Answering the call deep within
Patrick's story
I fell in love with basketball watching Michael Jordan’s and Scottie Pippen's captivating esthetic playing style! My mom, a seasoned player who'd honed her basketball skills competing against her six brothers and their friends, taught me and my brothers to move gracefully with the cat-like facility of a martial artist. I saw, in Pippen and Jordan, the closest example of what she taught.
These two players didn't just dominate. They looked good doing it! That was of the highest importance to me - then and now - because I believe beauty is the signature of mastery. I had a deep unyielding desire for mastery.
I had a visceral response to the mere thought of mastery. Basketball was sacred to me because it provided a construct, an environment in which I could move towards mastery and enjoy the rewards that accompany its attainment: respect, fame, fortune, esteem.
More than just a game
My use of Michael Jordan as a pattern for my style of play was so much more than a shallow fleeting desire to emulate a famous athlete. True I was a child, but I wasn’t some adoring, empty-headed fan. My reasons went deep into my soul. For me, emulating Jordan's style was a step along my sacred journey to mastery, to the unfolding of my soul, and to the answer to the question, “What is possible for me?”
Playing basketball on the playground was exhilarating fun because there I was free to go for it. I could unleash my imagination and give all that was in me to my pursuit and feel for the gains. My training was self-directed and it was working. I was getting better and better. I was teaching myself, guided from within by my craving for mastery.
Hitting the wall
Then, in high school I hit an iron wall. I found myself facing that structure that interrupts creativity and imposes an oppressive order that immediately felt foreign. We know this wall as organized basketball.
I endured daily frustration playing on my high school JV team. Oddly enough, my height was a contributing factor. Generally height is an advantage in basketball, but for me it spelled doom. I was one of the tallest players on the team. So my coaches insisted that I play in the low post - a position that I associated with an ugly style of play that I despised.
My coaches ignored my skills and went about to shape me into a low post player. I felt violated and humiliated. This was not what I dreamed for myself. I was so far removed from my own vision that I became a totally separate player for my team. On the playground I was fantastic. On the team I was a confused, trained robot.
I felt there was nothing I could do to change my coach’s mind. My vision of the player I wanted to be was like a seed that had just sprouted above ground and was beginning to flourish. My coach's ego was like a thick heavy army tank that rolled right over me every day in practice.
Stand up for yourself!
More and more I felt myself drifting away from my dream instead of towards it. I absorbed this humiliation for two years as a JV player. When the time came to move up to the varsity team, I’d had enough, and decided to talk to the varsity coach to stand up for myself.
I found the varsity coach alone in the gym one day. I approached him and I told him I did not want to play in the post anymore. I could play the guard position. I did it every day on the playground and I wanted a chance to do it on the team. He was dismissive. I didn’t stand a chance. He’d already made up his mind about me.
When he made it clear to me that he, too, would put me in the post, when it sank in that my last two years of high school would be like the first two years, I quit right there. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew it wasn’t going to be playing in the post at Mojave High School - not one more day!
I did not know the weight of that moment. I could not know the impact of that decision. I’d been crushed by the tank for two years, and here when I dared to stand up for my vision, I was again crushed. Any chance my basketball dream had died in that conversation, as I would never again play organized basketball.
I still had the desire. I could sense my immense potential. What I didn't know was that there was a well defined path players followed to get to the pros, like water follows the course of a groove cut in the earth. By quitting the team, I’d gotten off of that path. I left my dream right there where the tank had crushed it.
The dream revitalized
Years passed. Then something happened. The vision sprang up with new life. That little plant stood up, because it had roots that reached deep down in a place no one could touch. Basketball still is sacred to me. I’m still moved at the mere thought of mastery. What is needed is a compatible environment, like the playground, and not just for me, but for every player like me who wants to follow their own vision for their lives.
The story that once strangled me, now strengthens me as I boldly introduce a new path to becoming a professional basketball player. In part 2 of this article I will reveal more about the movement that is taking the game back to the playground and giving power back to the player.
Patrick Johnson
Rimpage Founder