Basketball Score Two
When I was in the ninth grade, I wanted badly to be a basketball team. I didn’t make the school team but our church had a team that all were welcome on. Almost every day after school, I walked down to an outdoor basketball goal that was placed at the end of a cement slab and practiced. After a great deal of work, I found myself becoming much better at the game, and I actually became a ‘legend in my own mind.’ By the time basketball season came around I felt very confident that I was going to be the star player. Our coach (who had never played basketball before) gave us what I thought was a great pep talk before our first game. He said, “Okay, guys, if you want to win this game, you are going to have to give the ball to Randal and let him shoot. If he misses, get the rebound, pass it back to him, and let him shoot again.” He had watched me enough to know that I was the best player on the team which in retrospect wasn’t saying anything. I thought to myself, “This coach is a genius!” I was excited to show off my superior basketball ability.
We lived in the country and none of our players didn’t have as much money as the city ward (Beaumont) we were going to play. Their entire team had matching uniforms with names on the back of their jerseys and nice Converse All-Star basketball shoes. None of our players had basketball shorts or jerseys, and only two even had basketball shoes. Two other players went barefoot, and I wore my scuffed-up Sunday shoes, which I also wore Monday through Saturday. As we began warming up before the game, the opposing coach complained that my hard-soled shoes were scuffing up the gym floor. After some discussion, I became the third member of our starting lineup playing barefoot.
When the game started, I excitedly followed the coach’s advice. On offensive plays I dribbled the ball down the court and shot every time I got near the basket. If my teammates got a rebound, they passed the ball back to me and I shot again. I was also excited because there was a young lady in the stands I really wanted to impress. What better way to do this than for her to see that I was the star of the team. As the game progressed, I continued to shoot the ball over and over again. I could hear one of the fathers of a teammate screaming at me during the game to “pass the ball off,” but I ignored him and followed my coach’s pre-game instructions to shoot every time I touched the ball. I figured that he was just jealous because his boy was not nearly as good as me. I decided his son had had the same opportunity to practice each day, and it certainly was not my fault that he had failed to do so.
Into the second quarter, I discovered I had a problem. I was not used to going without shoes. My feet hurt and blisters began to form. Finally, with about two minutes left in the game, the pain became so intense that I had no choice but to ask the coach to take me out. The first time my replacement got the ball, he made a jump shot and scored two points. The crowd roared with excitement. The final score that day was Beaumont 52, Williamson, 2. My replacement had scored our team’s only points of the day. Needless to say, I was humiliated by my ‘off day.’ In fact, I didn’t want to go to church the next day to face those who had witnessed or heard about the game. It is times like these, when we are down and discouraged and our self-esteem is low, that we need a friend to say, “Just because you had a bad day doesn’t make you a bad person or a failure.”
