The Pickup Player/Coach: Why Your Friends Secretly Hate You

Preface: Pickup basketball should be understood as an event among participants who are not playing with high school/college teammates. When I was a sophomore in high school, I accepted that a senior—by virtue of his advanced position on both the social strata and team—could verbally abuse me with impunity during a pickup game. In the absence of these power hierarchies, pickup basketball consists of friends or even complete strangers engaging in games that, by definition, do not count for anything.

Today, I stumbled upon this video, which aptly characterizes the various pickup basketball archetypes.  Only one of these stereotypical (and very real) participants has the power to reduce the joy I can experience while playing pickup basketball, and inspires me to seek another group of amateur players more aware that they are amateurs. This basketball zealot is known as the Pickup Player/Coach, or PPC for short.

The PPC…

• Displays the most enthusiasm, outward determination, and emotional investment on the outcome of each contest
• Is the only person on the court ever doing these things simultaneously: 1) pointing his finger, 2) speaking, and 3) dribbling the ball.

• Thinks he knows more about basketball than you do
• Either a) suffers from a lack of self-awareness or b) believes that the unwritten auspices of Competition and Masculinity somehow sanction—demand, even—his behavior
• Is rarely, if ever, the best player on the court. This may strike those unfamiliar with pickup basketball as an apparent irony, but is unsurprising for the reasons I’ll attempt to articulate later.

It’s important to note that not all verbal utterances make one a player/coach. Even strangers at the rec. center encourage one another after an ill-fated crossover dribble or compliment a nifty assist. Critical remarks, many of which begin with “You gotta,” and all of which are spoken from the mindset that a) the outcome of the game matters[1] and b) people profit from the advice given to them, are those that distinguish the PPC from his socially adjusted teammates.

“You gotta make him go left, man.”

“You gotta cut to the basket there! You woulda had a layup!” 

"You gotta spike those, Focker!"

The Pickup Player/Coach is essentially a thirty-three-year-old Aaron Craft, without all of the media adulation heaped so lavishly and often undeservedly upon all semi-skilled white college basketball players. If forced to describe his game, the words “fundamentally sound” would spill from your mouth as thoughtlessly and automatically as you’d describe a fresh cup of joe as “hot.” 

If you’re a PPC, your friends may not hate you as a person, but I can virtually guarantee that they hate you within the context of pickup basketball and hope to God that they don’t have to play on your team. I would rather play alongside Volume Shooter Who Far Overestimates His Scoring Ability than a PPC—even if that means my only scoring opportunities avail themselves through put-backs and fast breaks. If you chide a teammate for poor help defense, you are a PPC, and everyone hates you more than the black hole with a Kobe complex. If you so much as utter the words “box out” during a pickup game, everyone should hate you, and they likely do.

“But Brandon, you should cut this guy some slack. He is just trying to do his best, goshdarnit. Don’t hate on his passion!”

Here’s my response: Imagine, if you will, another hobby you practice in which someone attempts to instruct you on how to properly enjoy yourself. If you produce an activity that does not involve a personal trainer, I’m impressed.

Now, that thought exercise may not be entirely fair because basketball—unlike other pastimes you could mention—is both competitive in nature and a team sport. Perhaps surprisingly, the player/coach may not necessarily be the same person to criticize an opponent’s river call in Texas Hold ’Em[2] or tell his spouse that she sucks as a Taboo partner. His competitive streak on the basketball court, blessedly, does not always find expression in every other type of game he plays. However, the player/coach is—in most, if not all cases—a former high school point guard whose career met its ceiling when his floor-slapping, screen-setting acumen, and ability to win sprints in practice did not translate to scholarship offers from John Calipari, Roy Williams, and Bill Self. 

As such, pickup basketball triggers a largely lost, though desperately nurtured, desire to be viewed as a hoops success and, perhaps even more importantly, as a leader.  And after high school—sometimes college, though most PPCs weren’t talented or genetically blessed enough for this level[3]—there are basically only two avenues affording the PPC to masquerade as the leader he so clearly and desperately desires to be. One of them is pickup basketball. The other is church league. 

