SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA: BASKETBALL EDITION
| Five Things… [About Basketball]| The "Anyone Anywhere" Meeting Update | From the TFLMS Archive: "Basketball and Pennies" | Much, Much More |
I’m grateful for a day with my son. I’m grateful for a tour of his ship. I’m grateful there was a way back. I’m grateful for an early morning. I’m grateful to be sober today.
[I’m traveling this morning and hope you enjoy this previously-enjoyed Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza!]
The Basketball Edition
Again, why did this take so long? Also, I’m now out of disclosable hobbies, so we could be really in tough shape next week. But, that’s next week and this week, it’s all about basketball.1 Why basketball, you ask?2 I wondered that, too. Let me start with a digression about yesterday morning.
It’s been a long, hard-ish couple of weeks here at the ranch. There’s a new gig that’s pretty exciting, but has, let’s just say, lots of challenges attached. There’s another new project that seems completely fantastical to me, except that it keeps happening and geting real-er. And there’s this enterprise, the whole TFLMS empire, that I truly, truly love and cherish. Also, has undeniably helped keep me sober and deepen and widen my spiritual life.
Why basketball? So, last week was long and included a day-long strategy session in Philadelphia that has generated and will generate what is called in my line of business, “a shit-ton of stuff to do.” Once I put this up, yesterday at 7:06am, I was off for the morning!
At roughly 7:18am I exited my apartment in basketball garb.3 It was a beautiful morning here in New York, I walked briskly with occasional bursts of slow jog to the park down the block and the anticipation was building. I got down and up the 86th street stairs, past the big dog park (there’s a little dog park along the East River Promenade, too) and then there it is. In the words of Monty Python, “aloof and majestic:”
Is there a sweeter thing than that? That is a blank canvas. If I could have picked my own nickname, it might have involved the phrase, “coast-to-coast.” I really love that. Anyway, it could not have been a more perfect morning. I treat these shoot-arounds (also the best part of NBA games) semi-seriously and have been developing the protocol for about fifty years. Yikes. One rule: Need to make the first shot, HAVE to make the last one. We’re never done until we hit a three and then two free-throws.
My basketball consciousness developed early. I remember my dad taking me to Purdue games (featuring Rick Mount back then) and I think things really popped for me when the Bucks won the NBA championship in 1971. I was a huge Lew Alcindor fan.4 I think around the Fourth Grade was when things blossomed into full obsession. We had moved again, but we were now in a house in Iowa City where we were going to stay a while and it had a basketball hoop on the garage.
Pretty soon, I was out there every single day. I’d shoot until it was dark, on snowy days if the driveway was clear and I could stand not wearing gloves for 10 or 15 minutes (also the ball doesn’t bounce much in that weather), when the rain let up for a bit, or when it was like 100 degrees. I was out there shooting, imagining game situations, practicing moves that would take years of practice before they could be debuted in junior high gyms.
I don’t remember what I thought about, but I know that it was a time where I let things out and worked things out. There was a divot in the driveway that marked the approximate free throw line and I can remember that one of my challenges in practicing free throws was clearing my mind of all the thinking and focusing on the bracket at the back of the rim. I think basketball was a way to turn my brain off. Unfortunately, I found some other things that did the same thing a few years later.
Over the years, I’ve played a literal ton of pick-up basketball. As a kid, I started playing in games down at the old University of Iowa Field House (capacity: 13,365). In the summertime, I’d play at the outdoor courts down by the big dormitories. There were always games to find and it became my favorite thing in the world. Unfortunately, my budding career got nipped when I had to choose between debate and basketball. 5 Basketball became my secret getaway. I could spend hours playing and not thinking. I loved that a lot. I needed that.
The years went along, it became harder after law school to maintain a regular basketball schedule.6 Also, injuries. I tore up my ankle again as a young lawyer and when I got home after getting outfitted with the boot and crutches that I was going to be using for the next 3 months, the utter despondency I felt about the prospect of not being able to play was really telling. I genuinely felt a sense of panic.
Thinking about that now, tells me a lot about my brain and my thinking patterns. I was reliant on ways to escape my reality—even just for a little bit. I had a portfolio of techniques I used, including drinking and drugs, but other temporary brain oblivion-inducing things, too.
