A Wonderful, Fantastic Smack-Down

A few days ago I was asked to sit on the bench with a young coach who is coaching a boys 7th grade team. I know this guy very well, and he absolutely has it going on. He gets it. So he's playing in a 7th grade league and most of his guys are smaller and younger, so he has his hands full from the get-go.

The game begins and we're hanging around for a little while. Mostly because the other team's first group was nervous so they didn't start too well, and the second five is just bad enough to where we could stay with them. Then the first five gets in for their second rotation and the game quickly gets out of hand. By halftime, we're down 10. By the end of the game we're down 24. That's a real beating considering the fact that it was running clock and all of that.

So he turns to me as the last seconds wind down, "Well, what did you think?" he says.

I looked at him and smiled, "I thought they played great," I said.

"Yeah, me to," he said as he rose from the bench to greet his team coming off of the floor.

Now why did we say that? Because we both knew that we will catch that team and pass them up. We were the more aggressive team throughout, and we played harder at both ends of the floor. We lost because we either didn't have the skills or the size to run with this team.

You see this is the point. While the other team was running their patterned offense, thinking they were being successful because their greater size and speed made it harder for us to keep up, we tried to pull off our dribble moves. Failing every time. Basketballs were more like dodgeballs in that gym. But we tried and tried and kept on trying. And with each failure, we got a little bit better. But the more we try to use our skills in a real game, the better we will be. And one day, if some idiot coach makes our kids run a patterned offense, they will have the skills to make any offense work.

Even the flex.