Basketball, Wings, and Trust

Last Thursday I was playing basketball at my gym. I love basketball. It's a great team-oriented sport. You can tell a person's personality by the way they play the game. I'll write more about this in the future. For now, I want to talk about that particular game on Thursday.

I was playing a 4 on 4 half court game that night. The fist two games were awful. I lost both of them :( Why? Many reasons. One of them was that our team didn't do a good job of passing and mainly because it's the first time we played together as a team. I tried very hard to help out my team to win. Whether doubling against their big guy, rotating on defense or shutting down my guy, we just could not get the job done. I wasn't frustrated. I've won and lost many times that it's just another game.

After that second loss, my friend Jeremy showed up and two of my teammates left. So we replaced them with Jeremy and some other guy. With Jeremy on my side, we won the next four games in a row. It was a blast! I haven't team up with Jeremy for a long time because our work schedules were always conflicting. So why did we win this time and with an amazing run of 4 winning games in a row? Consider this: Jeremy is not physically gifted. He's a forty something year old man (but still in good shape) playing against other twenty to thirty year olds during that night. Neither was that new guy. He doesn't know how to shoot and he's not even good at all.

The reason is trust. Jeremy and I have played countless times that I can trust him to do his part, whether it's defending his own guy, helping others to double team their guy, making his shots, or putting the trust in me to take that shot. Similarly, I trust Jeremy whenever we play together. We all know each other's weaknesses and strengths and share the same goal: To win the game. So throughout the night, we helped each other out on defense, we passed the ball to each other to make excellent plays, and we had a lot of fun. We played against other good teams but they didn't click well as a team compared to us. During these 4 games, I've scored around 3 to 4 points. For those of you unfamiliar with the scoring system, each basket is worth one point and the first team is get 7 points win. So during these games, I was pretty much the MVP. This would not happen if it wasn't for Jeremy. He makes me play better and more competitive because he knows my weaknesses and strengths and most importantly, we click as a team. Jeremy also scored like 2 to 3 points during these 4 games. Jeremy is like my wingman and I am also his wingman. :)

During the run of 4 games, we beat 3 different teams. One of them was Alan's team. Alan is another great friend of ours and you can also say I'm his wingman. He and I have also played countless times. I remember him always calling or emailing me to come play basketball with him every Tuesdays or Thursdays and to play on the SAME team. He says I'm a great wingman and help him make his life easier on the court. Similarly to me and Jeremy, Alan and I trust each other.

So where was I? Oh..on that Thursday night, Jeremy and I beat Alan's team very badly. The score was 7 to 1. Jeremy and I did not guard Alan because we all want to have fun and play a relaxing game. After that humiliating loss, I can tell Alan was not happy. After our 4th win, we played Alan's team again. This time Alan took the assignment of guarding me. I'm like "Why do you want to guard me? I thought I was your wingman?" So Alan goes "Yeah, but I want to win and you will have to work hard to score every point." So throughout the game, I was very nice to Alan. I was very passive and I didn't make him look bad by scoring although I should have made that lay-up when I blew by him. So how did he return the favor? Well..he played very rough and was very physical. I was knocked to the ground several times because of his rough play. Others would have gotten mad or retaliated. I didn't get mad or lose my cool. We played so many games together as a team that this didn't bother me.....much. In the end, Jeremy and I lost. One of the reasons was that I was too passive. If I played my usual game of scoring 3 to 4 points we would have won. Normally, I would play good defense on my guy and they would score at most 1 point on me. Alan scored 2 points on me. The final score was 5 to 7.

The moral of my story is that there are some people you can trust and some you need to be careful around. In basketball, I can trust both Jeremy and Alan when we're on the same team. We pass the ball to each other trusting and always helping each other out on defense. But when we're playing on different teams, I have to be careful around Alan. Alan wanted to win so badly that he showed no mercy to his fellow wing....ME...ahhaahah whereas I played very passive and had mercy on him. Jeremy, on the other hand, would not do what Alan had done. I've played against Jeremy many times and we guarded each other countless times and we ALWAYS had played 'nice' to each other because we all wanted each other to have fun playing basketball. Plus, each of us have won and lost many times before so it's just another basketball game. Now, I'm not saying that I don't trust Alan in real life outside of basketball. Alan's a good friend of mines and I will ALWAYS be his wingman and I'm sure he's my wingman whenever we play together on the same team.

This just to shows that when people want to achieve a certain goal, whether to win a basketball game, to win a girl over, or to achieve power or money, some people would not hesitate to take advantage of you. In real life, you can't always trust people 100% no matter how long you've known them (In case you're wondering, I've known both Jeremy and Alan a little over 5 years). Not all hope is lost. There will always be people like my friend Jeremy where you can count on. And if Alan is reading this....Watch out! No mercy from me next time :)