Jump Shots: A False Game

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Jump shots bouncing off the rim, passes to the wrong team, a silence where one could hear a penny drop, and the word “BASELINE” is what I remember from practice two days before the Highland Park game. We were playing live against the scout team, but we were playing them like they were the ‘95-’96 Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan at the helm. After a few minutes of this nonsense, Coach McKendrick told our team to get on the baseline to run. However, it was not because we were playing poor. It was because our captains were not talking to our team and bringing more energy to our practice. As we were on the line preparing for what would be a series of timed sprints, Coach said, “We will not be a good team if I’m the captain. I do not hear

I was trying to encourage our team, and kept yelling to get a stop and do what we were supposed to. However, I noticed that I was doing the same thing they all were - backing off when the person I was guarding got the ball. So, the next time I had the opportunity, I got up into my man and did exactly what I was trying to get my teammates to do. The next play, Jordan did the same thing, and we got a steal. Then, Alex, Ben, and Sherman all started to follow what we started. Human beings can only hear and process so much, so to compensate for what they miss, they watch what their leaders are doing. They then tend to match the intensity of those they look up to, which explains how actions can go farther than what one has to say. On a much larger scale, Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader of his “team” and he had to be an example for them. Obviously, his speeches and letters were extremely important, but his vision for equality would not have been as effective if delivering speeches was all he did. He needed to be the one leading the Selma march, and the one peacefully protesting with everyone else. This is exactly what he did, and one day he found himself in a Birmingham Jail as a result of a nonviolent demonstration. He wrote a letter responding to a public statement of concerns and cautions issued by white religious leaders. In it, he talks about how inequality has reached the point where they cannot say anything else to gain freedom, and that they need to take action. He says, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (2). They had fought for their rights, and they even had laws for them at this point in history, even if people were not following them. However, as he states, the freedom will not be voluntarily given. It will be