The PPC wreaks a corrosive effect on the game and group dynamic. He fails to register that his teammates approach the game with varying levels of motivation and competitive fire. Many of them sought the gym to avoid nagging, not to unwittingly encounter a surrogate spouse holding a mouthpiece while barking orders. Consider, if you would, the range of reactions at the disposal of the PPC’s unfortunate teammates. In my experience, people either suffer in silence, allowing the litany of unsolicited instructions to proceed unabated through the conclusion—and sometimes even after the contest— OR bade him to STFU—“I didn’t come to the Y for some kid to lecture me on ball reversal”—opening the door for a full-on public spectacle. My own default is the former, but every man has his limits. 

So, please, hoopers, be anyone but Player/Coach. Be the tall guy, channeling his inner Antoine Walker, who only shoots threes and is a general waste of six feet, seven inches. Be the “my bad” guy, consumed in self-deprecation and treating each errant pass as one would if he dropped a baby. Be Accessory Guy, donning a headband and Allen Iverson sleeve, if you absolutely must. 

But please, on behalf of pickup basketball players everywhere, we beseech you: deny your inner Aaron Craft. The world will be better for it.

 

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[1] I’m not condoning a competition-devoid session of rainbows and smiles, but you can attempt to win a pickup basketball game without vocally conveying just how much you do care.

[2] Guilty, in case you were wondering.

[3] And their fathers, having the power to award their progeny with walk-on positions, didn’t happen to coach a college team.

How to Meltdown Like a Man

Defining meltdown anecdotally: One spring break, my friends and I drove to Colorado. While at an ESPN Zone in Denver, we caught the waning seconds of a first-round NCAA tournament game. A table full of Iowa fans watched in dismay as their mid-major opponent cashed in on a desperation heave from three that knocked the Hawkeyes out of the tournament and ended their season. The impunity of March Madness struck yet again.

“Bull****!” a grief-stricken Iowa fan screamed as he slammed both fists on the table and began to openly sob in public.

I’m sure that I laughed at the time, but this fan’s despondency and disbelief are hardly foreign to any serious fan of college basketball. These demons returned to torment me Wednesday night, as Kansas scored 13 points in the opening half of a loss at Texas Christian—a team previously winless in the conference and sporting a 9-12 record.

“It’s the worst team Kansas has ever put on the floor since Dr. Naismith was here,” Bill Self said. “I think he had some bad teams when he lost to Topeka YMCA in his first couple years.”

            Those words got more play over the next day than Gangham style. 

When TCU’s student section began the “overrated chant,” it conjured images of the Shawshank bars hammering home on Andy DuFresne’s cell during his first night. It seemed perfectly plausible that everything was merely a bad dream until that lucid moment. And so, as I sat on my couch and attempted to make sense of a defeat dealt by a team that my grad school rec. team would have handled easily, familiar habits seized control and began to dictate my behavior. Such behaviors compose the blueprint of sorts for a proper sports meltdown—knowledge with which any serious fan should be equipped.

1) Knee jerk cynicism: Initially, you must not attempt to sugarcoat the team’s defeat. In a word, overreact. Sunshine pumping will make you look like an imbecile, so adopt the notion that exaggerated pessimism will gain the respect of your peers. Defeatism bestows wisdom upon its heralds. Embrace Hyperbole, for he is your dearest friend during this stage. Flee from Perspective, for he is an idiot.

Helpful examples, courtesy of Phog.net:

Gosh, I hate this team. Kinda can't wait for this season to be over. No chance we make to the Sweet 16

Is it too soon to contemplate a coaching change?

EJ has turned into Matt Cassel.

Including one of my own gems (yikes): I am a diehard KU football fan, and I have never been this embarrassed.

           

Office etiquette: When forced to face the music with your coworkers on Monday, you must feign outward resignation (i.e. “The season is over”) while secretly and internally nurturing an irrational, eternal optimism. Part of being a sports fan means ignoring reason and logic where it concerns your own team, but mocking those who do the same for their teams—especially your rival fans. As such, it is essential for you to comport yourself as an individual bereft of any hope.

Exude an air of annoyance when one of your coworkers dares to broach the subject. If forced to verbalize your disappointment, go for something curt and self-deprecating.

Co-worker: Didn’t think I’d see you today, Brandon.

