AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2007 > January > 05
Friday, January 5, 2007
Demanding all-out effort
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I don’t subscribe to this theory of the “must-win” game (the phrase Hawks point guard Speedy Claxton used to describe tonight’s crucial game against Toronto at Air Canada Centre).
No disrespect to Speedy or anyone else who believes in that cliché, but isn’t every game a “must-win” game?
Now I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Evil Spirits or Bed Bugs either. In most instances, my quest is to be a realist (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t).
What I do believe is that when competing - be it playing basketball, coaching basketball or any other game or goal-oriented activity - it has to be done with a ferocity and urgency that can’t be matched by a casual participant.
It’s the one advantage certain teams bring to the floor, field or court with them that can mean the difference between winning and losing, success and failure. (I’m convinced that it’s the one thing that separates the NBA’s elite from the rest of the pack).
And more than anything, it’s the one thing I find lacking most nights during NBA games. I’m also convinced it’s not a deliberate thing. I just don’t know that some guys (some who’ve gone to college and some who have not) have learned the precious lesson about going hard all the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I love NBA the game. But if I have one gripe, it’s that there is a preoccupation, by some players on some teams (no one in particular, and for you junior sleuths out there this diatribe isn’t directed at the Hawks or any specific player or team) with nonchalance that drives me nuts.
It has nothing to do with how much money guys make (many of the hardest working players are the highest paid), and everything to do with the foundation guys received when they were learning the game.
That one possession a guy takes off every four minutes is the one that gets him beat. You can’t rest in a hyper-charged environment filled with many of the world’s most graceful and impressive athletes. You just can’t.
Try that in college, in any sport, and you’ll never play (a coach’s livelihood depends on him or her being able to get the most out of the talent they have recruited). Try it in football, at any level, and you’ll leave the field on a stretcher. You can’t lose focus, not even for a minute. My pops has a saying (“Keep your head on a swivel”) that he uses in life that best illustrates what is at the root of this problem for me.
And don’t think for a second that this is just some daily ranting for me. Half-cocked efforts in any competition has ticked me off for years (particularly when the half-cocked effort is from someone on one of the teams I root for.)
It’s been one of my pet peeves since the fourth grade when I was blocking, tackling and running for daylight for the St. Stephen-St. Paul Trojans of East Grand Rapids, Mich. (we had a combo-team coached by the late great Joe Lauria).
We were fourth graders mind you, but Coach Lauria made it perfectly clear to us, even at that young age, that there would be only one way to play for him - like every snap was your last.
It was a successful system (we played for the championship, and won several, in all but one year that I played under him) that translated into every other sport and every other activity. We learned how to be aggressive, and unfortunately for our teachers and parents, sometimes we were too aggressive. Ha.
But the bigger lesson learned was how to compete. How to set aside whatever issues were outstanding for the purpose of taking care of the job at hand. You had to compete at the highest level every time out. And I can’t see how there could be any exceptions to that rule for professional competitors (athletes, whatever).
I know you’re probably laughing by now at the thought of a pint-sized Blog-Z running student body left in one of those old Bike helmets with the skinny, double-bars across the face (and my pops hit me with a dynamite X-Mas surprise - a team picture from like 1985 or something that I’ll have to share when I get back to the U.S. of A). But those memories, like so many others, don’t fade. When you live in a world littered with sports (the way many of us do and certainly the way I have the past 30 years).
Or maybe I’m just getting old(er) and more nostalgic now that we’ve crossed over into 2007.
