Basketball & A Real Life Application [Freelance]

When we think of basketball, we think of scoring, defense and winning. There is no fallacy that these are the basics of the game, but it only scratches the surface of what the game really is. Basketball is a team sport that involves the efforts of everyone on the same team to survive the opposition and win the game. Plausibly, winning one game isn’t the goal. In fact, the goal is to win the championship and establish your legacy. That means that the team has to die to their egos daily for the betterment of the organization overall. Some games, you’ll score 15 or more while in other games, you won’t play more than 15 minutes. It happens, but how badly do you want to effectuate that goal?

To tie this to a real-life application, let’s look at family, one of the more crucial foundations of a person's life. In a family, we can agree that the father’s job is to provide and protect while the mother is highly dependent on ensuring that the house is a home. As it pertains to motherhood and their expectations, to each his own. Different mothers in different households serve different roles when it comes to making a house a "home". The child(ren)’s job is to follow in the parents’ footsteps of collectively nurturing/providing for the household, or team. In other words, learning how to take care of each other. After all, that’s what a team is, right?

If you’re like me, you didn’t grow up with a father, whether it was voluntarily (splitting, divorce) or involuntarily (death). My father walked out on us when I was 3 years old and I have a couple of friends who’ve lost their fathers at a very young age. It takes an emotional toll on the rest of the team, so it would be easy for some to assume that the team (which was my mother and her child) would not be in playoff contention. That’s what usually happens when a team loses its star player or "leading scorer". According to the opposition, there was no way that a young mother and her boy would survive this marathon called "life" all the way through. 

What does that mean for you? What do you do when the leader of the team abandons the team for whatever reason? In some cases, the franchise is left discouraged and unmotivated, oftentimes resulting in a losing season (the family falls apart). In other cases, the team readjusts in an effort order to hold the team together or put up a fighting effort at least. Reluctantly, I was blessed with a mother who carried the weight of the team on her shoulders, something like LeBron in the 2016 NBA Finals. Counted out in one of the more crucial stages of life, it would've been easier to just throw in the towel or simply hover in a pool of mediocrity. 

But with God’s help, I can say that my mother single-handedly raised her boys to be responsible, respectful, and ultimately, God-fearing. Amidst the absence of a father, it didn’t get in the way of the ultimate goal, one that would re-establish the entire franchise. That doesn’t mean it was easy. In a basketball sense, role players were playing 30, sometimes 40, or more minutes per game (by this, I mean my uncles and other mentors stepped away from their families to coach me through), and the team was dealt several losses along the way. The troubles of life sometimes shook what some would call an unstable/under-qualified team, but faith in God and hard work prevailed. 

I say all that to say this; there is power in humility, teamwork, and fluid functionality. In life, you will be dealt a hand that you might not know how to play. You’d be expected to manage a load that you were not built to carry on your own. But because some people might expect that out of you, they might treat you any kind of way or even abandon ship when they see your inability to fulfill. It might be because they'd feel like they are "too good" for you or even go as far as seeing you as a liability to them. 

And you know what… sometimes, that is okay. Recalibration is necessary sometimes. Not every player can fit into a team’s system, regardless of how good they might think they are. One thing that must never change is your ultimate goal followed by your belief in God. Isaiah 45:2 reads 

"I took you by your right hand to help you defeat nations, to strip other kings (teams) of their power, and to open city gates that will not be closed again. I will go in front of you and make the mountains flat. I will break the city gates of bronze and cut the iron bars on the gates."

So what if your roster is insufficient, or if people deem your team defective. People may give up and turn their back on the team, not show up to practice, or even join the forces with the Warriors, I mean the other side. These can all happen in the most pivotal seasons in your life. But humility, teamwork, and fluid functionality are all you need. God is not limited to the decisions of man, nor is he incapable of rallying your team back from down 3-1.