Me: We suck.

Hope Springs Eternal: At this stage, the dichotomy between realism and optimism evolves, as you rationalize the recent struggles and—purely motivated by self-preservation—feel the pressing need to provide your brethren with perspective and/or optimism. You do this more for yourself than for them, as evidenced by the five-paragraph treatise I posted on Phog.net in the wake of our home loss to Oklahoma State.

An excerpt of my desperate attempt to solicit group therapy:

If, at the beginning of this season, someone told me that this team would be 19-2 (7-1), I would have been ecstatic. We lost two NBA players that we miss sorely, particularly a dynamic point guard who put tremendous pressure on defenses through his penetration and athleticism. This team, as Self admits, doesn't really have a prototypical point guard--or a point guard at all, really. How remarkable, then, is it that we had so much success this season? How often can a team be really good without an excellent floor leader who breaks down defenses and generates easy scoring opportunities?

Though thoroughly depressed and having glimpsed the proverbial writing on the wall weeks ago, I felt morally bound to rally the troops—risking communal mockery—and convince them that true fans eschew Reason in the face of hardship. Reason suggests that due to our offensively challenged and uninspired play, Kansas fans should lower expectations. 

Reason: Forget about winning the conference. And those Final Four tickets? They should have been posted to Craig’s List last Saturday. In other words: 

Brandon: You make a compelling case, Reason. Respectfully, however: 

And with that, you (read: I) have successfully traversed the stages of a standard sports-related meltdown. You (I) are (am) once again prepared to rejoin civilization.

The Definitive Rules of Fandom

I recently became privy to a friend’s dilemma.  One of the most passionate and knowledgeable sports fans I’ve ever known claimed to be “homeless” in the NFL. Despite having a college football team, a college hoops team, and an NBA team, my good friend was an impartial pro football guru/enthusiast.  My friend, unsatisfied with dwelling in the cardboard box of his vicarious existence, devised an elaborate, semi-scientific process through which he’d eventually select the team worthy of his support.

Once I read the blog post declaring said intention, I proposed to Eric that we conduct the trial together, each applying criteria we deemed essential.  For example, Eric insisted that our team could not prominently feature an Oklahoma player. In turn, I refused to bestow my energy to a team that had a K-State or Missouri player on their roster, let alone in a prominent role. We also agreed that our team could not be a perennial power—the last thing we wanted was the maligned frontrunner label.

Sometime amid our careful, though half-serious process, the Kansas City Chiefs were in the final stages of weaving together the futility masterpiece that they called a football season.  Being a native Kansan, the Chiefs have always represented the only geographically logical choice for a professional football investment.  And yet, I have never really cared about them. The reasons aren’t few, and I think that they illuminate the reasons we become—or don’t become—fans in the first place, and why I ultimately could not select an NFL team at all.

1) For starters, I have only attended one of their games in my lifetime. Attending a game and absorbing the unique experience afforded by a stadium’s atmosphere often generates the passion it takes to develop an irrational emotional attachment for a group of behemoth, freak-of-nature strangers scarcely aware of your existence.

One of my most formative and enduring sports stories involves my late grandfather Roy, who became the paterfamilias for my family’s KU basketball fanhood. On one fateful day, Roy attended his first Jayhawk game in Allen Fieldhouse.  Bud Stallworth rained 50 points down on the hapless Missouri Tigers in a victory that thrilled the capacity 16,300 crowd and instantly transformed my grandfather into a lifelong fan.

So, from that angle, perhaps I never gave the Chiefs a fair shake.  I lacked that seminal, life-altering moment that may have been possible if I ever saw Joe Montano play in person.

2) As a child who spent every waking moment scripting his future career in the NBA, football meant about as much to me as pinochle or mathematics. Football, much to my wife’s disappointment, did not emerge as a hobby for me until long after my hoop dreams were cruelly squelched by inevitability. By the time I decided that waiting nearly eight months for the annual renewal of my vicarious existence was simply too depressing, I threw my passion in the only place that made any sense for me.

Perhaps no better segue exists for the following.

3) The Kansas City Chiefs are not good at football. It’s really difficult to care about a team that sets new records for fruitlessness each year—that is, unless you have never known anything different than cheering for that team. For this reason, and others, I harbor the utmost respect for the noble, longsuffering fans of wretched teams.

