind of athleticism that responds on command whether you’ve been asleep for 8 hours or warm for 2. Ankle weights, jumping rope, plyometrics, bleacher sprints, etc. From the detrimental to the effective I tried it all. And why? Because comparison rules the airwaves.

There is a crazy amount of pressure to be like others in our society. We embrace such pressure and acquire an obsession for chasing after the wind. My vertical was an obsession when I should have been more focused on shooting off the dribble. In language everyone understands, I was so busy comparing myself in one area that I missed opportunities to develop others. But in all the pursuit of a stupid vertical leap, which I never even measured in 25 years of playing basketball, I find myself returning to the term.

Vertical is really not about jumping. It’s about keeping your thoughts elevated to the higher things – to God. At least this was my journey once basketball stopped being my idol. It means “not trippin'” over the small things, the trivial and the flat out disheartening. Vertical now means that when the seemingly unbearable floods life, a proper vertical will return you to life the way it was intended – free from fear that you’re not good enough, pretty enough and far enough along in your career. Vertical is not horizontal because horizontal steeps you in that maze race the rats hate so much. Horizontal obsessions can consume us because we’re always in a state of comparison not minding our own business. And no matter your station in life, you can rest assured that without a vertical that seeks to know truth you will live a counterfeit life. There’s something more. There’s absolutely more to life than our disappointments, failures and rejections. Eyes need to be up instead of looking to your left or right to compare yourself to others. By the time I dunked on the guy in the photo above, I knew this lesson. I could never be as good as some people at basketball but I could give my life to something bigger than myself when I trained and played. I guess I was right in high school. Vertical is everything!

NEEDLESTACK

by

Posted:

Want to know why finding your niche is so hard? It’s because whatever it is you’re supposed to do is hidden in a stack of needles. The old simile comparison of a search for a particular item being like “looking for a needle in a haystack” gives you the advantage of distinction. Hay straw is cumbersome to pick through but put a needle and a straw side-by-side and you’ll have no trouble determining the needle. What’s near impossible is looking for your needle among countless counterfeits. And that’s what this world is…a stack of needles.

When I was a kid I was strange. I dressed funny and would have looked funny even if my feet were shod with Air Jordans. Wasn’t nothin’ cool about me and let’s face it. How many black guys named Norman do you know? That’s what I thought. I was a nice guy some might say. I was the guy people gravitated toward for conversation and I got good at listening. I would’ve entertained a career in psychology but it was too nebulous. It wasn’t definitive enough for me and I always felt like my ability to understand people’s plights needed a purpose linked to my Faith. But I got to college, majored in English after ignoring how easy Economics seemed to be (I had a knack for missing signs in college). On graduation day, with a degree in print journalism, I thought “Man…I could’ve majored in something else but what can I do? The only thing I’m halfway decent at is speaking English.”

But to all my relational personalities, all of my S-types, you empathic souls who are highly communicative, there’s a needle in the stack specific to your gifts. I used to wish I’d been born analytical in the technical sense, mathematically inclined as such. I thought no one paid people like me big money. But truthfully, the whole world wants someone like US to work for them, to represent them, to disarm disgruntled constituents on their behalf. A CEO would be foolish not to recruit the one who is qualified to start a company but who doubts his/her own creativity and ingenuity while feeling indebted to serving humanity. You may be the truly decent and if you are, you’ll be steeped in the needlestack as people show you option after option, trying to convince you that you belong on their team. See, I’ve found that very few people recognize your wiring. Some attempt to and genuinely want to move you forward but they don’t know what you’re on the planet for any more than they know why cats instinctively bury litter. Consequently, finding out what you were put here to do is a clumsy escapade if you don’t have a stomach for the journey or the gall to be brazen in exercising faith in God. Needless to say, I am enjoying the needlestack more these days because I’m no longer in charge of the search. The One who is seems to be saying, that the needle I’m looking for happens to be wherever I am. Don’t look for what to do so much as for what to be and the needle you seek will find you.

Forget You

by

Posted:

“I see you ridin’ around town with the girl I love and I’m like, ‘Forget You’…” Man I laughed when I heard this jam today. And I won’t lie, if profanity bothers you, stick to the edited version. But besides being a comical rendition in the spirit of 60s Motown, this song by Cee Lo touches on such a common human theme – DISAPPOINTMENT.

