DNP
On giving up a thing I love for a thing I love, but a little bit more
At age 7, I begged and begged my grandmother, grandfather, mother, anyone who would listen for a basketball goal. At the extraordinary height of roughly four feet tall it was not the concept of dunking that enthralled me. It wasn’t necessarily the concept of making the shots. It was just about having the goal itself to shoot on, and the older I got, the goal became a central theme of friendship. It was a meetup spot for me and my childhood best friend Alex; it was a place where we would organize some small, low-stakes games of various sorts. When my family moved out of this childhood house six years ago the basketball goal was left with it; I have no clue if it’s been binned or if it’s stayed up an extra season of life in the Basketball Hoop Premiership.
At age 29, closing in on 30, I did not beg for a house with a basketball goal, but upon informally touring what would be our future house for the first time it was certainly a thing I noticed. Contrary to the goal I grew up on, this goal is firmly planted in the ground, surrounded by some amount of poured concrete. I frankly do not think it is the correct height and would guess it to be about 6-8 inches above the normal height of 10 feet, but the function it serves is a good one. Whenever I am bored or stressed out or just up for it I go out the back door and get up a few shots.
The change from age 7 to 29 is decidedly not one where basketball has become less important to me. This newsletter is in some form a proof of that. I have made a minor career out of my passion for college basketball, with a particular focus and draw amongst Tennessee fans for my coverage there. It still matters to me more than any other sport. A certain subset of the sport, though, has dwindled in fascination to me, particularly in the last few years.
Contrary to what friends may say I do occupy some amount of brain space for important anniversaries in my life: marriage, cat adoption, birthdays, the day my grandmother hit a deer in her Chevy Tracker (December 14) while we were driving to the 2007 Middle Tennessee Natural Gas Christmas Party, presumably other important ones that I cannot think of. One that slipped through the cracks is that, for the first time since I was 7, I have gone an entire calendar year (Strava claims July 10) without playing a single competitive basketball game, organized or pick-up.
At a point in my life, this would have made me irreparably sad. Playing basketball competitively is one of the great joys of life. I think it’s one of the best ways to see another person’s real personality, what’s bubbling beneath the surface. Pick-up soccer has this same capacity and I presume hockey would too, if people play much pick-up hockey south of Ontario. For me, for years, basketball was that release and the main source of fitness in my life.
And then there was a thing that happened in March 2020 which you may have heard of that shut down all the gyms. They even tore down the goals.
I started 2020 with a pair of athletics-related goals on my yearly goals list:
Total 1,000 pounds on the three core lifts (squat, deadlift, bench);
Run a 5K with my dad.
At the time, I thought I loved weightlifting, or at least liked it a lot, and then the gyms shut down. The second point there became the main focus. I wrote last year about getting really into running, but at the time in 2020 I was not looking to get into marathoning. I just wanted to run my hometown’s 5K race with my dad and finish at the same time or close to it.
When COVID happened, that 5K got cancelled as did most races across America for several months. With nothing else to do, I started running a couple times a week, then three times, then four times, then five times. We breezed through a self-policed 5K that June; I did a 10K on my own two months later. The more I ran, the freer I felt, the happier I became.
Once things began to reopen, I wasn’t lifting at the same pace as I once did and never really recovered. At the same time, I started playing pickup hoops at the earliest possible opportunity. We had a group going for a while that would meet on Thursday nights at a Baptist church in the middle of nowhere and that lasted for several months. Some form of that group continues on these days at various venues across Knoxville and the surrounding communities.
Said form of group no longer includes me. It’s been more than a year since I played with them. There was no break-up or rage quit or anything of that nature; I simply do not have the time anymore to devote to it. At one point in my life this realization would’ve brought a lot of deep thoughts and some sadness with it. Now, it mostly just…passes by? Almost, but not quite, to the point that it no longer registers.
This is because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in my life running. Strava helpfully accumulates all of one’s activities in a handy year-long wrap-up; this is what I have done so far in 2023.
This is NOT a brag but rather a somewhat helpful explanation. Roughly five hours a week so far this year has been devoted to running; that does not count some of the other activities I do from time to time. (It also does not count the 40-hour-a-week day job I run alongside this blog.) When I was still playing pickup with real frequency, this was more like an hour a week, and as recently as 2021, it was maybe two hours. Consider that running, even at a very easy effort, is pretty intense on the body.
