BrokenCowboy: Sports Views with a West Coast Bias

Vs. Jackie Robinson • February 11, 2004

We played Jackie Robinson Academy tonight, our second game of the season. First I’ll give the result -- we lost 46-37 -- and then I’ll explain why this was perhaps the most frustrating game I’ve ever coached. Certainly, there have been more disappointing losses in my career, including a semi-final loss two years ago that will never leave me, but I don’t think I’ve ever been involved in a game that was more difficult to endure than this one.

In middle school basketball, you don’t usually know what to expect from your opponent before you get to the gym and the ball is tipped. There are obviously no pre-season publications or scouting reports to peruse, and even the scores of previous games can be deceptive -- the transitive theory does not apply to basketball. But there are a few things that you know. There are some schools that are consistently good, either because of good coaching or because of their location in a middle- to upper-class neighborhood. Conversely, there are schools which usually struggle for any of a number of reasons, including coaching, neighborhood, and school size. Jackie Robinson is a K-8 school, which means that their middle school enrollment is extremely low -- about three hundred total students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Our school, on the other hand, has about 1400 students in the sixth through eighth grades. Obviously, this is a huge advantage. Knowing this, I fully expected an easy win.

Technically, we were the home team for this contest, but our gym has been unvailable for games for the past two seasons as our school has been undergoing campus-wide renovations. Last the year the gym was completely closed for asbestos removal, so in addition to playing all of our games on the road we actually had to practice outside on the asphalt courts, which was ridiculous. This year the gym is fine, but it’s serving as the cafeteria while the actual cafeteria is being refurbished. A line of refrigerators and food warmers sitting six inches beyond the east baseline makes practices interesting, home games impossible.

Jackie Robinson has no gym on its campus, so our game was played at a neutral site. We arrived first and started our warm-ups, and when the Robinson team entered the gym, I was even more certain of victory. This moment, when the two teams see each other in the flesh for the first time, is always interesting. High school teams are usually cool enough not to look at one another, as if they don’t care or simply aren’t interested, but middle school boys are never shy about staring. It’s not uncommon for lay-up lines to come to a halt as opposing squads look for people they know and try to figure out who’s good and who’s better. And so it was when Robinson came in. They had about twelve players, and some of them were definitely sixth graders. Their tallest boys were slightly pudgy, and no one looked particularly athletic. There was no intimidation, no fear. My boys snickered. They were sure that they would win. Worse than that, so was I.

An interesting thing happened a few minutes later as we circled for last-minute instructions a few seconds before the opening tip-off. A cell phone rang and one of my players bolted from the huddle to answer it. Since this had never happened to me before, I had no idea what to say, so I just stood and waited. Jeremiah returned about thirty seconds later and looked at me as if nothing had happened. (An interesting note about Jeremiah -- he usually wears his hair in braids, but on this night, per my request, he was rocking his ‘fro for all it was worth. This is no ordinary afro -- it’s wider than his shoulders. Our principal has forbidden him to wear it out at school because she feels it’s a distraction. She’s probably right.)

And so finally, to the game. We scored a quick lay-up after the tip for our first lead of the season, 2-0. Unfortunately, it would be our last lead of the night. I can’t be sure how much of it was caused by our over-confidence, but we were completely outplayed. Robinson quickly tied the score and then raced out to a ten-point lead which they held for most of the game. We had a lot of problems, but the most glaring was our inability to make lay-ups. My conservative estimate is that we missed between fifteen and twenty of them, mostly unguarded. We also turned the ball over far too often. Just like last week, we boxed out well, but since we weren’t at such a sever height disadvantage, we out-rebounded Robinson by a wide margin, perhaps two to one. Our turnovers negated this advantage. Far too often one of our big guys would snare a rebound only to toss an ill-advised outlet pass into an opponent’s hands. We also gave up the ball during transition more times than I’d care to remember, most often when a forward or center decided to try toting the rock upcourt rather than finding a guard.