In Cee Lo’s commentary, it’s a story of the underdog who gets snubbed by the cutie, harbors a little malice, grows out of his Steve Urkelness and eventually becomes quite the catch. Of course by the end of his guttermost to uttermost metamorphosis, he acquires a nice swag that naturally gives him the right to say…”Forget You and uh Forget her too.” But could Cee Lo be onto something even more profound? Perhaps the snide, vengeful snubee who lies in wait to stick it to the heartbreaker actually hasn’t forgotten anything. We’ve been there to be sure, right? We’ve all been hurt or felt rejected. But we’ve probably also been energized by the thought that our vindication might one day come through a proper retribution.

Truth is, and it’s one I still hate admitting, something I was told years ago. “Unforgiveness is like taking poision and waiting for someone else to die.” It still doesn’t completely resonate. But Cee Lo was at least intuitive if not intentional in esteeming the benefit of a short memory. What’s better than the dish best served cold – Letting Go. At the moment of offense, one feels angry enough to pick a fight for the next 365 days but we all know that ain’t how it works. Chances are, if you’re like me, you’ve tried waiting for your time to play Cobra. It’s 2011. Forget You. Payback is probably not why you’re on the planet.

<

A COLD SWIM UPSTREAM

by

Posted:

If you had something important to say, something that would warn others of impending danger would you say it? What if you could be sure your audience would rebuke you? What if you could be certain that your message was true but it was literally the kind of thing that you could be sure would alienate you for the rest of your life? I was and am interested in this stuff so I started reading about how the prophets of the Bible received there appointment.  I noted three things. God told them, respectively, to say what He told them to say, to not fear the rebels and to understand the consequences of NOT saying what He told them to say. It made sense to me. It sounds and may actually be pretentious but I saw myself in the prophets more because of the fearful character trait.

When you have something to say, something urgent, something life-saving it will be met with an array of emotions from confusion to outright refusal. And those reactions are not anomalies. They are standard. The Prophets alluded to did not feel worthy to communicate the message with which they had been entrusted. They were afraid, not only of the backlash they would undoubtedly incur but of the potential for failure. Aren’t you afraid of failing? Yeah…me too and I found it interesting how God addressed the fear of failure we all possess. Here’s what was said to Ezekiel:

4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them. 6 And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people. 7 You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. 8 But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious people; open your mouth and eat what I give you.” EZEKIEL 2:4-8

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2010 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

As a year ebbs near end we are all challenged with our role in communicating truth, we do well to remember the strength of the prophets as found in a strength much deeper than their own. The world can’t wait until we’ve made more money or even until we’ve raised our own families for us to decide it’s finally time to stand for unpopular virtues that have become trite and passé. The truth is lonely and divisive, fitting given the way in which Jesus arrived on the scene. Just saw “The Nativity” last night…good flick.

PEACE ON MOUNTAIN AVENUE

by

Posted:

Some guy approached the rear of the van I was driving today on the way to my team’s game and shut the door to where my gas cap goes. I saw him in my rear view mirror. That’s never happened before. And at the same time I was having a conversation about the lack of “Good will toward men” during Christmas time. I was focusing on the trampling crowds, the mobs of irate drivers bent on satisfying those closest to them. Turns out, I talk too much. Before I could thank the stranger, he was almost back to his vehicle. I gave him the thumbs up and yelled, “Thanks Bro!” He responded but I never saw his face. My wife and I laughed at the irony of the activity vs. our conversation. Just when you think all is depraved and that the holiday season is a ruse for monetary exploitation, some guy I’ll never see again gets out of his car at a stop light and does something cool, prompted only by either a will to help or a pet peeve toward unkempt automotive fuel compartments. Either way, it was blog worthy and left me thinking about the significance of the insignificant. There’s value in every effort, every observation and every moment – there’s still hope. You can tell because prior to the mysterious “Samaritan” appeared, one of my basketball players called me from the van leading our caravan to tell me about the gas cap door. There’s hope for this world yet.