Musical Chairs and the .03%

The Inglewood Tigers was the first basketball team for which I played but the first competitive game I ever played was Musical Chairs. Talk about an extended metaphor for life. I remember crying because some girl in the middle of a growth spurt sat herself in that last chair after blocking me out  when the music stopped. Akin to this legendary game that introduces players young and old to the cruelty of attrition, the National Basketball Association has no shortage of applicants and currently thrives on the astronomical aspirations of millions of boys around the world.

Musical chairs could have been the predecessor of the modern casino. You could gather 20, 50, maybe a thousand of your closest friends and play but there’s one seat available at game’s end. An unconfirmed statistic puts the number of Division I Basketball Teams at 347. Most basketball rosters carry between 12-13 active players. 13 x 347 = 4164. Another online statistic puts the number of high schools in the United States at somewhere around 26,407. It’s a safe guess that, aside from all girls high schools, most of the 26,407 or so have boys varsity basketball teams. Keep the rule of 12-13 on a roster and that’s 343,291 players. The question is, how many of those 343,291 really think they have a shot at the league? Well, statistics say:

2.9 % of high school seniors play basketball in an NCAA college
1.3% of college seniors are drafted by an NBA team
.03% of high school seniors are drafted by an NBA team

It’s only a downer if you’re into musical chairs to be the last woman/man sitting. The older I get the more I think that Musical Chairs is about the music and the suspense. It’s a whole different game if you hire a DJ and get voted dance champion by night’s end because you got around those chairs with flair. The percentages remind you that there’s lots of people on this planet and though you may know someone in the .03, 1.3 or 2.9%, you don’t have to be them to compete with passion and enjoy the game. I wish I knew that in 1985 but I was only 10 years old; cut me a break.