Monday, February 6, 2012

Evolution of basketball

Let's be honest with each other.  I have become bad at basketball.  It seems I don't really fit playing any position.  I'm going to blame this on my early growth spurt.

It started when I was about 13-14 years old.  I hit my growth spurt long before any of my friends did, so while I was 5'10 everyone else was still 5'5.  Since I couldn't really dribble or pass that well, I was relegated to being the inside guy that could get rebounds and occasionally the low-post basket.  And so thus I developed my game.  Never had to dribble or shoot from outside.  Just post up and rebound.

This started to hit a serious snag when I was 21 and took a basketball class from BYU.  We played a lot of pickup ball in the class, and I started to naturally take my position at the low post.  But the more I tried to play there, the more I got dominated by everyone around me.  I wasn't getting rebounds, all my shots were blocked, I was pretty much a liability for my team.  I really couldn't figure out what was going on until I realized that I was no longer the tall guy on the floor.  Our team would generally have 2-3 guys that were taller than me.  I would have to start playing on the outside.

And I've been trying to adjust to the change ever since.  This was brought home with me the other day when I was playing basketball with my co-workers (a weekly occurrence).  I have been mildly sick lately, not too bad but enough to take a few more pounds off me than normal.  I'm not a heavy guy to begin with, but I just noticed how bad I was getting pushed around and boxed out.  I remember thinking "how did this happen? I used to be so good on the inside."  Well, I blame my early growth spurt. 

So there you go. Just thought I'd let you know in case you ever play basketball with me.

2 comments:

Stefani said...

as long as you have someone/something to blame ;)

JBod said...

Funny, I had similar thoughts run through my mind during our stake basketball tournament a couple of weeks ago. I was the shortest guy on the court during our first game, and I'm 6'1". I was always one of the bigger guys growing up.