Wisdom is the most UNDERRATED character trait. In my world, it's my "6IXTH MAN" and we all have opportunities, daily, to sub wisdom into our lives in place of ignorance. If knowing what to do is half the battle, the other half is letting what you know form WHO YOU ARE!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
6ixthman.com
Thank you to those of you who have been reading, leaving comments and provoking yourself toward deep reflection. Keep playin' your 6ixth Man by participating in blog posts on this blog or at 6ixthman.com.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
0 Wins 3 Losses at Spokane Hoopfest
I had been looking forward to my first time participating in Spokane's colossal annual event known as Hoopfest for about 3 months. 6700 players, $36 million in revenue for a 2-day 3-on-3 basketball tournament that shuts down the streets of downtown Spokane (a city in Eastern Washington). I was to play with 3 guys I'd never met, introduced to me by a friend who lives in Washington. But then I arrived, the competition ensued and my team lost. Our only win the weekend of June 27-28 was because a team forfeited. Facts can be misleading though. Each game we lost was by 3 points or less with the last one on Sunday being a narrow one-point defeat.
As I soaked in the experience and the thick culture on Saturday morning, I was enamored by the basketball enthusiasm but more so a sense of community. Ex-players, current players, wheelchair players, kid players, co-ed players, elderly players, etc. were all united in a common interest. Hoopfest is 20 years old but before 2004, I'd never heard of it. In the age of Wie and PS3 people still get outdoors in plus 90-degree heat and enjoy a game played on asphalt streets concave for drainage instead of flat for pull-up jumpers. Any number of variables makes the basketball aspect of this less than desirable for a gym wimp like myself. I hate playing outdoors. But I did it this time and can't wait for 2010. I strained my back the last game and played on Advil, something I almost never do.
I was sick to my stomach on the first day from losing. After all, I didn't fly standby just to lose in a 3-on-3 tourney. But therein lies the lesson and spirit of this blog. Did my team "Walking Tall" compete? CHECK. Did we pray that we'd be a witness of Christ's love and truth to other athletes? CHECK (Before every game). Did we blame the referees for our losses? CHECK, but only the first two. See, I discovered a couple of things that weekend. #1 The competitive juices still ebb profusely through my veins. #2 The embarrassment of losing was short lived because of the camaraderie of my team members who happen to share my faith.
Being flanked by real men who love to compete, hate losing but possess an allegiance to something bigger than basketball was enlivening. Sunday was so much different that the first part of Saturday when our hopes of winning the tournament faded and we were relegated to consolation bracket play. My team members and I played together, ate together, bunked at the same home. We absorbed, I felt, the essence of a "Hoop" "Fest". Basketball as in ...Basketball. Fest as in festival or celebration. It's as if the tournament helped me to honor the notion that my athleticism, fervor and endorphin rush from basketball is a gift. We celebrated the gift at Hoopfest and it was the anti-septic I needed in the face of 3 infectiously toxic close losses. THE LESSON: When the shots just don't fall and thousands are watching, be right there in the moment. It took a couple of losses but once I was in the moment, the festival became less "Me-Fest" and more "HoopFest".
Sunday, July 5, 2009
FANS Between a Rock and a Hard Place
You know what's hard? Time's up. It's hard to be stunned by the death of your hero and then find out he wasn't exactly hero material, I mean...that he had pronounced shortcomings. I'll preface by ackowledging the "Nobody's perfect" preamble without actually stating it. It goes without saying. But I remember being 16 and finding out that Magic Johnson had contracted the HIV virus through promiscuous escapades during the Showtime era of Lakerdom.
He was the basketball icon who, for me transcended limitations of poverty and circumstance. I wanted to be Magic but despite the tragedy that befell him on that day in November 1991, I couldn't help but ponder the means by which my hero had fallen from grace.
At any rate, here we are 18 years and one sport removed from the demise of my idol. Today we mourn the untimely death...homicide of Steve McNair. He was loved by so many, more than we Californians can even fathom because sports in Tennessee is larger than life and sports figures, I've been told, assume a much more signifcant persona than we're used to. But what's the appropriate line of conversation at this point? McNair was once 1 yard from taking the St. Louis Rams to overtime, he vanquished naysaying critics who said a D-1AA quarterback would never make a career in the NFL and he played through injuries most wouldn't tolerate at a desk job. But when he was found dead, he lay next to a woman who wasn't his wife and very likely his mistress. She was 16 years younger than him and McNair's wife Michelle was at home taking care of their four children when the news broke that the neighborhood gridiron legend had been found dead. So many questions come with stories like these and they fit like soaking wet puzzle pieces. Get it? They don't fit at all actually because real life seldom fits neatly with romanticized iconoclasm. We all have heroes. But once their humanity is revealed, then what?
