The new school that I work at had a fundraiser last night held by the student council; the undercard was a student vs. student basketball game and the main event was the winning student team vs. the staff squad.
I haven't played "competitive" basketball in over a year and even then it's been awhile. After high school, it was an alumni tournament and some pick-up games at the SHELL in Madison. Now? Even less... every once in awhile I'll hop in our 11-man fast break or Cardinal Pride drills with the middle schoolers but that certainly doesn't count. Even less, I'll play open gym with some of the high school players. And, it was at least a year since I did that last, so I wasn't sure what to expect last night.
The best part being, of course, just because I haven't played much in the last.. oh... 9 years doesn't mean that my mouth has slowed down or is rusty. I'd compare myself to a Larry Bird when it comes down to it. I hit the students with all sorts of trash before the game started. Just basic stuff, "Really? You're going to guard me?" "There's a reason they call me Jimmer J back home." Of course, the weather was overcast yesterday with a chance of rain, which played right into my game. To one kid I said, "Hey, do you know why it's so cloudy? Because tonight.. I'm going to make it rain." Then, ironically, the fire alarm went off to end the school day and I saw the same kid leaving and said, "You know why the alarm went off? I was in the gym heating up for the game tonight." Couldn't have worked out any better.. except that his team lost and he didn't even get to play our team.
Then, of course, the game started and here comes an important question, "Can you change a player's DNA?" All week I had talked about scoring and shooting. I told myself before the game, to set the tone, I was going to come down and get into the lane and score on one of the first possessions. When I get in the gym now I work on my shot, pull-up, and finishing in the lane trying to work on finishing and putting up points.
They got the opening tip, scored and we came back down. I had the ball, got into the lane and... saw a flashing teammate. What did I do? Force up the shot or dish it off to the open teammate? What do you think I did.. if you guessed forced up the shot. You guessed wrong. If you guessed dished it off for a better, open shot.. you were clearly right. I turned ran back down after the assist and smiled. Shooting isn't my game, scoring isn't why I play. I'd rather get into the lane and throw a bounce pass to a backdoor cutter than to go behind the back through 2 guys and put up a bad shot that goes in.
Don't get me wrong, I did shoot.. but barely as I put up about 6 shots in the 24ish minutes I played. Thankfully, I played with a guy that had the DNA to score.. and score he did. But, what makes a player a scorer? What makes a player a distributor? Is it knowing your limitations and excelling at other aspects of your game? In my case, I know it's something that I've always played with.. in middle school our team had a lot of size. I played PG then and my job was to get the ball to our freak athlete or our post player; I didn't have to score. This continued into high school where I played with guys that were built to score.. I played with 2 of our school's all time leading 3-pt shooters and our school's 2nd all time leading scorer, so my job was easy: bring the ball down the floor, pass the ball to scorer, watch the shot go in and win.
Points are only as important as scoring enough total for the team to win. Individual points? Eh.. you need to have somebody that has the basketball DNA to score or to take the big shot. That was never really my game, whether it was a lack of confidence or deferring to others that were more equipped. You can't have 5 guys that have that DNA on the floor at the same time, you have to have guys that know and accept roles. I think that's why I was able to defer so much last night and focus on crashing the boards and finding the open man. I'd done it so long and so many times it was 2nd nature last night. Could I have put up more shots and scored? Yeah, I could have.. would that have been better for the team? Doubtful. My team had a player that had better scoring basketball DNA and was on last night. Why interfere with that?
That is something that players need to realize. Their basketball DNA can change over time, in the right environment and with the confidence and needed skills, but if you play on a team with somebody that has a better ability to score and more of that mentality; it should be easy to focus on other things. Who cares who gets the points? Ball movement, passing, cutting and spacing are as important during the game as who gets the points (and therefore, the accolades). I always say to my team, "Offense will take care of itself. I don't care if you score 0 or 20, you'll contribute your time on the floor in other ways." Thankfully, at middle school, players buy into that more easily than they do in high school. I haven't had any battles of people putting up too many shots or hogging the ball too much; if I did, what would I do? I'd have to make them find that role, make them understand their basketball skills and value what's more important.. the team or the points. Easier said than done.
In case you were wondering, I only hit 2 of those 6 shots.. one beautiful Rafer "Skip to My Lou" Alston floater and a reverse lay-up. A double-double of the Jason Kidd and Magic Johnson variety according to my crowd statisticians with double digit boards and assists. I was like Dennis Rodman on the glass. And don't worry, the teachers won 50-32. Beatdown city.
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