4-Basketball

“There is no greater calamity than lightly engaging in war. Lightly to engage in war is to risk the loss of our treasure.” Lao Tzu, on the Art of War.

The YMCA basketball season is over for another year. Now it’s time for training camp to begin for the 1995-96 season!
We had a good year , winning more than we lost and never quitting until the final buzzer sounded. When the season opened we did not know each other at all and my challenge was to get the younger men to call me by my first name. But as the year wore on, our character as a team, and our individual characters, began to emerge, and by the end of the season, we were a unit with a common purpose.
Stewart is a young man with a ready smile and a 40” vertical leap. He always wanted the ball, but especially when we really needed a basket. As our only African-American member , he was free to say, at our first game against an all African-American team,”just ‘cause they’re black, don’t mean they can play!” But they could, and we lost big.
On a team of fierce competitors, Bubba (yes, that’s really his name) was the fiercest. At 6’5” and lightning quick, he was our top scorer, and he played strong defense. But Bubba is a hot head and at the end of the final game, when I was feeling elated to have participated, it was clear that he would have enjoyed the season only if we had won the championship. He could feel only disappointment. Bubba could not lightly engage in war and it struck me that here was the kind of American spirit and brash youth that won World Wars. We were all glad he wasn’t thrown out of the league for excessive technical fouls. Do they call technical fouls in war?
The rest of us blended into the woodwork, splitting time on the bench evenly. John , the fearless guard on the court, had to be made to go in and get playing time. I guess he was afraid to get too much time on , and hurt someone's feelings. Kevin ,who ignored being 5’6” tall and played point guard at his imagined size of 6’5”, 200 lbs and would take the ball inside against ANYONE, and usually pulled it off! Joe , our resident chiropractor, who really got in a shooting groove at the end of the season, and Keith, the husband of the Y’s fitness instructor, another good shooter but who took more satisfaction at a steal or a good pass than a basket. And boy, could he pass!
And then there was Janet, the YMCA’s child care director, the woman with whom I have entrusted my children, day after day, for two years (along with Kevin and Stewart and Bubba and John). The first woman to play on the Y’s Men’s league, Janet was the only member of our team who knew anything about basketball, having played in college. And she was the only member to play as though she were one fifth of a unit, to really see her role as a part of a team, and not an individual.
And she and I both knew , at the start and at the end, that fellowship and bonding as a unit and playing this game as a team were all that really mattered. That being a part of a team and a league and a community was the treasure we all sought. That keeping score is only the way we get the result . Where is victory when the ball is put away, the gym floor swept , and the lights put out, except in our hearts?

Dave<=======Better than he thinks! Not as good as he imagines!
Internet address- dseward@cetlnk.net
March 5,1995