Robinson, for their part in the drama, was doing a good job of playing within their capabilities. They played a fairly disciplined man-to-man defense that we weren’t prepared for, and they hit their share of open jump shots. At the outset of the fourth quarter, still down by about ten or twelve, I decided that we’d try out a full-court press, even though we had never practiced one before. Basically, I told the boys where to go on the court and kind of directed them on the fly as to when to attack and when to drop back into the base defense. (There were probably only about fifty people in the gym, making conversation possible.) Surprizingly, this looked like a good move for a while. We were able to force several turnovers, and actually trimmed the lead to six with a chance to cut it to four, but we still couldn’t make a layup or take care of the ball very well ourselves. As the clock ticked down and score stretched out to its final margin, it was clear to everyone on our bench what had happened. If we had played as well on this night as we had a week earlier (in a forty point loss), this game wouldn’t have been close. As a coach, it was easy for me to assign blame. First, there were the obvious problems of missed shots and turnovers, things which are only partially within my control. Second, there was the man-to-man defense. I hadn’t prepared the team for this, explaining to myself that we probably wouldn’t see it, and that even if we did it would be easy to tweak the offense on the spot. It wasn’t. The third problem is bigger, and it will certainly affect our entire season. The bottom line is that this team isn’t that talented. Based on the typical talent in our league, we have a lot of average players, but no above average players. I love them all, and they all do certain things well, but there isn’t anyone who does a lot of things well. This doesn’t mean that we can’t win, it only means that it will be difficult for us to win. When the season started, my goal for this team was to finish 3-2 and make the playoffs. Right now, it’s looking like 0-5 is more likely than 3-2.

In Twelve Years • February 10, 2004

In twelve years of coaching, this has never happened. Three weeks ago when I made the final cut, three of the boys just kept coming to practice anyway. One of them, seventh grader Eric, is the younger brother of Andrew, a boy who made the team. This is common. Younger kids often have to wait in the gym during practice so that they can walk home with their older brother who’s on the team. Eric, however, seemed interested enough that I asked him if he wanted to be the team manager. I explained the duties -- sweeping before practice, collecting jerseys, keeping track of the balls, etc. -- and he gladly accepted. More on him later. The other two boys were brothers, eighth graders Ivory and Isaiah, both of whom were in my English class as sixth graders. On the day they were cut, they met me in my classroom after school to find out what they had done wrong, and then followed me to the gym to watch practice. For the next few days, I noticed that Ivory, Isaiah, and Eric were not just sightseeing. They were focused on my instructions to the team, and when we worked on passing and ball-handling drills, they’d often be following along off to the side. At one point when the team was losing focus during a particular drill, I stopped them and had them run a set of lines as punishment. Ivory immediately hopped out of his seat in the bleachers and ran along side the team. I completely ignored him, but I couldn’t help but be impressed at his perseverence.

During the last practice before our first game, we only had seven players available. Since I wanted to review the offense and defense in a 5-on-5 half-court situation, I had no choice but to bring Ivory, Isaiah, and Eric in, strictly as stand-ins. Before we got started, I asked the team a simple question: “In this offense, where do we always look to get the ball?” The only person on the floor who knew the answer was Eric. Next I asked, “Alright, when we get the ball to the high post, where does the three have to go?” This time it was Ivory with the correct answer. I could only shake my head.

And so today, after a couple of players had dropped out, I told the team that Ivory, Isaiah, and Eric had been added to the team. What else could I do?

Travis • February 9, 2004

When people fall in love for the first time, they suddenly notice things others might not -- the path of a leaf gently floating on a breeze, the varied textures of a sunset, the music in a young child’s laughter. Basketball coaches notice boys who are more than six feet tall. A few weeks ago I happened to be in the attendance office when a new student was checking in -- a new student who was about six foot two. I immediately pencilled him in as my starting center and headed over to introduce myself. He and his guardian (I would later learn that it was his grandfather) were just leaving, so I only got his name: Travis. I asked if he played basketball, and said simply, “No, football.” A minor detail. I was worried, though. If he had just moved into our area, he would be automatically eligible and we’d all live happily ever after. But if he were a disciplinary transfer (this is common), he’d have to sit out basketball season. And so knowing that our season hung in the balance, I went to the attendance secretary to get the scoop on Travis. “He just moved here from Arkansas.” Can you hear my fist pumping? But wait, there’s more... “And he’s only in the seventh grade.” Excuse me while I call the jeweler with my ring size. Bling. Bling.

Travis started classes a week later, and news spread quickly. Everyone was telling me about the new big kid. I ran into him before practice and finally got the chance to talk to him at length. It turned out that even though he was about to turn fourteen, he had been enrolled in the seventh grade because he had missed a lot of school this year. So technically he’s a seventh grader, but if he does well enough on the upcoming report card he’ll be moved up to the eighth grade. He also reiterated his lack of interest in basketball. I gave him my best sales pitch, but he was adamant that he was a football player, and that was that. “Don’t you want to just come to practice today, just to see? Just to meet some of the guys?” He wasn’t interested. “Alright,” I said. “I can respect that. I won’t bother you about this again.”

