With all this talk about the past NBA Finals and upcoming draft season, I have realized that I have not spent much time talking about my own experiences with basketball and why I feel so passionately about this blog which essentially covers what the second unit can really do for any given team. Other than my Checking In post (which you could find on the side bar), I want to elaborate and give you all a better idea of what this is all about.
First and foremost, I am not a professional ball player nor do I intend to be. I'm just a short, 5'4'' 145 lb Asian who happens to love basketball. I first started to play when I was in the sixth grade, which is actually pretty late given the fact that many of my colleagues and former teammates had already started training in youth leagues by the time they could literally walk.
I was just never really the athletic type and often stuck to the classic playground games such as Tag and Dodge-ball. When things got way too aggressive with Dodge-ball and the staff decided to ban the game, my friends and I just started to go out on our own and find new things that interest us. Some decided to play soccer while some decided to hit up the courts; well, I just happened to go towards the courts.
In the "ancient" years of my playing, basketball was very frustrating to me because of the complexity of constantly dribbling the ball. Anyone who starts out playing knows how annoying it actually is to even attempt to gain some handles, and by that age in elementary, everyone was way too impatient to actually go through the fundamentals necessary to get those good handles. People just wanted to play, so, we just played. Nevertheless, the playground games were fun and even though there were a lot of carry-overs, traveling, and air-balls, no one really cared. It was a transition into something new and everyone was excited to take part, regardless of how ugly some of these games got.
I did not actually take basketball seriously until middle school when I started to find myself intrigued by the 2008 NBA Finals. The funny thing is that my entire family are and were already crazy Laker fans but I wasn't into it. I was part of a generation that still bought into the WWE and the great days where every single punch, body slam, irish whip, and piledriver seemed so authentic and real! However, I was growing up and wrestling was getting worse and worse. It was time to move on and there was just something about basketball that started to garner my attention.
Once I was into it, there was no turning back. I soon found myself yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs in the living room alongside my relatives as I learned the names of the players that my parents had already known years and years ago; I studied the game and picked up the rules quite quickly but still as an outsider looking in, I did not necessarily jump on the bandwagon and cheer for the Lakers' starters, but rather the players that intrigued me the most. I am naturally a very curious person and I was then, so the most unorthodox players or the ones that rarely got playing time seemed to grab most of my attention. Surprising to many, but not really surprising to any of you all given that I just told you these circumstances, my very first favorite player of the Lakers at the time was Sasha Vujacic. Yes, that is right, the Machine! Mr. Sasha "drain-it-in-your-face-from beyond-arc-and-off-the-bench" Vujacic! There was something about his charisma and energy that I liked in a player, especially a player that was only looking at 20 to 27 minutes max each and every night; I mean those are the guys who are pretty cool. Right? Well, to me that was awesome and is still awesome. I thought that it was pretty cool to see those guys who actually seemed excited to play and work themselves to the limit all for their team. I mean they would do anything in the little time that they have on the floor and that is great to see.
After a devastating loss to the Celtics, I felt the pain that the Lakers felt in losing out on the finals that, according to many of relatives, they had worked so hard to reach all year long. I was now completely sucked in. I got all the NBA video games for my PSP (that is the first ever Playstation Portable, the hottest portable gaming console at the time) and started to do some research. I began to go way back into the Purple and Gold's franchise history; watching old clips of Magic, James Worthy, and Kareem, the Showtime Era as well as the Shaq and Kobe Era; I started to ask relatives about certain players and what they were all about, what were they good at and how did they get there. I was just spending that entire summer soaking in the history and the game itself; it was fun and it was something that would stick with me for quite some time.
When the '08-'09 season began, I was locked in and ready. I knew all the teams that the Lakers had to beat in order to climb the tough mountain and go back to the Finals; I knew the teams that would be a breeze to them and the squads that would pose a bit more trouble, and yes, my favorite player was still Sasha. If your a Laker fan, you know what this season meant to the City of Angels and boy what a season it was! But let's be honest, Kobe did not win the championship in this year of redemption alone, he never won any of his championships that way. It was the other guys like Pau Gasol, Trevor Ariza, Sasha Vujacic, Josh Powell (who did phenomenal on the squad that season), and Jordan Farmar who brought the trophy home. This is what I loved the most about the Lakers: the team works collectively and that is what brought the comeback into fruition. I actually hated Kobe when he ball hogged because I felt that his own frustrations got the best of him and he hurt his team when he tried to do everything alone. I noticed that when he scored 35 points a game, it was amazing but at the same time it spelled trouble for his team because this meant he was or felt inclined in some way to do all the work offensively. Sorry Kobe, but there are five guys on the floor for a reason other than clearing them all out.
When you play as a team, you are at your very best and the Lakers proved that again the next year when they won yet another championship with the help,once again, by the supporting cast. It was Metta World Peace's (formerly Ron Artest) defense, Sasha's clutch free throws, Kobe's willingness to trust in his teammates and find them open. It was all these things and more but it felt good to beat Boston on the NBA's grandest stage: a game 7 victory to pull it all out...Yes!!!
You see, it was this early outlook that I had for the game that already drove me to enjoy cheering for the underdogs, those who worked extremely hard to win, not for themselves but for the team and I feel that the second unit whole-heartedly does this on a consecutive bases, a thought that I keep and kept in mind as I started my first season in middle school, on my own basketball journey...
To Be Continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment