Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Basketball: Tryouts, Transformation, and Mythical Beasts

The ponies assembled on the baseline awaiting instructions. Ponies with pony legs and eager eyes, preparing to run as ponies do.  

The trainer, overseeing, projected the future, imagining horses and hoping beyond hope that someday one pony might become a unicorn. 

"Do your best. Have fun. Two laps around the court and do not cut corners." Winners do not cut corners. 

A few ponies galloped around the gym, others trotted, and a few lumbered. Some cut corners despite the admonition not to. 

Dribble the arc. "This is the 'three-point line', the spacing line. Dribble right to left around the line with your right hand and return left to right with your left. It's not a race, control the ball, eyes up." 

The trainer had run many ponies over many seasons, no longer able to recall being a pony.  

"Now, repeat with 'crossovers' every third dribble, change of direction, change of pace. It's not just changing hands. Crossover with the ball back to your shoelaces. Explode out of crossovers." So many times he taught this. So few players mastered them. 

Later the ponies dribbled with speed up and back and still later passed two balls back and forth in three lines. Some continued to gallop, aware of flying basketballs. Others struggled to move and handle the ball. 

As hours and days passed, the trainer saw some ponies differently, as a few showed equine explosiveness and maneuverability. Yes, some of these could become exceptional horses. 

Weeks and months passed. No more ponies ran, only horses, and the smoothest and most graceful of them began to emerge, a unicorn. A trainer doesn't make a unicorn. The unicorn simply becomes, nature's transformation as beautiful as the caterpillar to butterfly. 

Years passed and the trainer's dream emerged. Others saw the unicorn, too. She was more fluid, more functional, more everything. 

Few remember Secretariat's trainer or even the jockey. That is how it should be. Secretariat wasn't a normal horse, his oversized heart heralding more horsepower. 


The unicorn became a four-year All-Scholastic, Dream Teamer, and a McDonald's All-America nominee. I still remember the first day pony. 

Not many coaches enjoy the privilege to watch even one metamorphosis. Find your unicorn.   

Lagniappe. 

Lagniappe 2. 

Lagniappe 3. Space invaders. 

 

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