NO AUTOGRAPHS PLEASE

by

Posted:

I didn’t realize it at the time but when I had the chance to play half court basketball last week with Laker legend  and former NBA Head Coach Byron Scott, I was being mentored. Somewhere someone is reading this and laughing because they’re assuming he can still go and took me to school, so-to-speak. To those readers I say, “Mind your business…” :-).

It’s rare to sit next to someone who is an expert in your field and not be awe stricken. The larger than life persona can paralyze and turn a teachable moment into nothing more than an autograph session. But how many of you know that it’s a breach of baller’s code to act like a gitty teenager when you’re playing defense – even if it is against a guy with three NBA championships?

Somehow my team beat Scott’s and the next thing I knew I was sitting on the sideline talking about coaching, character and diplomacy in the highest realm of basketball on the planet. It was about 20 minutes of rich conversation that verified much of what I assumed about the NBA. Byron Scott, while still an icon in my mind, sat there…one ball player talking to a younger version with respect and candor. I tried to listen and focus on the subtle lessons materializing. Given the location and circumstances surrounding the event last week, it’s likely to happen again but as doors of opportunity go, this one won’t remain ajar forever. So I’m intent on being the student, if only for a few weeks. I can be a fan for the rest of my life.

THE LOST DISCIPLINE OF CAMARADERIE

by

Posted:

The Hurt Locker is a good film and it has nothing to do with bandwagon appeal. I’m a war movie glutton because if I had college to do over again, I’d probably go military academy instead. Platoon was probably the first war movie I remember and it inspired me to write two letters directly to the President of the United States about efforts to rescue prisoners of war. Wait…I saw Rambo in the early 80s but he was a bit of a rogue.

The Hurt Locker has that element of internal conflict mixed with the prominent, non-agendized theme of interdependence. Nothing shows how much we need each other in this world like soldiers whose lives depend on selflessness, courage, poise, discipline and a host of other virtues. Survival has a way of bringing out a very selfish quality that already resides in us unless we’ve been trained to work counter intuitively. And you see that tension in the movie as an army specialist struggles to find meaning in life outside of war. Now away from the cinema and “back to me…”

In basketball in particular, interdependence is in retreat having been exchanged for individualism. If you don’t believe me, go to a community college basketball game in southern California. The good teams have figured out that if they don’t work together all is lost. The Riverside and Citrus Community Colleges of our great region are proof of that. But the vast majority of basketball is diseased because the soldier camaraderie is missing. And I’m at a loss. Though it might border on insulting for me to parallel war and a game I will say that training and absolute hierarchy separates one from the other. The military is not a place for a democratic paradigm to be promulgated. If you make it through training as an insubordinate, you certainly won’t make it through war as one. Follow orders or die from your blind side.

More and more, basketball players of all levels saunter into the gym with an air of superiority and instead of going to war as a team, they engage coaches in a power struggle. Purpose and preservation of life were woven well into the Hurt Locker and although muddled, a distinct deference to them was evident. The movie ended and I sat thinking, “Maybe coaches are afraid of players, afraid of risking the loss of a star player or fearful of backlash from brass and boosters.” Coaches want to win and want to keep their jobs. But shouldn’t we view the consequences of structureless athletics as death?  Lots of mulling comes out of a war movie, especially for guys like me who never served. But I think I get one thing – that when roles are obscured during a crisis, bad things happen. Basketball, like other sports, is just a game but the time our young athletes are living in isn’t.

THE CUT LIST

by

Posted:

I had innumerable encounters with the cut list. The cut list comes in various forms and appears on locker room windows and doors when you’re in high school. Sometimes the cut list isn’t posted anywhere because it’s just understood like when and if you weren’t picked at recess/lunch to be on a team. The cut list has on it the names of those deemed good enough; at least that’s how the list is perceived. It’s misleading because you actually DO want your name on the list. It means you’ve made the cut and are moving on.

