Fantasy Basketball
by Jerome Green
October 10, 2008
It’s in the game at every turn. We see it, we feel it and we express it. The luvv of the game is stored in our DNA. It so present and revealing that you don’t need a CSI crew to examine it or find out how it got there. It’s in the exchange between competitors that we get to explore who we are and why we are. What are we here to do? What are our lives about? Basketball, while not the Gandhi of wisdom, is a perfect place to discover a few things about us. No matter if it’s between the lines or on the sidelines. Every exchange, every possibility brings us closer to the courage that is needed to conquer our fears, overcome obstacles and learn.
Basketball is a fantasy game. A game that allows us to dream and venture beyond the realities of the realness of everyday life and into the playfulness of the world. Basketball is a game. A game made up of spirit, skill and athleticism. It requires a little and a lot from us. To play the game to it’s fullest requires work, not drudgery. If you find yourself laboring with the game, step away, but don’t run away. Each player and coach who comes to the game comes with a set of expectations and a bucket full of potential. Sometimes it is the potential alone that swallows us up and disables us from really finding out who we are in relationship to the game. Potential requires work. There are no two ways around that fact.
There is no better place for me to watch basketball right now than on a Sunday at the Hangar (HAX) in Hawthorne, California. There you get to see 8-year-old 3rd graders and 18-year-old twelfth graders playing with their hearts, mindless to the outside issues of pressure of the day. Economic recession? Not in their thoughts. What is in their thoughts is getting the ball up the court, making the pass, playing defense and having fun. I see some kids having fun, I see others worrying about not being good enough, but in each of them I see hope, passion and love.
Today’s player has to navigate in waters that I never had to. They have to manage their fantasy lives with the reality that their parents place on them. As I look around the Hanger, I see parents with dreams and wishes. Desiring their son to be the one that gets that D1 scholarship. Deep down most parents want their child to be the one that everyone talks about being the horse or the go to guy on his team. Imagine if each player had to carry the burden of being the best. The game would die. The luvv would die, and the fantasy would turn into a dark reality that wouldn’t lift us and carry us away up into the stars for us to look down and enjoy the moment. The game was meant to be fun and in the process a few players get to take that fun all the way to the top. The rest of us get to play the game in adult leagues, or intramurals or until our bodies give way to age. In the meantime, no matter if it’s the NBA or the CBA, you can see that glimmer in every ones eyes once the ball goes up. The question being asked over and over, will today be the day that I find peace in the game?
Paul Newman, before he passed said, “It’s been a privilege to be here.” What a way to go out. Realizing that the life you lived was wonderful and that it was a pleasure to be here, to exchange, to luvv and be luvved. I’ve heard coaches say leave it all on the floor and some people like Hank Gathers and others have done just that. We remember them, not for how they died, but how they lived.
The game is just that. A game. A funny, silly game invented by James Naismith and refined and defined by thousands of others. I am sure when Naismith invented the game, he never in his wildest dreams thought that it would be where it is today, but then again, maybe he did. It is all a fantasy after all.