He was the basketball icon who, for me transcended limitations of poverty and circumstance. I wanted to be Magic but despite the tragedy that befell him on that day in November 1991, I couldn't help but ponder the means by which my hero had fallen from grace.
At any rate, here we are 18 years and one sport removed from the demise of my idol. Today we mourn the untimely death...homicide of Steve McNair. He was loved by so many, more than we Californians can even fathom because sports in Tennessee is larger than life and sports figures, I've been told, assume a much more signifcant persona than we're used to. But what's the appropriate line of conversation at this point? McNair was once 1 yard from taking the St. Louis Rams to overtime, he vanquished naysaying critics who said a D-1AA quarterback would never make a career in the NFL and he played through injuries most wouldn't tolerate at a desk job. But when he was found dead, he lay next to a woman who wasn't his wife and very likely his mistress. She was 16 years younger than him and McNair's wife Michelle was at home taking care of their four children when the news broke that the neighborhood gridiron legend had been found dead. So many questions come with stories like these and they fit like soaking wet puzzle pieces. Get it? They don't fit at all actually because real life seldom fits neatly with romanticized iconoclasm. We all have heroes. But once their humanity is revealed, then what?
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Tyson Gay Didn't Play the Blame Game
http://www.strimoo.com/video/10553600/A-Shot-at-Glory-Track-Tyson-Gay-MySpaceVideos.html
Before Tyson Gay came in 5th at last year's Olympic 100M semi-finals in Beijing he prepared with gold medalist Jon Drummond. Gay was the most heralded sprinter and favorite going for USA's chances at a 100m gold medal until he was injured at the Olympic trials. If you viewed the video, you got a glimpse of the rigor of Gay's workout along with the expectations of family members close to him. What stands out, however, is not that he was favored to win and fell out of contention but rather how he prepared himself and didn't blame anyone or even an injury for the performance he would give in Beijing. Despite his own disappointment, Gay commented following Jamaican Usain Bolt's electrifying performance for gold at Beijing, "No telling what he (Bolt) could do if he ran start to finish."
It ’s never always someone else’s fault
I do not know Elmer G. Letterman but he is quoted as having said, “A man may fall many times but he won’t be a failure until he says someone pushed him.” Funny. There is still a tendency to respond to such wit, “But what if someone really did push me….isn’t that my validation?” It is not validation but rather an excuse to remain mediocre at best. The fourth lesson I have learned from not playing basketball is that, It’s never always someone else’s fault. My college coach stunned me early in my freshman year at a practice when he told us all that bad passes are the passer’s fault. I thought to myself, wait, “what if my guy has terrible hands or cuts to the basket with his head turned the wrong way? Would the inability to receive a pass not be the receivers fault at that point?” Coach said that he was tired of players blaming other people for their own poor decisions on the floor. “My teammate did not help me when I was beaten one-on-one.” Coach had a drill to ensure you did not get beaten one-on-one. “I could not take a charge because the referees called me for three early fouls and I did not want a fourth.” Coach had a drill for making charge-takers out of sissies. The concept was simple. Basketball is a game of competing. As a 17/18-year old freshman, I learned that blaming others only postponed
a confrontation with personal truth. Coach redefined “competing” as doing the right thing at the right time with maximum intensity.
To compete is to execute technique rehearsed in practice. It entails, for instance, telling a teammate he is being screened and helping on his man long enough to prevent an easy bucket. The principle of competing in every minute detail was the way in which my college coach attempted to garner selflessness in a team environment. In my college program, we did a 1-on-1 drill called “1-on-1 in the key.” The drill was simple. Stop three guys in-a-row before your defensive tenure is up. The only way out of the key was to throw a hard chest pass to an offensive player, close out on him and stop him from scoring using sound defensive principles. If you fouled him, you went back to zero stops. If he scored you went back to zero. If you missed
a blockout or gave up a rebound your stint on defense could feel like a sentence to the underworld of Greek mythology – eternal.