I fought tenaciously to always make the team and not be the one for whom peers felt pity and I managed success in that…until I became an adult. Once I was grown, there were plenty of times when my ideas were dismissed in the workplace, my services no longer required and my presence merely tolerated. That’s probably the same as being cut from a team. So, enter the world of pervasive factors like budget cuts, attrition via seniority lists or nepotistic influences. You learn very quickly, perhaps as early as elementary school that being good enough doesn’t always keep your name on the cut list. At any rate, when you’re cut you learn that you’re deathly afraid of rejection and unfairness. When you get cut from the team, fired from the team, or downsized from the team the stock response is hurt, humiliation and a grim sense of betrayal. In our own eyes we’re never deserving of elimination. But whether we’re deserving or not may not be the issue. More important than why you were cut may be the discovery of what lies beyond the list.

And lest you ignore the cut list, be advised that your pedigree won’t shield you from it. Of late, names such as Mike Dunleavy, former Los Angeles Clippers General Manager/Head Coach and LaDanian Tomlinson, former running back of the San Diego Chargers made the list. Dunleavy found out via voicemail that he had been cut while Tomlinson was simply blindsided. Best believe that you usually know neither the day nor the hour that you’ll get the bad news but at day’s end, there’s more than one cut list that will bear you name in a lifetime. Be afraid if you’re never cut from anything. Chances are that you’re just really good at fitting into environments that don’t require you to find your own niche. If, however, you are like the rest of us expendables, take joy in knowing that somewhere there’s a roster with your name on it. Have fun finding it.

IN YOUR HANDS

by

Posted:

If you were 34 years old and in need of work where would you look? If you’re Marion Jones, the former world-class sprinter stripped of her gold medals for her role in a doping scandal, the answer is, “You’d look at your list of skills and try to use any of them to get you a job.”

Jones was released from prison in September 2008 for her connection to breaching drug use policies and check fraud. But as it turns out, she used to play a little basketball and in fact started for North Carolina back in the day (1994). She was drafted by the Phoenix Mercury once upon a time and now, at an age that many pros are losin’ steps and shuttin’ it down, she’s in the market for a career change.

Prison aside, Jones is shrewd using both her notoriety and reputation for being the consummate athletic specimen to earn a living in a world where jobs are suddenly in short supply. I remember being 28 and out of work of my own volition. When you face unemployment, you have a frighteningly immense sea of opportunity to navigate and are in danger of falling prey to jobs that serve as a mere means to an end. But consider Jones and how she went back to her repertoire to do inventory. What skills and passion do I or did I once possess? I did the same thing at 28 when I ended up back in the world of basketball before drifting toward teaching.

For Jones, her decision to play in the WNBA was calculated I’m sure as she evaluated, with help, her athletic condition and prospects of adding value to a professional basketball team. At day’s end however, she consulted a personal strength to see if it might offer her a meaningful transition from Track & Field, from criminal association, from a tabloid worthy fall from grace to gainful and fulfilling employment. Why should you be any different if today you’re lost about the next phase? Where are you strong? Like God told me when I wanted to fold up my tent and go back to a “regular” job, “What do you have in your hands? Use it.”

BEAUTIFUL URGENCY

by

Posted:

“Play with a sense of urgency,” people are saying to the Lakers who happen to be on a 3-game losing streak. Tonight they host Toronto in hopes of stopping the bleeding. There’s a logic concerning urgency, however, which says that it is accompanied by crisis. And invariably, crisis is usually assumed to be the spark igniting passionate performance. Scratch the word performance since it sounds a bit superficial. How about saying, “crisis is usually assumed to be the spark that ignites a desperate fight to preserve, stem the tide and/or rally?” If there’s urgency, there’s a stimulus of dire proportion. When it’s urgent, it’s right now, immediate, shot to the top of whatever priority list you’ve written on you Blackberry or other smart device.

So in keeping with the logic that crisis and urgency are blood brothers, is it possible to live life as a conscientious objector to both? Do we evade the “c” word because its presence promulgates the existence of its kin known as urgency? It seems like we fear urgency. How can you tell? For starters, we have trouble identifying the crisis that precedes it. Am I the only one who California rolls through the life’s stop signs sometimes or all the time ignoring the warnings and admonitions that can save us? If you’re a teacher in high schools public and private you know well the difficulty of transferring wisdom to students who experiment with drugs to the tune of addiction by age fourteen. There’s disease, general apathy, mythical worldviews concerning what it takes to survive in the real world and a host of other characteristics that would indicate crisis. And lest we pick only on our youth, adults have playgrounds too that accentuate the notion that they too are slaves to escapism. And we adults are probably the best at rationalizing because we’ve earned our indulgences right?

