Sporting memories: Making 2 stupid plays in a game and being remembered for it

When I was in middle (grade 7/8) and high school (the rest of them) I was involved in all the major sports, or major sports in USA anyway. Football, soccer-football, and basketball were major parts of my life and I was one of the better players on all of those teams. That doesn't mean that my teams were always good though because like in any sport team, one guy can't carry the entire bunch because even if you have a LeBron on your team that scores almost every time, he is going to get tired and someone has to guard the other 4 people on the other team.

So on my Freshman year team, a lot was expected of me because my sister, who is 2 years older than me, had already established our family name as a group of pedigree children that are to be feared, double-covered, and expect a lot from.

I was on the Varsity team in my freshman year, and this is not something that happens very often, especially for a guy that is 5 foot 10 and probably not going to grow a great deal more at that point.

I did double digits in most games, and while I hadn't been promoted to point guard (they aren't going to give this job to freshman) I played a shooting guard position because I was quite reliable to make baskets from almost anywhere. At that point I was still kind of afraid to play in the paint because the older boys were sometimes 6 foot 5 and a lot bigger than I was. Thank goodness for rules I guess.

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_{if this was my team I would be the one in the far left}

We were about halfway through my rookie season when the school had an event called "Pack the Place" where students were encouraged and kind of forced to attend. Forced is probably a strong word but it was a different time and teachers could offer extra credit for things like this and not get in trouble for doing so.

Anyway, our gym had seating for a couple hundred people and it was kind of unnerving to have that many people get excited about my high school team. Normal attendance is not like this so for us it was like being somewhat famous. There was a lot of eyes on me as well, because I was the ONLY 9th grader on the team and probably on either team.

I did pretty well at the start, but the other team started doing a full court press and if you don't know what that means it is that they are on you all the way down the court. Normally the defense, in order to preserve energy will just let you walk the ball past the halfway line and then get on you from that point.

Since on our team there were only two people that could handle this pressure without making a ton of mistakes, me and the point guard (a senior and 4 years older than me) were the only two that were taking the ball down the court. This made it even easier for them to choose who to cover on any inbound pass. It was a failure on our team's part and a failure on our coaches part to continue to have 3 guys on the court that had no confidence dribbling outside of a ten yard break for the basket.

Our center, whose name was Pedro, was a near 7 foot tall dude that if he ever bounced the ball, was likely to lose it. I blame his size 16 shoes getting the way.

We handled this pretty well if our forwards and center could get into a scoring position but this is pretty difficult to see when you have a guy that is on your ass and waving his arms in front of your face... and this is especially true if you are the only 13 year old on the court that has a baby face and everyone kind of expects the world from you.

Well about 2 minutes before the half the opposition succeeded in getting us in a half-court trap which is where you have no choice but to go forward because going back will be a "back court violation" or as it is more frequently known "over and back."

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_{go ahead and try to make a pass in this position}

On one particular time down the court we spent too much time getting the ball to the half line and we were running out. This is another reason for a full-court press because the 24 seconds starts as soon as the ball is inbound. When they ran this press and trapped me (i had already picked up my dribble with the intention of passing laterally to a forward who then broke for a position play as soon as the double coverage came onto me) and now all of a sudden I found myself with no one to pass to.

You can't just hang onto the ball forever in this situation because both guys on me at the time are trying to strip me of the ball or force a jump ball (we didn't do jump balls, just alternated possession at that time) and I saw the shot clock and realized that even if I did make a pass successfully, there wasn't really enough time to have a shot at a basket. So I leaned back and went for a shot from what we call "downtown." Basically, far too far to have much of a chance at making the shot.

In my mind it was going to go in or at least rattle off the backboard and we would get a rebound since our guys outnumbered their guys 4-3 over in that direction but instead what happened was a wildly off-target shot that made me look like a numpty that didn't belong on the court.

That was the major problem for me in that game

The second one was during a fast break and I was the only defender that could get back in time. Instead of using what I had been taught and just planting my feet in the other guy's way to the basket, I danced all the way to the rim with him and then tried to swat his shot. I actually succeeded in this, but in the meantime I had committed a foul by using his shoulder to gain additional height. I didn't mean to do that but I guess it was just part instinct.

Whatever it was, it looked sloppy and like I didn't belong out there. I ended up with a technical foul as well and almost a 2nd technical because I argued with the ref out of youthful frustration.

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_{Flopping was alive and well back in those days and I like to believe that this was the reaction of the guy I barely touched}

The coach benched me after that and I didn't play again for the rest of the game. We lost but about a dozen points.

The good news is that the team we were up against went on to make it to regionals and we didn't. So I guess I can rest a bit easy knowing that at least we lost to a good team.

The aftermath was pretty brutal though because teenagers are mean and for the next week or so I was rather relentlessly bullied about my performance including by a teacher during class. I guess you could say I took it on the chin but the teacher actually asked me to stay after class and apologized for doing that when he noticed that during his joke about me in class the rest of the class laughed but I remained stone-faced and emotionless. I think it was good of him to do that because teachers should know better. This teacher actually was real clever about how he approached this after the fact by waiting a few weeks and then started giving accolades about me getting double digits in later games and continually pointed out how special it was that a freshman would be so much as allowed on the Varsity team, let along average nearly 10 points a game on it.

But those were a tough couple of weeks for me because that embarrassing failure in front of the biggest crowd we had ever seen was something that stuck with me. It could have very well been the opposite if I had done really well and it would have boosted my confidence but honestly, I was pretty shaken by that ordeal and this kind of resulted in me losing a great deal of passion that I had for the sport.

There is no feel-bad-for-me message here. At 5 foot 10 that would later become 6 feet the odds are seriously against you as far as excelling in the sport anyway and I would later transition out of basketball entirely by the end of my 2nd year. We never won anything of consequence and in my sophomore year we were at a serious disadvantage because Pedro (the near 7 foot tall guy) graduated and we were at that point one of the shortest teams in the region.

But it's funny how certain moments stick with you. That was over 30 years ago and I can still see and hear every moment of the my failures in that game. It was all for the best I guess because basketball wasn't much of a future for me and I have no regrets about paying especially since basketball season didn't interfere very much with football or soccer.