I always wanted to play basketball for the school and I was not aware
that other kids had been receiving intensive personal instruction for
years while I was playing playground ball around town. I had never
played organized basketball as a youngster I had only participated in
disorganized basketball games. This lack of formal team mechanics and
my overall lack of skill in basketball were definitely my downsides
but I did play really hard which turned out to be a bigger downside.
We had been running and doing drills in tryouts and then we were
teamed up for some live action 5 on 5. I had been hustling up and
down the court defending with tenacity and crashing the boards for
rebounds which I thought was making me look like a valuable addition
to the basketball team. The coaches evidently thought it made me look
like a spaz. I had made the first cut from the field to twenty and
thought I was on my way. I sealed my fate, in my opinion, when I was
defending a kid who ended up making the team as the power forward and
when he drove on me for a shot I went to block him did that and more
when I slapped the ball out I followed through with an elbow to the
nose. It was a instant and plentiful gusher and the coaches told me
to leave tryouts while they tried to get the kids nose under control.
I, in my naivete thought that I was just going out for the day and
that there was still a chance that I would make the team. I showed up
the next afternoon to hopefully read my name on the list that would
guarantee me Junior High glory. The list cutting the team down to
eleven was up on the coaches window and I walked over and saw lots of
guys high fiving and a few sulking off. I was conflicted in wanting
to know what was on the list but not wanting to be cut. I compromised
by asking a boy on the back row of the small crowd around the paper.
He let me down hard with a dismissive snort and a quick 'no'. I
believed him but I still wanted to see my name not on the list.
Choking back my emotion I wedged to the front and read the names
twice to make sure and then headed off somewhere private to have a
little cry. Unfortunately for every boy cut from a basketball team
from then and forever Michael Jordan was becoming the best player of
all time and he had been famously cut from his high school basketball
team. This was supposed to give us hope that if we tried hard we
could try out the next year and maybe make the team. What the coaches
never told us was that he was not cut from the team outright he was a
sophomore who didn't make the varsity team he did make the J.V.
squad. We were freshmen who didn't make the freshman squad and in the
next years we would be more and more years of experience and
familiarity behind and to my knowledge none of us also-rans ever made
the team in subsequent tryouts.