In a way, my obsession with basketball, or with fishing, or with any of the things I get obsessive about, was a way of seeing how great my need was for brain quiet. Poetically, they call it “surcease.” You could see the way basketball became so important to me repeated a few years later when I discovered drinking. In a way, my love of basketball helps diagnose my alcoholism. It also illuminates the way out.
Yesterday morning featured a dazzling array of moves that ended with perfectly-arced, heavy back-spinning shots. Well, not all of them, But, all of the fears, concerns, flashes of anger and insecurity all fell away and it didn’t matter whether I made the shot or not. Well, that always matters. I’m sure I look pretty ridiculous to the passers-by on the promenade. I do not really care. When I step into that deep corner jumper the way you’re supposed to, right elbow in, squared to the basket, jumping straight up and then that quick wrist flick. When that shot drills the middle of the rim with all that backspin and just drops straight down and then slowly bounces right back to me. Yes, I’m going to celebrate that.7
Basketball maybe shows how I got to the bad places I got to, but it also shows me the way out. No, I’m not going to tell you you need to start doing shooting drills to get sober.
You just have to figure out something you love doing and understand why.
I realized that understanding why I loved basketball so much could help me design a sober life. And that’s the point I think, it’s about designing a life I love and can sustain, not just figuring out how to live the old life without drinking. I love playing basketball because I love being on a team. I love the excitement, the instant camaraderie, the shared goal. As I liked to proclaim during my very brief official career, the position was called “shooting guard.” But, to be honest, making the play that leads to someone else making the flashy score feels even better. Especially that eye-contact and finger point afterwards.
I like winning and you can’t win alone.
I realize all of life can’t be exactly like basketball. But I can approach all of life the way I approach one of the things I love best in the world. Enthusiasm, wordless excitement, tolerating the occasional bad bounce or ankle sprain. Playing with effort on rainy days, snowy days, dark days. I can approach all of the challenging things in my life, the way I approach basketball. In that world, I don’t need something like drinking to blot out the angry, dark thoughts. Love and light seem to work a lot better.
If every morning starts holding the ball behind the baseline, looking downcourt and seeing nothing but a big, huge rim, well, I know exactly what to do. We’re going coast-to-coast, baby.
1. Billy Preston and Basketball is a Match Made In Heaven!
I’m sorry, I could and have, literally watched this over and over. ABA basketball was the absolute best.
2. The 1976 ABA Slam Dunk Competition
I mean Michael Jordan was good, but seriously. This was like ten years before and he could have taken off just inside the key and still dunked. Truth. I’m sorry, that last throw-away dunk would still win dunk competitions. And the shoes. I loved those shoes.
3. Even More Amazing!
David Thompson could take a quarter off the top of the backboard and leave change. And dunk.
4. Best Shot of All Time?
5. The IceMan Cometh
I loved George Gervin and that pump left, baseline jumper. According to Coach Miller: “there are no finger rolls in 8th grade basketball.”
For us, reading and writing have been a big part of recovery and sobriety. We thought we’d start sharing some of our favorite books on the topic of recovery, addiction and general happiness and telling you how they helped us! If you have ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions or if there are some books that you’d like to chat about, well, we’d love to do that with you. 8
The “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
It’s the “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, this Tuesday evening at 7pm. We had a glitch last week, but we’re ready to go and hope you can join us this Tuesday! It’s 1/2 AA Meeting, 1/2 Alcoholic Book Club and 1/2 something else I haven’t figured out yet.
Hope you can join us!
From the TFLMS Archives:
Actually, I’m already thinking it’s maybe not all about basketball.
If history is a guide, you probably haven’t and won’t be asking that, but it’s kind of a writing crutch I’ve come to rely on.
No, I don’t wear like an actual jersey or team shorts or even a hat turned to the side.
He writes this now, under a different name, and I’m a loyal subscriber. I wish there was just the smallest token of appreciation back for 50 years of fan-hood (it even involving making my own “33” jersey with a white t-shirt and black magic marker and a subsequent grounding when the marker messed up a load of laundry.) Not a guilt trip, just a request/dream.
Note: I did end up getting scholarship offers and became a lawyer, so it was the logical choice.
I played at some pretty choice playgrounds in north and south Philly when I was in law school—learned some pretty interesting lessons there, including how not to lose your shoes if someone dunked on you.
Note: That moment also gets recorded in the “Swagger Inventory” and can be applied against moments of insecurity or fear later in the week.
Seriously, write a book review and we’ll probably put it up.