Playoff brackets are intoxicating. As the pairings are first announced, the converging blank lines offer limitless possibilities while promising inevitable certainty. Every year when the NCAA tournament committee reveals its playoff seedings, I spend hours studying them, eyeing potential Sweet 16 matchups as I mentally follow teams through the sea of right angles that lead to the championship. In college, I even posted a six-foot wide bracket on the wall to track the progress of the sixty-four teams involved.
Our playoff bracket has room for only twelve teams, and the Lindbergh Eagles are one of those teams. The information I received from the bus driver last night was correct; Stephens beat Robinson by a point in overtime and Hamilton crushed Washington, giving us a slot on the bracket. I’m fairly certain that this is the first time in the rather long history of Long Beach middle school basketball that a sub-.500 team has advanced to the playoffs. So now we get ready to play Hoover Middle School, a second place team from another league, on Monday night.
Today’s practice was casual, as our Thursday practices tend to be. We worked on defending the inbounds pass underneath the opponent’s basket, a situation which has cost us about ten or twelve points this season, and ran a few rebounding drills before closing with a few fundamental games and competitions. But the most important event occurred early in practice and had to with Kenneth. I hadn’t spoken to him since his tantrum during last night’s game, figuring that he still probably wasn’t ready to hear anything I had to say. Instead, I opened practice by talking about how proud I’ve been to see how selfless our four big men have been all season long. Stephan, Patrick, Damon, and DiMarrie fill the four and five positions, and they’ve all shared playing time fairly equally. Each boy has started a game or two, and each has come off the bench. When I make substitutions, the boy who comes out of the game always sprints to the bench and never complains about being replaced. Their commitment to the team has been admirable. So I issued this compliment to them in front of the team, and even though I didn’t once look at Robert or Kenneth, every other boy on the team did. Even though I truly am incredibly impressed by how the four big guys have played, the true message of my statement was obviously directed at Robert and Kenneth.
We started practice, and it didn’t take long for Kenneth to have another tantrum. As we were working on the inbounds drill, the boys started having trouble stopping after the ball was inbounded. Instead, they wanted to continue playing past my whistle. We were wasting practice time. When I explained to them that the point of the drill was only to work on defending the pass, not to work on half-court offense and defense, most understood. Immediately after this discussion, however, Kenneth intercepted a pass from his defensive position and started dribbling downcourt, pretending that he was starting a fast break in the opposite direction. I called to him to pass the ball back, and when he didn’t do it immediately, another boy, Luigi, yelled at him to pass it back. This was too much for Kenneth. He turned and fired the ball back and yelled something at Luigi about minding his own business. When I stepped in and told Kenneth that he should’ve given the ball back even before he was asked, he started yelling at me. This is typical of boys who have anger control issues. Even though I really had nothing to do with the situation, he was taking out his anger on me. I quietly told him not to raise his voice to me, but at this point he clearly wasn’t in control of his emotions. At one point I asked him if he understood what I was saying, and he didn’t answer. When I pressed him, he snapped, “Yes!” During the entire confrontation he wouldn’t look at me, and his body was turned almost completely away from me. Total disrespect. I asked for the ball and told him to take a seat in the bleachers, where he sat for the rest of practice. I tried talking to him about thirty minutes later, explaining that if he didn’t learn to stop yelling at his coaches, he’d be watching a lot more basketball than he’d be playing. Not surprizingly, this drew no reaction from him. My guess is that something else will happen in practice tomorrow, and I’ll have no choice but to kick my starting point guard off the team on the eve of our first playoff game, which would be a shame.
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