At least for another few days. Today I happened to be subbing for one of Travis’s teachers, so I asked him about football. I was resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t play basketball, but I was genuinely interested, and he’s a pretty nice kid. It turns out that his uncle is a football coach at Bishop Montgomery, a local Catholic high school which usually fields strong teams. Travis planned on going there to play football next year. What position, I asked. “Wide receiver.” Suddenly there’s an alarm ringing in my head, and I can’t find the snooze button. I’m looking at this kid in front of me, and I’m seeing Terrell Owens. And I’m thinking, “If Randy Moss thinks he can play in the NBA, surely this kid must think he’s good enough to play middle school basketball.” Which is what led me to break my previous promise.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play basketball?” I asked. Travis smiled, the same way you might smile when you get the same wrong number three times in a row. And with that, I finally became aware of two things: one, Travis would not be playing basketball; and two, my heart was breaking.

Tom Cruise was Right • February 4, 2004

As it turns out, Tom Cruise was right. The final spread was 82-44, but it wasn’t as close as the score would seem to indicate. Hamilton jumped to a 13-0 lead out of the gate, energized by a relentless, agressive defense, and never looked back. We played a remarkably competitive second quarter in which we were outscored 18-16, but things got ugly in the second half. The talent gap was as huge as expected, but it also didn’t help that they suited up 17 players for the game, while we had eight. After one of my players, Kenneth, blew a gasket early in the fourth after the referees failed to blow the whistle when he was fouled, I sat him down for the rest of the game, shrinking our roster to seven, only two of whom weren’t guards. Meanwhile, the Hamilton coach was sending in wave after wave of players, often substituting five fresh boys at a time to face our struggling and exhausted squad.

There were bright spots, however.
* I found that we have a decent point guard. Robert is small (probably about a foot shorter than the guy he was guarding, a point guard who’s clearly modelling his game after Jalen Rose, right down to the number five on his jersey), but quick and fearless.
* Up until his meltdown, Kenneth was doing well at the other guard position.
* One of our other guards, Andrew, stood his ground and took a charge in the second quarter, just the way we practiced. Of all the boys on the team, Andrew was the one who had the hardest time with the drill, constantly turning away from the punishment, but he took it like a man tonight.
* And after being reminded early in the first quarter, the team actually seemed to be buying into the “one and done” mantra. I think they boxed out more consistently and agressively than any team I’ve ever coached. The problem, though, is that we probably gave up an average of six inches at every position, which negated our efforts in many cases.
* Most importantly, my team did not give up until they were too tired to compete, and they even ran the offense a few times in the fourth quarter. (At this point in the season, at that point in a blowout loss, this a HUGE accomplishment.)

Still, we did lose by 38 points, which is hard to ignore. In my experience, it’s much harder to coach on the winning side of a game like this, and the Hamilton coach did a fairly good job, although he probably didn’t need to press at all in the second half. (He did, however, buy himself a technical, inexplicably responding to a questionable call by barking at the referee, “You’re gonna have to give me a T!” He was up by about 35 at the time.) After the game I told my boys that they had lost to a team that had a very real chance to win a city championship, and that I would be rooting for them the rest of the season. Hamilton and Lindbergh are only about five miles apart, and we serve basically the same type of student population -- lower class and disadvantaged. Schools like ours don’t usually win championships, so we coaches who deal with players who are quick to give up and parents who are quicker to criticize tend to pull for each other.

Two final thoughts about tonight. The last time I lost a game this badly was ten years ago. In that game there was a boy on the other team who had played for me and sat in my history class the previous year before transfering after the unexpected death of his mother. He went on to be a very good high school player, and I saw him play several times. He was at the game tonight, a grown man of twenty-four, watching a cousin of his who plays for Hamilton. I hadn’t seen him since his graduation day six years ago. This is probably my favorite thing about teaching and coaching, catching up with former students and players.

The second thing that sticks out about tonight is the incredible resilience of middle school boys. Immediately after the game the team was decidedly dejected as they changed in the locker room. I spoke to them a little about their effort and the positives we could take from the game, but they were still focused on the sting of the scoreboard. As we boarded the bus, their collective mood began to change, and the loss was soon forgotten. As the bus started to pull away from the gym, a mere fifteen minutes after the final buzzer, I heard the boys pumping themselves up again, boasting to each other that they wouldn’t lose another game. “Wait till next week when we have Patrick and DiMarrie!” yelled one boy. And then in response -- “Yeah, wait till we get to the championship game and play Hamilton again!” I could only shake my head in amazement and wish I were fourteen.

