Basketball Diaries

I played pick-up basketball today with my co-workers, and it went about as well as you might imagine that it would.  The last time I hung up my sneakers, I seem to remember myself looking something like this:

Somewhere in the past seven years of inactivity, I somehow managed to morph into this:

(Which, by the way, is totally unfair because this guy is 73-years old in this picture and managed to make a college basketball roster.  Here's more from the newsroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvkmqbgUU_E&feature=player_embedded.)

Anyway, besides giving me the gift of an enormous basketball scoreboard that is bringing back fond memories of my better years, my parents also gave me the gift of hope in the form of a new pair of basketball shoes.  I have been looking for every excuse in the book to not make myself get back out there, and my friends and family are doing everything they can to smash those hurdles down.  I figured I owed it to everyone to get back out there and give it the old college try.  We played 2-on-2 again, which meant that one poor soul was saddled with 268 lbs of dead weight.  I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but the most frustrating thing about trying to come back is knowing that my mind still thinks like a guy who has never stopped playing while my body acts like a guy who has been dead for three years.  I don't have the lungs for the constant movement, I don't have the knees for the drives, cuts, and stops that I used to thrive on, and I don't have the coordination to be able to do things that used to be automatic.  When I post up (a spot I'm so much more comfortable at, mostly because it just involves standing and leaning), I still remember what to do, but when I go up for easy shots, it is like my hands can't figure out if we're doing a jump shot or a lay-up.  Have you ever seen someone block himself when he was shooting?  I'm almost pretty sure that I did that three times today.

I'm only going to get better with repetition and time, but of course this happens to be the week where I have something going on every other day over the lunch hour.  Still, I had way more fun today than I did a couple of weeks ago when I only made it 18 minutes.  Today I made it a full 42 and lasted for three games. Granted, this is half court ball, so all bets are off when we get more guys and have to start running up and down the court.  I can only imagine what kind of shape I'll be in on afternoons where we go full court since today I played, showered, dried off, went back to my desk, and was absolutely soaked by the time I logged back in to my computer.  Investing in a small fan for that after workout moisture is going to be a necessity.  With that said, I've got a new pair of kicks, a big ol' scoreboard reminding me there's a champion somewhere deep inside of me, and fantastic (and patient) friends and family who won't let me quit.  I may not ever get back to my glory days, but to paraphrase the words of America's finest poet, Sir Toby Keith, I'm not as good as I once was, but I can only hope to be as good once as I ever was.  

In the meantime, I will continue trying to go from this:

...into that...

...without ever going back to this.

Finally deciding to "Shoot it, fat boy!", 

Stiles Pool