The lesson here is that blaming other people borders on insanity. In a game situation, you are the one guarding these offensive players so who will you blame? The technique for stopping an offensive player is not difficult to learn but feels physically unnatural. So I remember dreading this drill. I remember spending 30-45 minutes trying to stifle my fatigue and finish my sentence. It sucked. Nevertheless, I learned how to play defense. I’m 31 years old and I would challenge anybody to get by me on the first try. Blaming others does not teach us anything except how to shirk responsibility. Shouldering responsibility ensures that you get the tools needed for the game. All things equal, you should never fail in a contest if you have accepted the cost of preparation. Mastery of skills, information, concepts, etc. all lead to a performance of which one can be proud. Blaming others is a tool of deflection as much as it is a tool of deception. If we concentrated on what we control half as much as what we do not, our production would be exponentially increased. It’s never always someone else’s fault but it is always within one’s power to “compete.” That seems ironic but it is not. The someone you are blaming is often someone different and you are the one constant of every experience you have ever had in life. Surely the probability of every botched experience being the result of someone’s ineptitude must be astronomical. Again, you are the common denominator. You have private access to your thoughts and your physical abilities. You have consciousness if you are reading this right now. You are in control of far more than you realize. Humans can create the automobile, Velcro and telescopes that orbit the Earth but strangely find ourselves incapable of so much. To blame is to insult how we are created and I learned this good lesson from the best seat in the house – next to coach.
Before Tyson Gay came in 5th at last year's Olympic 100M semi-finals in Beijing he prepared with gold medalist Jon Drummond. Gay was the most heralded sprinter and favorite going for USA's chances at a 100m gold medal until he was injured at the Olympic trials. If you viewed the video, you got a glimpse of the rigor of Gay's workout along with the expectations of family members close to him. What stands out, however, is not that he was favored to win and fell out of contention but rather how he prepared himself and didn't blame anyone or even an injury for the performance he would give in Beijing. Despite his own disappointment, Gay commented following Jamaican Usain Bolt's electrifying performance for gold at Beijing, "No telling what he (Bolt) could do if he ran start to finish."
It ’s never always someone else’s fault
I do not know Elmer G. Letterman but he is quoted as having said, “A man may fall many times but he won’t be a failure until he says someone pushed him.” Funny. There is still a tendency to respond to such wit, “But what if someone really did push me….isn’t that my validation?” It is not validation but rather an excuse to remain mediocre at best. The fourth lesson I have learned from not playing basketball is that, It’s never always someone else’s fault. My college coach stunned me early in my freshman year at a practice when he told us all that bad passes are the passer’s fault. I thought to myself, wait, “what if my guy has terrible hands or cuts to the basket with his head turned the wrong way? Would the inability to receive a pass not be the receivers fault at that point?” Coach said that he was tired of players blaming other people for their own poor decisions on the floor. “My teammate did not help me when I was beaten one-on-one.” Coach had a drill to ensure you did not get beaten one-on-one. “I could not take a charge because the referees called me for three early fouls and I did not want a fourth.” Coach had a drill for making charge-takers out of sissies. The concept was simple. Basketball is a game of competing. As a 17/18-year old freshman, I learned that blaming others only postponed
a confrontation with personal truth. Coach redefined “competing” as doing the right thing at the right time with maximum intensity.
To compete is to execute technique rehearsed in practice. It entails, for instance, telling a teammate he is being screened and helping on his man long enough to prevent an easy bucket. The principle of competing in every minute detail was the way in which my college coach attempted to garner selflessness in a team environment. In my college program, we did a 1-on-1 drill called “1-on-1 in the key.” The drill was simple. Stop three guys in-a-row before your defensive tenure is up. The only way out of the key was to throw a hard chest pass to an offensive player, close out on him and stop him from scoring using sound defensive principles. If you fouled him, you went back to zero stops. If he scored you went back to zero. If you missed
a blockout or gave up a rebound your stint on defense could feel like a sentence to the underworld of Greek mythology – eternal.