Day Before First Game • February 3, 2004

The day before the first game of the season is pretty much always the same -- doubt, frustration, anxiety, and fear are the dominant emotions. Questions abound, as it’s never clear exactly how the players will respond in an actual game situation. Also, there are million things that were postponed, casualties of limited practice time. In bounds plays, press breaks, man-to-man offense, and free throw procedures, to name a few. But even as I struggle with what hasn’t been done and wonder if there will be time to squeeze it in during tomorrow’s walk through, there is still one prevailing question running through my head: will we win? Intellectually, I know that this is the weakest team we’ve had in three years, and that a 3-2 record and a possible playoff berth would be a successful season. Our opponent tomorrow is Hamilton Middle School, the team we scrimmaged against ten days ago at the Pyramid at Long Beach State. Their starting five played for only the blink of an eye, but I saw enough to know that they’re tall, fast, and athletic. I saw enough to know that they’re much, much better than we are. But while my intellect tells me that this probably won’t be one of the three wins I’m hoping for, there are moments when Jim Valvano creeps into my coach’s mind, and victory becomes possible.

What if they can’t shoot? I’ve decided that we’ll play a ridiculously tight, exaggerated 2-3 zone, stressing the fact that it’s okay for them to shoot, but we can’t afford to give them any rebounds at all. Taking this to an extreme, I’ve told my players that they aren’t allowed to block any shots -- instead they’re to close out on the shooter, get a hand in his face without leaving the ground, and box him out after the shot. Our mantra for the week has been, “One and done.”

What if they try to take advantage of their length and athleticism and play only the 1-3-1 zone that they featured at the Pyramid? We worked for a week on an offense (“X-Gap Motion”) to exploit this, and I’ve stressed the need for patience. We could actually use their aggression against them.

What if they’re undisciplined? Yesterday and today we practiced taking charges. Convincing a twelve-year old boy to give away as much as fifty pounds and still stand his ground in the lane demands more Zen than Phil Jackson could ever muster, but I think I have some boys who will give themselves up for the team. And as if that weren’t enough punishment, another drill found each of the boys taking turns pump-faking me into the air, just so that they could draw a hard foul. I guarantee that our team will be tougher than any we play all season long.

The reality, though, is that even though they might not be able to shoot, they might not vary their defense, and they might be undisciplined, middle school basketball is still about size and speed. In addition to the talent gap I expect to see tomorrow, we will likely also face a manpower deficiency. We had seven boys at practice today; only four players have turned in all the paperwork (parent permission, insurance, and physical) to be eligible to play tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll be able to field a team, but I’ll be surprized if we have more than six guys, and they probably won’t be the six guys I’d pick, if you know what I mean. So even though it’s fun to listen to Valvano for a while, eventually the only voice I hear is Tom Cruise as he speaks to Demi Moore in A Few Good Men: “You should prepare yourself for the likelihood that we are going to lose, and we’re gonna lose HUGE.”

Mario • January 17, 2004

Mario is head and shoulders above every other player at the school, and everyone knows it. He’s about six foot one and probably around 200 pounds. A manchild. During tryouts he rebounded over everyone, dribbled effortlessly, zipped cross-court passes with the flick of a wrist, and rained jump shots from beyond the three-point line with ease and accuracy. But all you really need to know about Mario is this -- he has a 0.80 GPA. Not even close. The most frustrating thing is that Mario was in my class in the sixth grade (he was big even then), so I’ve been talking to him about his grades for two years now, all to no avail. But as I’ve said, everyone on campus knows that he’s a great player, probably one of the best four or five players in the city. Our principal places an alarmingly high level of importance on our sports program, so she’s been asking me about Mario since the fall. When I told her that he was ineligible, her response wasn’t, “Oh, that’s too bad.” Instead, she said, “What can we do? Can he do some makeup work? What if I call the commissioner?” Remember, this is middle school basketball. Any grade changing would have been highly unethical and against the rules. Even so, I must admit that I was tempted. It’s probably good that his GPA is so low; if he had been closer, the temptation might have been too much to resist, which made me think of Bob Huggins and John Calipari and Jerry Tarkanian and Jim Harrick. If I had somehow slipped Mario on to the team, what would I have had to gain? A shot at a middle school basketball city championship and a cool trophy, and that’s about it. No long term deal, no shoe contract, no increased caché on the recruiting trail, no bump-up in my public speaking fees. Suddenly it’s very easy to understand how these coaches might talk themselves into making an exception “for the good of the kid.” Even though I never really had a decision to make, I’m happy with the resolution of this problem. Hopefully Mario will learn something from this, though I have to say that I don’t really think he will. I just wish he were eligible.