But crises continue to loom don’t they and they aren’t limited to the third world. While aid to Haiti and Chile are rightful, the family deserves urgent care. Isn’t it important to rest and not work 8 days a week? Don’t we see the small window of time we have to impact our sons and daughters as they speed toward adolescence and adulthood? Are we really still smoking cigarettes with all we know of its ills (nothing pesonal if you “chief”)? Crisis is all around isn’t it and it would be alarming except that we have the ability to effect change that can remedy it. It’s a power reserved for humankind. How much fun it would be to stop hittin’ the snooze and get up thinking of not whether there is need for my urgent efforts but  rather where I will deploy them.

CHAMPIONS RESPOND

by

Posted:

When you go 0-3 on a road trip as the NBA’s reigning champion, it never suffices. Injuries, fatigue nor the fact that every team hits you in the mouth every night fail to qualify as acceptable excuses. The Lakers lost three games between last Thursday and today (Sunday Afternoon). But in spite of all the reviling epithets from Lakers fans that profusely riddle the radio lines, the guys who actually wear the uniforms have a mantle that should serve as catalyst.Until someone takes it from them, they possess the label champion.

As much as I enjoy Lakers games, my era of induction into Laker fandom was stained by the  guy in the picture taking over games. Don’t let the smile fool you. Earvin “Magic” Johnson was among the fiercest of competitors capable of pushing the break for show and for back breaking, will destroying effect. But lest we be deceived by a romantic reminiscing of Laker lore, Magic and his supporting casts laid eggs from time to time. They played down to competition on occasion.

Nevertheless, champions are resilient and in order for the Lakers of 2009-2010 to repeat, they’ll have to possess poise that reflects a team not rattled by a momentary lapse. People sound off about their favorite sports team losing because it’s scary. The average citizen is absolutely afraid to lose and furthermore, afraid to try in light of past failures. Wouldn’t it be grand to win all of the time? Possibly, but we, the Lakers and people everywhere face real opponents that range in nature from overeating, to pornography to outright laziness. How much of a microcosm is sports? A team goes 0-3 on a short road trip and fans come unglued. What about when you go 0-3 at work, at home or in your secret life you keep hidden? Your season doesn’t have to be over. Champions don’t win all the time; they just compete as if they do.

NEW GROUND ETIQUETTE

by

Posted:

COMPETE LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER!

It’s indescribably hard to act like you’ve been there before when you haven’t. Last night I watched my Alma Mater, Chapman University’s Men’s basketball team win a playoff game for the first time as a Division III school. In Fact, they’ve struggled for years to make the playoffs because they are an Independent, non-conference institution. So this year the door cracked open when the Panthers won 27 games against only 2 losses and it’s the new territory awkwardness that’s in the air. That’s when your fans pack the gym but hesitantly storm the court after the win. And even then, about 25 percent of the crowd stays in the stands because the sports information director told them they had to. If you’ve been there before you know that “all the king’s horses” ain’t keepin’ you off that court if your school advances in the NCAA tournament.

Rush the floor tonight but remember… THERE’S MORE TO NEW GROUND THAN BEING ON IT!

New ground is frightening even when the ones treading on it feign familiarity. I’ve learned to never mistake a confident swagger for familiarity with new success. It’s not the same. A swagger, most often, is nothing more than mystique and a smoke screen to hide apprehensiveness. Familiarity shows itself in the ability to execute right behavior under duress. Teams that can quickly acclimate to realms where stakes are high win the war of attrition. In other words, familiarity doesn’t have to take all day but it is unmistakable. What prevents it is satisfaction, something else masked by a swagger. Those who are satisfied with arriving to new ground make the stepping stone the destination. Those who possess adaptability grow familiar enough with, say the NCAA tournament, to know the road is not the goal. Everyone ends up in their version of the playoffs at some point. Don’t be satisfied when you get there.