Maybe a different, better version of me could both do marathons and still play all the pickup games I used to participate in. Maybe I could still lift weights like I did four years ago. But, in all likelihood, it is an equation of ‘how much can I take before I feel overloaded.’ To put it simply, in a week like this one:
There’s not a spot in there where I want to spend two hours of my life throwing my body around while shooting 25% from three and exerting most of my energy on defense/running off of screens.
I think I’ve finally come to terms with that: a temporary, hopefully non-permanent retirement from a thing I loved. It’s something I’ve been pondering for a few days now. I don’t know when the next pickup game I’ll play in will be and I no longer particularly get bothered by that. Basketball is my first sport, the thing I know the most about and the thing I want to write about for as long as people will let me. But, for now, I want to experience the joy (yes) and stress of running more.
…until my knee explodes or I twist an ankle, and then I will wish I played more basketball. Such is life.
So! This is a different post than usual. This is the real sicko doldrums of the college basketball offseason. I do have some content planned but a few larger projects aren’t coming together quite like I’d hoped. (Next week’s post will be an interview with a coach that runs a fascinating defense.) Instead, you get this self-indulgent essay about a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot as of recent. Still, I think this was worthy of publishing; hopefully you all enjoy it.
In the absence of real basketball news to report, here is a
Roundup of things I’ve enjoyed lately
that you might like.
If you want the reverse of the above essay John Saward wrote a beauty about how much he loves playing pickup last year. Saward is one of the best Internet-first writers alive.
I am an unapologetic YouTube obsessive who spends a lot of time watching videos and has quite a few subscriptions. Eddy Burback was not one I subscribed to prior to this week but I quite liked his vacation into an insane alternate portal by visiting every location of America’s worst(?) chain restaurant, Margaritaville.
More YouTube. This is a very thoughtful review of the “Fast Car” cover tearing up the charts and every FM radio station your car stereo is preset to.
Patrick Mayhorn at Meet at Midfield, the only national college football site I read at all, covered SEC coach fits at something called “SEC” “Media” “Days”…haven’t heard of it! Must be interesting. Anyway, if you’re a Tennessee fan skip directly past #14.
Been really into the old Ricky Gervais show/podcasts lately, before he went publicly insane. This clip of Karl Pilkington explaining a movie which includes Mission Impossible 7 (?) but isn’t Mission Impossible 7 has had me laughing for days.
Tifo Football’s wall chart for the women’s World Cup. I read that the USWNT are favored by 5.5 goals! over Vietnam tonight which somehow feels both insane and too short a spread.
As of July 21, the only two albums with any staying power I’ve heard released in 2023 are Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (though even I would admit none of the bonus tracks really draw me in like the Red bonuses) and This Stupid World, the new Yo La Tengo album which is a remarkable achievement for a band nearing their 40th year of existence.
VARIOUS MUSIC TAKES which you don’t come to this blog for at all. The Danny Brown/JPEGMafia combo album is really corny stuff, sorry, don’t get it at all even though I like both as individual artists. The new Olivia Rodrigo single is okay, don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other. This is a good pop song.
There has been a lot of ink spilled over the Northwestern hazing scandal that got multiple coaches canned. The only Northwestern-centric perspectives on it that have had any worth whatsoever are the current student journalists; I do not care whatsoever for The Athletic’s varied takes on the situation or for whatever Darren Rovell has to say about it. That being said there are two Northwestern writers worth reading on it: Ben Goren and the greatest writer living, Bring Your Champions They’re Our Meat.
ACTUAL COLLEGE BASKETBALL CONTENT. I met the Three Man Weave guys in Houston by chance and they’re all really nice dudes. Jim in particular is way more ripped and stout than I anticipated. Anyway they did a Mount Rushmore thing for CBB coaches. My hot take here is that all 12 coaches listed are objectively really good, though obviously the list with all of Self/Few/Drew on it is the winner.
MORE COLLEGE BASKETBALL CONTENT. If you’re in need of a repository for all of my opinions I dispense of most of them on The Chase Thomas Podcast with my friend and fellow Knoxville resident Chase Thomas. I have a more sour disposition than most on podcasting as a medium but Chase’s is good and educational in a way that basically every other sports podcast I’ve given a chance isn’t. As we get closer to the season I’ll be on it more and am finally becoming open to being on more podcasts/radio shows in general. Reach out.