The List • January 16, 2004

What I’ve found during my years of coaching is that the boys who are dropped from the team on the final cut aren’t nearly as upset as the boys who don’t make the first cut. The day that the first list goes up is the hardest day of the season for me, and this year was no different. I posted the list at 8:00 AM, and within an hour at least four or five boys had come to me to ask why they had been cut. For some reason, it’s always the boys who didn’t really have a shot at making team who need the most feedback. I can’t always relate to the athletic prodigies, but I see myself in these boys that I cut. When I was their age, there was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to play baseball, and every time I find myself in conversation with a disappointed boy who can’t understand why he hasn’t made the team, I’m instantly reminded of what it was like when I was cut from high school baseball team. Sometimes a love of the game isn’t enough. So the conversation usually goes the same. In most cases, I don’t have a strong memory of why the boy in front of me didn’t make the cut, and often I don’t even remember his name, so I tend to speak in generalities. “Don’t worry, you can always try out next year; don’t worry, you’ll be a little bigger next year; keep working on your dribbling, especially your left hand; whatever you do, don’t stop playing; practice your shooting” -- and always, “Thanks for trying out.” Whatever I say, it’s never the right thing, it’s never enough. Tears are not uncommon. The day after the first list went up, I had to cut a sixth grader who’s in my reading class. I hate cutting my own students. Often, they’re trying out simply because they’re in my class. So I had to cut Damon. His GPA was too low. I walked over to his desk and spoke to him privately, and his eyes immediately welled up with tears. He put his head down and cried for the entire period. I just let him cry, because how could I honestly tell him that everything would be okay?

About an hour later, I had almost the exact opposite conversation with an eighth grader with the same name. This Damon, however, accents the second syllable of his name, so it rhymes with “c’mon.” Damon is off-track right now, so I had told him the night before that I’d call him and let him know if his name was on the list. It was. When I gave him the good news, he reacted as if he had just won the lottery. “Are you serious?!? Are you serious?!?” Yes, Damon. “Yes!! Yes!! Thank you, Mr. Waddles! Yes!!” I could actually hear his fist pumping. Most eighth graders are far too cool for celebrations like that, so Damon instantly became my favorite player on the team.

Tryouts • January 15, 2004

Open tryouts are at once the best and worst part about coaching basketball. On the one hand, it’s a logistic nightmare; over the course of the three-day tryouts for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, eighty-seven boys came out for this year’s team. But as frustrating and exasperating as it can be for me to put up with the chaos of a gym overcrowded with mostly untalented kids, those first few days are filled with the hope of a new season. I typically dread that first day with only sixth graders, but inevitably I find myself energized as soon as I open the doors and roll out the balls. Some of the boys have played on organized teams in park leagues before, but for almost all of them this is the first time they’ll be trying out for a team, the first time a coach will sit in judgment of their abilities. This year, as the thirty-odd boys filed past me, their eyes reflected anxiety and hope, confidence and excitement.

As always, there were very few sixth graders good enough to be considered for the team. The biggest variable in middle school basketball is puberty, and these boys were at least a year or two away from having either the size or the coordination to compete. Typically I’ll keep two or three of the best sixth graders on the team, mainly so that all three grades are represented. I’m not really building for the future, though. The best sixth graders don’t often maintain that status as eighth graders. Almost without exception, the eighth graders who make the team are drawn from that group of fifty or so boys who have won the puberty lottery and matured physically, leaving their peers behind.

So as I said, this year’s pack of sixth graders looked pretty much the same as it always does. I always start with a simple lay-up line, and I could probably cut 70% of the boys just based on that. There were two or three boys who were significantly taller than everyone else, but sadly lacking in coordination, and about four others who could handle the ball well and shoot a little bit. I chose the best eight.

After seeing the seventh graders on Monday, I looked at the eighth graders on Wednesday, which is never fun. While the sixth graders are a bit scared of the whole situation and desperate to impress me, the eighth graders are really trying out for each other, showing off for their friends and any girls who may have sneaked into the gym. (On this day I would spend a good portion of my time chasing a pack of ogling young girls from the gym every few minutes or so.) We ran a few different drills designed to show me who could dribble, who could shoot, who could pass, and who could follow directions, and after an hour so I had eliminated about half of the eighth graders, bringing my three grade total to about thirty-five. Twelve more names would be eliminated after I checked grades. (Our district requires that student-athletes have at least a 2.0 GPA with no more than one unsatisfactory conduct grade.) All that was left was to post the list, have another couple days of second round try-outs, and then post a final list.