My uncle Jared is the stalwart champion of the Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, and KU football.  Were it not for Kansas basketball, Jared surely—and justifiably—would have committed sports seppuku many moons ago. Loyalty counts for something, though, particularly when it is extended faithfully to the bantha fodder of sports teams.

Fans are not without a sense of ethics, as it turns out, and nearly all of them cast aspersions (and sharp objects) at people who back only the most dominant teams.  The man who dons New England Patriots, Duke Blue Devils, and New York Yankees apparel is assuredly the man who cheats on his wife for a comely woman twenty years his junior, attends Westboro Baptist rallies, and kicks cocker spaniels in his leisure.  The man who wears Cleveland Browns attire in public is the fellow who donates to the Red Cross, helps little old ladies cross the street, and pulled a maimed Lieutenant Dan from a Vietnamese war zone.

4) I could never quite condone embracing Missourians as brothers-in-arms on Sundays, but actively despise them every other day of the week.  The Chiefs fan base is a tension-ridden amalgamation of Kansas State, Missouri, and Kansas fans. Compartmentalizing my college athletics disdain simply was not tenable.  For most, rivalries are central and indispensable to their experience as fans.  My anathema for Missouri and Kansas State was set in place long before football managed to lay its claim to my consciousness, and asking a person to set such a thing aside for the benefit of watching abysmal football strikes one as discordant with nature, ethics, and The Rules of Fandom.

Before I moved to Oklahoma last summer, I foresaw the possibility of adopting the Thunder as an NBA team.  A passing, blithe interest in the Phoenix Suns would be relatively easy to shed for a team that had two Jayhawks on its roster and one of the most likeable players in professional sports.  Luckily, and most importantly, the Thunder galvanized my emotional investment last year when they eliminated the wildly unlikable San Antonio Spurs from the NBA playoffs. Tim Duncan, whose emotional capacity knows its zenith only in the seconds following fouls whistled on him, is rather easy to hate, as is his balding, beak-nosed counterpart (Manu Ginobli), and Tony Parker. I was irrevocably tied to the Thunder bandwagon after watching James Harden deliver dagger after dagger to the most personality-devoid team in sports, thereby exorcising the demons attending me for all the years I watched the Spurs eliminate the Suns. In other words, I needed a foil for my team before that team could be mine.

One of the primary motivations for fanhood, unfortunately, rests in the desire to feel superior to your rivals. Enjoying your own team’s successes simply isn’t enough. To be a true fan, you must also revel in the failures of your rivals.

This morning, when I glimpsed a woman wearing a Kansas State pullover, it conjured images of my fourth grade teacher (who memorably found ways to insert her athletics allegiance into our class at every turn), Western Kansas, and agriculture. The sight also triggered emotional responses, of course. I thoughtlessly unzipped my coat to ensure she could glimpse my 2007 Orange Bowl shirt, a particularly apropos dig on the heels of K-State’s BCS bowl loss to Oregon.  I wanted to shove statistics in her face about the all-time head-to-head record in football and our utter dominance of the Big 12—and, by extension, K-State—in hoops. To the relief of my wife, I managed to suppress these desires, but made certain to bear a smug grin on my face after we paid our bill and strolled past her on the way out of that IHop.

Ultimately, I removed myself from the NFL adoption project.  Sure, I can produce an emotional response for a group of tattooed college kids trying to throw a ball through a net, but doing the same for a group of tattooed adults trying to crush each other’s skulls seemed impossible for reasons other than my preference for a finesse sport over a contact one. The nuts and bolts for true fanship are as follows, and—as I discovered—are nigh impossible to generate during your adulthood:

1) You must have attended a game at your team’s venue.  If you’ve never set foot on the campus at Chapel Hill, you don’t get to be a Tar Heels fan.

2) You must have cheered for at least one bad team—and remained loyal to said team—during your life.

3) You must have rivals that you detest beyond reason.

The absence of any of the above precludes you from being a fan, irrespective of the money you’ve shelled out for the team’s apparel.  Fortunately, other hobbies exist for adult men, though I can’t imagine what they are.