I come from a basketball family. My dad, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, and my brothers are all basketball nuts. We’re a pretty tall family, so I guess it’s only natural that the sport everyone likes best is the one invented for tall people. My dad taught my brothers and I how to play when we were really young and I’ve liked to play basketball for as long as I can remember.
The only problem though, is that I fucking suck at basketball.
I’m easily the least athletic person in my family. And even though I wasn’t very athletic, I’d always been pretty decent at sports growing up solely because I was bigger than everyone else. I played football, baseball, and basketball with a lot of success early on, but when the rest of the kids I was competing against caught up to me and eventually got bigger than me in size, my athletic success ceased to exist. I was a late-bloomer, so when the other kids got bigger and stronger while I stayed the same size, I was put at a pretty big disadvantage in every sport I played.
Basketball ended up being the first sport I quit. Despite my height, I was still big enough (heavy enough) to get by with playing football for a couple more years, but basketball just wasn’t realistic for me. I was about 5'4" playing against kids that were over 6 feet tall, and eventually games and practices just stopped being fun for me. I quit the sport entirely when I was 15, and I haven’t played competitively since then. My dad and my brothers continued to play basketball all the time though. Occasionally I’d join them for a shoot-around or a pickup game in the driveway, but each time I’d only end up embarrassing myself and leaving the court in frustration.
So for about 5 years now I’ve had this love-hate relationship with basketball. I love watching, talking, and playing the game, but I’ve been so bad at it that I never want to play anymore.
If you pay attention to sports media these days, you’ll see that the NBA is being covered more so now than ever before in recent years. This year’s Summer League ratings have grown by an insane amount, and the entire NBA offseason has been the source of pretty much every entertaining sports story of the Summer. The NBA is turning into a 12-month sport, and the league’s fandom is responding accordingly. Me and all my friends absolutely love the NBA, and we actually play basketball a lot more often now because of that. And because I’m now playing somewhat competitively again, I actually care about whether or not I’m good at basketball.
In the 5 years that I haven’t been playing basketball, I’ve hit my growth spurt and I’m now about as big and strong as everyone else on the court. Still though, my biggest weakness is and has always been my jump shot. I may have mediocre athleticism and mediocre size, but if I can develop a solid jumper, I will actually have a shot at being good at basketball. And luckily for me, I have nothing but time on my hands for the next month or so.
So for the past 5 days now, every single morning I’ve been waking up, eating breakfast, and immediately spending 2 hours in my driveway working on my jump shot. I’m pleased to say that the results have been amazing. In just 5 days, I’ve gone from being borderline autistic with a basketball in my hands, to being a future pickup basketball hall of famer.
I improved my shot with the help of an old Dwyane Wade Gatorade commercial that, for some reason, I can’t find anywhere on the internet. In the commercial D-Wade talks about the B.E.E.F. technique — balance, eyes, elbow, and follow-through. It turns out that that’s really all you need to develop a good shot. Balance and position your feet facing towards the rim, aim your shot at the back part of the hoop, keep your elbow in and upright like a waiter carrying a plate of food, and flick your wrist and follow-through on your shot. I basically have perfected my jumper with just those four tips alone, and it’s been an immensely satisfying experience.
My shot didn’t magically improve once I figured out the proper shooting form, though. Improving my shot has been a step by step process that’s required a lot of patience in the past 5 days. I started off just focusing on one letter of B.E.E.F. at a time, perfecting that portion of the form until I felt like I couldn’t get any better at it. I’d then move on to the next letters of B.E.E.F. and repeat that process all over again, until I was finally able to put all the pieces together and properly shoot (and swish) a basketball. I’m no Steph Curry, but I now can confidently hold my own on a basketball court with both my friends and my family members.
I think the most rewarding part of this whole experience has been taking a concept like B.E.E.F. and making it come to fruition in real life. I fundamentally understood B.E.E.F. in my head, and I then practiced it step by step, until I was finally able to successfully apply it to my shooting form. With just hard-work, persistence, and a concept, I was able to drastically get better at something in 5 days.
The goal now is to approach other areas of my life with the same focus that I had for my jump shot. If I were to approach my schoolwork, my writing, or whatever with the same commitment and focus that I had for B.E.E.F., I’d say it’s more likely than not that I’d find success eventually. What I learned from improving my jumper is just further evidence that hard work and persistence is all you need to find success in life. The tricky part though is figuring out how to motivate yourself to work hard and be focused on all those other, less interesting things you face in life…Oh well. I’ll figure it out someday.
But in the meantime, back to gettin those buckets.
