Breaking Up With Basketball
For the past 27 years, basketball was my social glue. To sum it up, I started playing basketball since 2nd grade, played fantasy basketball for about 10 straight years starting from high school until my mid 2os, played pickup games during college, coached basketball to middle school kids for 6 years. I never made my high school team (couldn’t shoot and too skinny) and never loved basketball enough to want to physically change my body for it. I made tons of friends and gained respect from other when they saw that I competed and could actually play.
But now, I’m ready to put basketball behind me.
If college was about discovering who you are as a budding young adult, then post-college and work-life is definitely about solidifying your characteristics and what type of legacy you want to build. We’re working on our careers, we’re exploring new and different types of activities. Our circle of friends begin to shift more frequently as people start dating other people, get married, have kids, move somewhere else, or go to grad school. Basically anything that modifies the frequency in which you communicate with someone. Basketball used to solidify many of these circle of friends. As we get older, ball isn’t life anymore.
I wanted to become a basketball coach as a career, but that’s not going to pay the bills. I still do, but I think it’s something I can put on the back-burner until I can financially support myself in order to do it.
I just don’t love the game as much as I used to anymore.
Maybe it’s because that in order to grow, you have to be slightly selfish. Since basketball is a team sport, it breaks the continuity of playing under control. Scrimmages and pickup games become your lab and doing lab work is not necessarily lined up with teamplay.
That’s where I’m at. I do want to get better, but I know that I’ll have to ruffle some feathers in the meantime in order to get there. It means using pickup games and teams I’m coaching as guinea pig situations and not everyone is a fan of that. It’s that awkward growing period from starting out as a noob to becoming a master. Everything in between becomes a struggle not just for myself, but for others around me as well. That’s where the grind truly happens.
I’ve come to realize at the ripe age of 27 that basketball isn’t everything. Our mid-20s are supposed to be about be noncommittal to anything (except maybe a significant other and/or working out). Since I graduated from college, 8 months out of each year have been dedicated to coaching basketball twice a week. My friends and colleagues marveled at my commitment, but know that they couldn’t ever give up their freedom to do something like that. It’s like having respect for a monk who practices celibacy; most people would never do it, but you find it amazing.
As a I look back at my early and mid-twenties, there are two things I accomplished.
- I gave back to my community which helped grow my circle of friends and a love a basketball for the first 27 years of my life
- I bought my freedom away from my parents place by buying my own home in the Bay Area without their financial help.
Now when I look life, I think about it in terms of time periods and ask myself, “What are the major events I accomplish during X period of time?”. When you define the periods of your life by milestones, it makes working towards bigger goals more meaningful and motivational because you want to leave a lasting legacy you can be proud of.
As I look forward in the near future, I’m asking myself, “How do I want to define my late 20s to early 30s?”
