One of my childhood friends was exceptionally talented at basketball. He barely even practiced. He was just one of those springy kids. He never played HS ball after his sophomore year but by our late teens he was usually the best player on the court even when there were college players out there. Easily had D1 potential. He was getting scouted in middle school.
He also liked getting high. On anything he could get his hands on. And women. This guy had triple digit partner counts when he was still in his teens.
I’m not sure what he’s up to now. Haven’t spoken to him in close to 20 years. I cut him and all of the other heroin addicts out of my life.
But man could that guy play. Even on drugs. Some guys get dealt a hand with talent and athleticism. Some don’t. That’s life.
The last sentence of this paragraph is what underlies your likability issue, which seems to largely underlie all of your other problems. You attribute statements to people who have not said anything of the sort, then feel victimized by what you feel they said. Someone says “I don’t know” when you ask for advice, or offers you advice that you find unhelpful, and you accuse them, whether aloud or not, of insulting you. I’m sure you did the same to the coach who doesn’t want to be around you. You’ve certainly done it in here. Presumably you do it all the time.
Were I you, I would go to the coach who doesn’t like you and apologize for being difficult, express determination to change, and then ask if it would be possible for you to have another chance at the team. But then, what about the Saturday issue? Is basketball really for someone who can’t participate in practices and who has a great deal of ground to make up?
College - you’ve already mentioned an interest in engineering. This is an excellent plan and one I think you should stick to. It pairs very nicely with the Mandarin in terms of increasing your value to the job market. I also think that less will be required of you in terms of social skills in that field, which will be a plus for you. Don’t let other people tell you what to major in - let them tell you the pros and cons of their field, that’s beneficial, but do what YOU want to do.
You are too much focused on other people. You’re getting no joy out of your passion for basketball because you can’t stop worrying about what others think or how you rate or what will get you past others. You seem to have to guess a great deal in social interactions - I see it here, and you’ve made clear it’s an issue across the board. When you do this guessing, you seem consistently to come to negative conclusions. This makes you defensive and…well, irritating.
You’ve gotten a great deal of very good advice in this thread, from people with the exact experience you seek to have. You should listen to it; they are the experts in the thing you wish to achieve. Other advice you’ve been given has to do with the social stuff and attitude issues. Let me state for the record that this has as much to do with your success in basketball as raising your release point. So…
If You Want to Play College Basketball
Reduce defensiveness. Learn to receive criticism. Assume it is meant to benefit you, and when coming from someone with authority over you, maintain a pleasant facial expression and use accepting words. “Okay, I’ll try,” and such.
Learn to run your own race and stop competing every second of every day. As my mother used to say, “keep your eyes on your own plate.” Seek improvement for its own sake, not as having to do with others. Stop approval-seeking, because when it doesn’t come or doesn’t come packaged as you want, you become bitter.
Reduce bitterness, or better yet, try to eliminate it. It’s unbecoming and makes for a miserable life. So there are football players and they missed practice and you believe you could beat them - so what? Figure out what the benefit is of them to the basketball team. Are they enjoyable to be around? Have skills you’re not recognizing? Learn from them rather than stewing over it. As Mark Twain said, “Anger is a brew that does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
Let’s be frank. No there is no guarantee you will ever be able to dunk. The answers they’re giving you, work hard and stay positive? That’s just the safe, stock answer. It’s the same thing Lebron tells a 9 year old who asks him how to be like him. The real answer is “work hard, stay positive… and if you’re a lottery winner genetically you’ll be an athletic freak and that hard work will pay off, otherwise it won’t be worth jack shit”. Most people don’t like the truth so no one ever gives the full answer. That’s the full answer. You don’t have any athletic talent. That’s your own admission. You basically suck. That’s your own admission. No amount of hard work and positivity is going to help you. The absolute best thing you can do at this point is enjoy playing recreationally and accept that you suck and it’s just a hobby or give up completely. The level of effort you are devoting to a completely futile exercise is pathetic at this point.
Where you are at right now is like me walking in the gym every day and putting 1000lb on the barbell and trying to pull it from the floor and then coming in here and bitching about how hard I keep trying and how I refuse to give up but it just isn’t fair because Brian Shaw can do it and why can’t I be blessed. I can learn to be happy with a 500lb deadlift and understand that powerlifting is a hobby and I’m not going to be a world record breaking professional or I can keep putting 1000lbs on the bar every day and insist that I’m going to pull it and prove everyone wrong. No matter what, I’m still not going to pull it. Now as a hobby, I may keep improving and get to a 600lb deadlift and maybe even a 700lb deadlift one day. I’m not saying you can’t improve at all. But my deadlift will not improve to the point that I will ever pull 1000lbs. I am not a professional lifter. It will always be a hobby. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to improve but accepting that it is a hobby is of huge importance… because if I didn’t, I would probably lose my job, lose my marriage, lose my mind, etc.
Accept that basketball is just a hobby and stop bitching about the fact that you’re not Vince Carter dunking… just like 99% of the rest of the worlds population, or stop playing basketball if you can’t enjoy it as a hobby, because your expectations of suddenly becoming more athletic are completely fictitious and never going to happen.
The truth hurts. Reality bites. Life’s a bitch. Tough pill to swallow.
Pick your cliche. They exist because it’s true.
You’ve been coddled by strangers who have been more patient with you than they should have been and offered you far more advice than they owed you in this thread and you haven’t even been particularly receptive of it.
The truth might suck, but it’s the truth. Have fun playing basketball and stop with this petulant “I’ll prove them all wrong!” childish shit or stop playing basketball altogether and go do something useful with your life.
Definitely late on this but glad I saw it. To make a long story a little bit shorter, I’ll skip the fluffy backstory and get straight to the point. I’m not here for a pity party. My parents threw me out when I was 18 because I was cocky, dumb, and insane. I had a dream I just couldn’t give up on. I wanted to pitch professionally. My parents thought I was crazy and looking back, they had every right to believe that. Coming out of high school I had just 2 walk-on offers at D3 schools and no scholarships. There was no way I could afford to pay out of state tuition at a small private school so those offers were out of the question. So it came down to this; it was go to college and hang it up or figure it out for myself. I choose option B, and in just over a year I grew from 6’1 to 6’4 and gained 40 pounds. By age 19 I had grown from 6’1 175 lbs to 6’4 215 lbs. because of this, my velocity spiked. That year I was throwing around 86 when I graduated, but was a consistent 92 the next winter when I got signed. Oh, and being a lefty helped. Seemingly overnight I could do things on the mound that I just wasn’t capable of before. Not meaning to be cocky but my curveball has been my deadliest weapon since the day I started throwing it. I knew coming out of school that I hadn’t filled out yet, all I needed was to throw harder. My parents didn’t see it the same way unfortunately. They believed the same thing everyone else did; that I was just a junkball pitcher. Just another guy that put up great numbers but didn’t throw hard enough to have a future. As it stands now, I just signed a minor league deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Currently preparing to report to spring training in February. If you take anything from my story, let it be this; the only person you need to believe in you… is you. I’m sure your parents just want the best for you. They don’t want to watch you struggle. Struggle is inevitable when taking a massive gamble like this. The odds are almost impossible, the odds of getting drafted are bad enough, but those odds only get worse when 1200 players were drafted ahead of you. As long as you believe in yourself, if you don’t reach your ultimate goal the journey will land you in the place you’re meant to be. AL MVP José Altuve was told at an open tryout that he was too small and to never come back. He came back the next year and the rest is history. Astros catcher Evan gattis was a janitor, now a World Series champion. If you ever needed any motivation to keep going despite the frustration and loneliness, here it is
