I returned to work Monday hoarse and in the grips of exhaustion. And I didn’t even play. I coached. My son Devin’s team. Ten year olds.
This was my third year at this, working with young, barely-experienced players, whose joy and enthusiasm for the game has to be nurtured against the daunting forecast of losing. You know what lies ahead, you just try to negotiate the grim reality of it with some faith that even bitter defeats offer building blocks of wisdom and human resilience. 
Of course, I never, ever, confess any of this to them during practice. Youth sports are a great dream machine and every kid who cares to lace it up rehearses those Michael Jordan-like moments where the clock reaches zero just as the impossible off-balance shot goes in. From their end of things, winning Hoopfest is in sight.
Not for me, though. I’m happily grounded in realism.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my son and his teammates. They’re great kids but the Li’l Lakers, no longer so little, were born from the nucleus of a win-less team in the Y League, a group of sweet, innocent, doe-eyed guys so charmingly and comically gracious that they would literally stop and applaud their opponents for fine plays made against them.
Not that I don’t hold hopes for a win or two, but I’ve seen our Hoopfest bracket year after year now, and the talent of teams like the Lapwai Ballers (a group of Nez Perce kids who are just freaking amazing) and the “Stampede” squad is so far beyond our reach that our Loser’s bracket coaching fraternity jokes about it with head-shaking fatalism.
Hoopfest is physically hard on all the players. But as much as I try to teach them how to set picks, use their bodies to block out for rebounds, and kick passes out for two point shots, I’m mostly there to try to hold their spirits together, so that they don’t get down on themselves and their teammates when adversity arrives in the form of a more accomplished group of kids. Here I’m just talking about the good teams like, say, the Sureshot gang. We all know the Lapwai Ballers are a whole different deal, like a meteor hitting your team bus.
Whatever unfolds on your court, you really want to enjoy Hoopfest. Basketball was my fourth sport growing up. But Hoopfest basketball is something else. Every year I’m impressed again by how well organized it is, and how much verve and life it brings into the city. The quality of play, the purity of the effort, is still fascinating to me. I love the intensity rising off the pavement and although tempers do flare, for the most part the commitment to good sportsmanship hangs together pretty well. At least from the games I’ve seen.
During a break between our games, Devin and I could walk about a hundred yards to Center Court, near the Imax, and watch some of the best players in the world (i.e. former NBA All-Star Hersey Hawkins) play. I try to imagine what it would have meant to me, as a young high school quarterback, to play in an event where I could chill out between games and go watch Joe Namath or Kenny Stabler play. I mean, good Lord.
My guys lost their first two games on Saturday, both in overtime. Pure agony. The good news was, unlike last year, we were in games right to the end even though Darien, our ace two-point shooter and most competent dribbler, was off his shot. (In the stunted Hoopfest scoring system, a two-pointer is taken from behind what would be the three-point line in regular basketball.) I appreciated that we were more competitive this year than last. And though I was churning inside from the close losses, I was quietly relieved that we were out of the way of Stampede and the dream-crushing superstars from Lapwai. We’d found our realm. The consolation bracket. Ah, the consolation bracket.
So that would take us to Sunday morning. Sweet cool air, ice blue skies. Just as we were about leave the house, Devin sneezed and started bleeding profusely from his nose. Blood everywhere, his game jersey spotted with crimson. Andrew, one of his teammates who’d spent the night, was at first deeply concerned. But once we got the bleeding to stop Andrew and Devin and I started joking about how it was going to look, to the other team, for Dev to show up already covered in blood. Now, that’s Hoopfest grittiness for you. There really wasn’t time to clean him up.
Not surprisingly, we got behind early because the team we were playing had better court skills. And then Darien suddenly couldn’t miss. He was raining two-pointers from all over the YMCA parking lot and would have had two others except that his foot was on the line. I’d never watched the L’il Lakers play in a lopsided game where they were winning. It was a whole new experience that I didn’t trust until the last minute of the game. The kids suddenly felt like world-beaters. Noah, one of our two first year players, gave me this big grin as if to say, ‘”would you like fries with that?”
Still, I couldn’t help but give Darien a “where the hell was that yesterday?” look. And he just smiled, sheepishly, and then asked if we could wear our uniforms inside out for the next game.
We drew the Kourt Kings in the finals of the consolation bracket. They’re one of the better teams and I still can’t figure out how they could lose two games in a row to wind up in the consolation bracket. I had watched their first game. They, like us, had lost a nail-biter.
Kourt Kings are led by a curley haired fellow who is a skilled dribbler and shooter. They also have a couple bigger fellows (they both wear glasses and resemble over-sized Harry Potters) that neutralize Devin’s size advantage inside. To put it in coaching lingo, we don’t match up well with Kourt Kings. We got behind 9 to 3. I called time out.
I called time out to embrace my guys. Despite being far behind, the kids were playing terrifically, especially on defense where they were working really well together to close off easy paths to the basket. I’ve been riding Devin and Darien the hardest, for years now, because they have good court skills but often get lost being spectators. It’s a nose for the game issue, the difference between just wanting to play and the desire to actually compete. Isn’t that the hardest part about raising boys? You want them to be kind and thoughtful, but you don’t want them to be pushovers. It frustrated me that their passion to compete had, until then, yet to take hold.
But that wasn’t true this game. They were really scrapping for rebounds and loose balls, blocking shots and playing with great heart. I was so proud of them that I was almost tearing up, which is not something a coach should do in the middle of a big game when the score is so lopsided. I know that. I’ve read Lombardi. But such is life. It was so strange that the Li’l Lakers were getting their butts kicked but playing, by far, their finest game.
And then they got even better. They went back out, kept working at it, and made the game close with some terrific inside play between Dev and Noah, who had the beefy Harry Potter duo reeling a bit. Even little Andrew slid quickly to the baseline to block what would have been an easy lay up for the Kourt Kings. Then Darien nailed a two and we were suddenly only down by a couple points.
At the end, Devin had a free throw to send the game into overtime with nine seconds left. It hung on the front rim for the space of time it takes me to fry an egg, and then it fell the wrong way, into the hands of the grateful Kourt Kings.
And that was that. The best loss I’ve been a part of since my junior year in high school.
What boggles my mind about Hoopfest, aside from the sheer breadth of it being the heart of basketball-world for a weekend, is the math of the stories involved. All the narratives, in all the teams, and all the games, flowing, side by side each other, block after block, after block, seemingly to the horizon.
As we were walking to our last game, we passed a court just east of City Hall, on Post Street. A young woman was standing, on the edge of the court, but obviously in pain, too much pain to continue playing. The sheer anguish on her face looked to me to be half physical and half the despair of knowing that there was no one to take her place. Her team was down to two healthy players, and they would have to go on, two on three, without her. She was in tears and had to be helped over the sideline. It was just heartbreaking to watch.
A few minutes later I was visiting with an old friend whose grandson’s team was playing on our court, the Thornton Bearcat-sponsored court, in the game before ours. It was a winner’s bracket game and it was really terrific, with the lead see-sawing back and forth. My friend’s grandson’s team was behind with seconds left when his grandson got loose for a two pointer and launched it. The ball landed on the back of the iron, bounced seven feet in the air, came down on the top of the backboard, rebounded into the air, and went straight down, swish. Elation, overtime.
They lost anyway, but even the losing players seemed to sense that there really are no losers in a game like that. The triumph of Hoopfest is that the bittersweet agony of defeat is really only a condiment.
–Tim Connor
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