Love of the game

I had played sports my entire life, but when I decided I was done, I was really done. To the extent of not watching, not playing, and rarely talking about them at all. I wanted to figure out who I was apart from them because it was all I had known. I didn’t even really know why I did play. It just had become something that I had always done even though obviously there was a finite origin somewhere. If you had met me a year from the day I turned 18 there would be no reminisce of who I used to be, only who I was becoming with each passing day which could have differed depending on my mood. Which I think is probably normal when you’re defining who you are from who you were. I was still in the midst of that transition when my dad, with all our faults in our relationship, still believed that somewhere was the kid that he most likely remembered wanting to shoot on his hoop until it was so dark he couldn’t see in front of him. That even in the thick of winter was shoveling snow so that he had a path to dribble. The same kid who acted like it was game 7 of the NBA finals dribbling around anything and everything in his house so much that his mom constantly scolded him. But he never stopped. That wasn’t who I was at 19, it had gotten to the point where it seemed so distant that it was someone else’s life, and memories that I had acquired. My dad introduced me to two people that would help shape who I would be in the following years. You never know how important someone is going to be in your life when you meet them, and it’s beautiful when you get to a point it’s unfathomable to even begin to wonder where you’d be if they weren’t. My dad had met A 9 year old girl and her father, somewhere playing basketball my dad had obviously seen something in her that he knew needed to be fanned like a fire that his son had once had to be the best not for anybody else but for himself. He told the girls father that he didn’t train but that he had a son that might be a good fit, and to be honest I’m not sure how I felt about it, I still was under the impression that all of that was another life, but not my life anymore. I remember the first day that I met them. I had pulled up to a middle school and I saw my dad rebounding for a little girl and her dad standing off to the side. There was something about the way he talked to me when I first shook his hand. I had never really been in a situation where I met an adult who didn’t already have some kind of preconceived Idea about me having known me from adolescence but, he didn’t because he was meeting the “now” me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at the time. But he treated me like an adult, not as a child, and it was a foreign concept to me because I never really had someone meet me as an adult and decide on my character from there. As I contemplated the dynamic of our first meeting, I went to meet the little girl. She was brilliant, and she also had something so familiar about her. She asked so many questions and she actively listened which honestly is impressive for anybody at any age let alone a nine year old to a stranger, but she was special. I think at the time because of where I was at in my life I didn’t realize how much she reminded me of me. She had this pure love of the game that was unmatched, and it felt like the hours we trained went by in minutes because she was just happy to be there, but the most intense person I had ever met. I knew right away that I would be doing a disservice to her if I didn’t plan and bring everything I had to working with her. Being as young as she was at first the training would be a combination of me just talking to her about anything and everything and also working on basketball. She had become a friend, she saved me from forgetting a part of my life that made me everything that I was, just because she reminded me of me and seeing it on the outside, the passion, the competitiveness, its awe inspiring and she pulled me off of the path I was going down to renounce it all. I’ve always loved kids because of their innocence so I wasn’t entirely surprised that she had this affect on me but what I never could have seen coming is that her father, from our very first interaction had treated me as if we were equals, like we could be friends. He’s the first friend I ever made as an adult, I never felt that awkwardness of talking to someone’s parents and waiting for a good break in conversation to cut and run, it was natural. I didn’t realize then how important his friendship would become to me, he’s one of the greatest men i’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing with an unending kindness that cant help but make you want to push yourself to be better. To hold myself accountable because he trusted me to mentor his daughter. I think back now and it really shouldn’t have surprised me that she was as great as she was because she had a father who adored her and wanted her to have every tool at her disposal to feel and be great. I hold them both in such high regard til this day and I assume I always will because the girl pulled me from a dead line and showed me why I loved this part of who I was so much, and her father showed me a kind of friendship that I wouldn’t have ever been able to recognize let alone appreciate if I hadn’t of met him. I haven’t seen them In a while but there are many times in my everyday life where I think of them because I wouldn’t be who I was if I hadn’t showed up to that court on a Saturday morning, I can’t thank them enough for helping me become the person I’m going to be so with all my love this is for both of them as well as a thank you for being a friend when I didn’t know I needed it the most.