The lesson here is that blaming other people borders on insanity. In a game situation, you are the one guarding these offensive players so who will you blame? The technique for stopping an offensive player is not difficult to learn but feels physically unnatural. So I remember dreading this drill. I remember spending 30-45 minutes trying to stifle my fatigue and finish my sentence. It sucked. Nevertheless, I learned how to play defense. I’m 31 years old and I would challenge anybody to get by me on the first try. Blaming others does not teach us anything except how to shirk responsibility. Shouldering responsibility ensures that you get the tools needed for the game. All things equal, you should never fail in a contest if you have accepted the cost of preparation. Mastery of skills, information, concepts, etc. all lead to a performance of which one can be proud. Blaming others is a tool of deflection as much as it is a tool of deception. If we concentrated on what we control half as much as what we do not, our production would be exponentially increased. It’s never always someone else’s fault but it is always within one’s power to “compete.” That seems ironic but it is not. The someone you are blaming is often someone different and you are the one constant of every experience you have ever had in life. Surely the probability of every botched experience being the result of someone’s ineptitude must be astronomical. Again, you are the common denominator. You have private access to your thoughts and your physical abilities. You have consciousness if you are reading this right now. You are in control of far more than you realize. Humans can create the automobile, Velcro and telescopes that orbit the Earth but strangely find ourselves incapable of so much. To blame is to insult how we are created and I learned this good lesson from the best seat in the house – next to coach.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Prude Went to See "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"
I haven't done much acting but on Monday I starred as the Prude in the theater watching the Transformers sequel. Some players on the varsity girls team that I coach warned that the movie was long. They didn't tell me it contained some of the most riveting special effects laced with over-sexualized inuendos and soft-pornographic references.
So there. I'm the prude but I submit that if you see the movie and were a Transformers fan growing up you know that your love for Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee and the Dinobots had nothing to do with profanity and coed dorm scenes promoting guilt-free sexual mythology. That's kind of a weird term but it is mythology...to think that cool movies are vehicles for an industry that creates slaves to the tune of billions. I'm facetious in saying that I'm a prude and here's why the sarcasm.
In "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" the main character (Sam) is the nucleus of a battle for human survival as Deceptigons consort to bring all of humanity to its knees. In the meantime, however, Sam goes off to college, lives in a coed dorm and encounters droves of model-type women who pose a threat to his relationship with the cutie back home. Inordinant amounts of time are spent displaying fictitious images of college students as sex-crazed junkies who are too sexy for their shirts and hair. It's the myth of youth being out-of-control from the blog yesterday. I'm the prude because I'm talking about it and people my whole life has asked me to relax. But I have one contention and it's directed toward men. Here it is: "Relaxing hasn't done men much good." Like Kanye West once wrote, "Have you seen the test? You got Ds...Ds..." Try Fs when it comes to self-control. Men are failing as fathers even when they are at home because so many young people tell their teachers that fathers are emotionally unavailable. Furthermore, porn is making slaves of many men...even Christian men.
So sticks and stones break bones but you can die crossing the street so I'm okay with the title "Prude." I just want to see Optimus Prime vanquish Megatron. I don't need a sideorder of cleavage to advance to plot. It's non-sequitir and yet we fall for it time and time again. I'm a nobody with a teacher's salary but if Michael Bay was listeing or anyone else from his camp I'd say, "dude make your money but don't forget that you play a role in this society. Men distract easily and do some pretty heinous things when they're not focused. Help the brothas out" Strength to love one's family is not formed in a vaccuum. Men everywhere are trying not to fail, trying not to give in to temptation, and trying to establish a commendable heritage once they've checked out. Is it prudish to ask movie makers of a PG-13 film to keep the creativity and ditch the kryptonite?
So there. I'm the prude but I submit that if you see the movie and were a Transformers fan growing up you know that your love for Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee and the Dinobots had nothing to do with profanity and coed dorm scenes promoting guilt-free sexual mythology. That's kind of a weird term but it is mythology...to think that cool movies are vehicles for an industry that creates slaves to the tune of billions. I'm facetious in saying that I'm a prude and here's why the sarcasm.
In "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" the main character (Sam) is the nucleus of a battle for human survival as Deceptigons consort to bring all of humanity to its knees. In the meantime, however, Sam goes off to college, lives in a coed dorm and encounters droves of model-type women who pose a threat to his relationship with the cutie back home. Inordinant amounts of time are spent displaying fictitious images of college students as sex-crazed junkies who are too sexy for their shirts and hair. It's the myth of youth being out-of-control from the blog yesterday. I'm the prude because I'm talking about it and people my whole life has asked me to relax. But I have one contention and it's directed toward men. Here it is: "Relaxing hasn't done men much good." Like Kanye West once wrote, "Have you seen the test? You got Ds...Ds..." Try Fs when it comes to self-control. Men are failing as fathers even when they are at home because so many young people tell their teachers that fathers are emotionally unavailable. Furthermore, porn is making slaves of many men...even Christian men.
