The first goal I bought for my son was plastic, held in one spot by filling the base with water. It was bigger then he was at age three, but shorter than I am at 5’2″ tall. We played together in the tiny driveway of our rent house, or in the grassy back yard next to the turtle sand box, kiddie pool, and plastic toddler slide.
At age four, he was on a “team,” made a goal during a game, and ran to me on the sidelines, face lit up,
He grew. I found another goal, used, also held in place by a water-filled base, but taller and an actual basketball goal, not a toy. I could still play with him, but he definitely scored over me, even at ages 7, 8, and 9.
The next goal I bought was held in place by sand bags. Heavy for me to move, but with the convenience of not having to be emptied and refilled over and over like the ones with the water base.
I bought a house when my son was 7 years old. We took the goal with us, and it got lots of use in our much larger driveway. He and I still “played basketball” together on occasion, but now his friends were old enough to do sleepovers, and the goal attracted neighborhood kids, so he had much better playmates than me.
By middle school, I’d bought him an honest-to-goodness competition sized basketball goal. This one required he and his friends to reposition it. I could no longer help. It was far too heavy for me, but the height of the goal was adjustable so it could “grow” with him.
For a time — as in through his sophomore year of high school — he topped out at 5’4″. There was much gnashing of teeth and angst that my short stature had doomed him to a life without basketball. It was what he most cared about, from the time he was three days old, held in his father’s arms in my hospital room. When a basketball game came on, he jerked his fuzzy, new-born head around to stare at the TV.
He spent hours a week practicing with the official sized goal in our driveway. By high school he had raised it to college height.
When he was a junior in high school, after a year as a sophomore on varsity, the coach made it clear he wasn’t going to play him. Rather than work as water boy, or simply sit on the bench the entire year, my son opted to take that year off.
Except taking a year off didn’t mean the same to him as it meant to others. All that summer and the one before senior year he practiced both at home and in the gym at L.A. Fitness for at least six hours a day. I’ve never done anything six hours a day that I wasn’t getting paid for. Such passion is rare.
During his junior year, he came home from school and went directly to the goal in our driveway, or the one at the gym, and spent three hours before dinner, homework and bed practicing. Dribbling, shooting, working on defensive and offensive moves. He watched countless videos on how to improve his game.
This was in addition to at least two, sometimes three basketball camps those summers and for four summers before. One of those camps was the Michael Jordan camp in Santa Barbara, where he heard Mark Jackson tell the campers not to worry if someone tells them they’re too slow to play. That’s what coaches had told him, and he still went on to play and coach in the NBA.
My son had been told by all his coaches he was too slow. When he went back his senior year to the first day of basketball practice, a coach asked what he was doing there.
That coach approached the head coach, who cast a dismissive glance his way before answering the assistant coach. The assistant came back and said he’d have to run a six-minute mile first. He worried he couldn’t do it, but another player offered to run with him, and rooted him on as they ran. He made it just under the time.
There were more hurdles and battles in his senior year. Also during AAU league play for dubious coaches and teams both before and after that year. He tore his hip flexor playing for one of those teams, and missed playing the last of his senior varsity year during playoffs.
That summer, coaches came to watch him play AAU, and he got two offers that included playing basketball. One was with a Junior college that would have groomed him for D1 schools and possibly professional. The other was for a four-year school, but a D3. The two-year college as in a small town in Arkansas. My son is bi-racial. It was my fear and my bias for four-year schools that pushed him to choose the four-year school.
As a life choice, it was a good decision. He played for varsity his freshman year on. He started his sophomore year on. He set dunking records that he still holds seven years after graduating.
He has a good degree from a respected, highly academic school. With his dyslexia, that was another goal to be proud of achieving.
He’s alway set his goals high, from childhood on.
He did give up his dreams of playing basketball professionally. It’s a tough, if not impossible, jump from a D3 school to the NBA. He could have played overseas, and I pushed for that, but he knew it didn’t pay well and he didn’t want me to have to support him while he played. He’d also heard how hard it is to fit in there, but more so how hard it is to work as a team when your teammates are from all different walks of life and countries who all speak different languages. I still mourn that for him.
Does he still love playing basketball? Absolutely. He’s working on getting in shape to play again now.
However, he’s always had a second dream. To write, direct, produce and act in movies and other media. He works on that with the same dedication he had for practicing and playing basketball.
Goals grow and change. They move up as we learn, practice, and mature.
I see all his basketball goals, from toddler size to professional, in a line of progression in my mind. An evolutionary type picture that leads to where he is today. Walking tall and confident toward his goals.
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This post was previously published on New Choices.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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