So sticks and stones break bones but you can die crossing the street so I'm okay with the title "Prude." I just want to see Optimus Prime vanquish Megatron. I don't need a sideorder of cleavage to advance to plot. It's non-sequitir and yet we fall for it time and time again. I'm a nobody with a teacher's salary but if Michael Bay was listeing or anyone else from his camp I'd say, "dude make your money but don't forget that you play a role in this society. Men distract easily and do some pretty heinous things when they're not focused. Help the brothas out" Strength to love one's family is not formed in a vaccuum. Men everywhere are trying not to fail, trying not to give in to temptation, and trying to establish a commendable heritage once they've checked out. Is it prudish to ask movie makers of a PG-13 film to keep the creativity and ditch the kryptonite?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Out of Control
So I finished up yet another week of NBC basketball camp last Thursday and thanks be to God...no kids were lost...not one. We ended with the same amount we started with and the older I get the more phenemonal the feat appears to be. Statistics and pop culture pundits scoff at the good in our world illuminating with cynicism how kids are inundated with messages that encourage hate, haplessness and a sense of entitlement. It always sounds like there's little to no hope for the 9-18 year old. If I didn't run basketball camps from time-to-time, I might agree that America's youth are doomed.
But I didn't lose one camper last week and here's why it's a big deal. At camp, there's 1 staff member/coach for every 10 campers. While we're in the gym during the day, kids frequent the bathrooms, visit the training room in the event of injury and are generally exposed to visitors who sporadically show up on the campus where camp is held. At night, when the staff and campers retire to the dorms, 7-to-8 hours lie between night and the next day's roll call. There were at least four other groups on campus while my staff and I managed 66 athletes of mixed gender with various medical needs and levels of socialization. Why isn't there more bedlam amidst the camp? The answer has to be linked if not rooted in the character of young people who are not yet sullied beyond salvation.
To think that there are still young people who value authority and respond to it is a stern refutation of the notion that freedom is "doing whatever you want." The kids at camp didn't seem to believe that. They wanted to be challenged. We trained from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and each camper completed an hour-long circuit trainng regimen called "Intensity Night" on Tuesday, June 23. Camp is Camp. Girls look across the cafeteria at the boys and vice-versa. Yes, someone tried to flush another boys shoe down a toilet. And Yes, kids put trail mix in one of my staff member's beds but out of control the youth culture is not. They are waiting - waiting to have their convictions excavated and their resolve tested. I didn't lose one kid at camp last week because they didn't want to be lost. It's as simple as that. Name one person you know who wants to be lost, aimless, and untethered? I'm convinced that people don't mind following if the leaders know where their going. Kids aren't out of control. They're out of patience with adults who abdicate responsibilty. You want to reclaim the youth? Be a model worthy of replicating.
But I didn't lose one camper last week and here's why it's a big deal. At camp, there's 1 staff member/coach for every 10 campers. While we're in the gym during the day, kids frequent the bathrooms, visit the training room in the event of injury and are generally exposed to visitors who sporadically show up on the campus where camp is held. At night, when the staff and campers retire to the dorms, 7-to-8 hours lie between night and the next day's roll call. There were at least four other groups on campus while my staff and I managed 66 athletes of mixed gender with various medical needs and levels of socialization. Why isn't there more bedlam amidst the camp? The answer has to be linked if not rooted in the character of young people who are not yet sullied beyond salvation.
To think that there are still young people who value authority and respond to it is a stern refutation of the notion that freedom is "doing whatever you want." The kids at camp didn't seem to believe that. They wanted to be challenged. We trained from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and each camper completed an hour-long circuit trainng regimen called "Intensity Night" on Tuesday, June 23. Camp is Camp. Girls look across the cafeteria at the boys and vice-versa. Yes, someone tried to flush another boys shoe down a toilet. And Yes, kids put trail mix in one of my staff member's beds but out of control the youth culture is not. They are waiting - waiting to have their convictions excavated and their resolve tested. I didn't lose one kid at camp last week because they didn't want to be lost. It's as simple as that. Name one person you know who wants to be lost, aimless, and untethered? I'm convinced that people don't mind following if the leaders know where their going. Kids aren't out of control. They're out of patience with adults who abdicate responsibilty. You want to reclaim the youth? Be a model worthy of replicating.