"There are too many teams, too many people, who aren’t going to win."
It feels good to know I'm not the only one who things like this. I work in high school athletics, where stakes are low but is the peak for so many young athletes. How should we define success on that level? There's so many teams and players who won't win titles simply because they live in the wrong district or because there's some other school that seemed a little more appealing so the talented (and rich) family moved to that place instead. Success can't be measured with a plastic trophy that'll collect dust in a cabinet, right?
Ah but there's those expectations again, right? I'm expected to believe that Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing were failures because they didn't get to hold the Larry O'Brien. That can't be true, yet there are people who tell me that's how I'm supposed to think.
Anyway, this piece was new to me and I appreciated it.
Glad it found you, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I still find I have to watch any March Madness games in small doses, the stakes feel entirely too stacked. The more young athletes I meet and write about, the more I feel the pipeline they’re told to get into isn’t made to serve them. Not to self promo too hard in my own newsletter, but I just wrote about a tournament Danny Green and the NBPA run for public high school athletes that made me feel like there’s still folks out there who want to make the experience a lot less gross, if you’re interested to read!
"There are too many teams, too many people, who aren’t going to win."
It feels good to know I'm not the only one who things like this. I work in high school athletics, where stakes are low but is the peak for so many young athletes. How should we define success on that level? There's so many teams and players who won't win titles simply because they live in the wrong district or because there's some other school that seemed a little more appealing so the talented (and rich) family moved to that place instead. Success can't be measured with a plastic trophy that'll collect dust in a cabinet, right?
Ah but there's those expectations again, right? I'm expected to believe that Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing were failures because they didn't get to hold the Larry O'Brien. That can't be true, yet there are people who tell me that's how I'm supposed to think.
Anyway, this piece was new to me and I appreciated it.
Glad it found you, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I still find I have to watch any March Madness games in small doses, the stakes feel entirely too stacked. The more young athletes I meet and write about, the more I feel the pipeline they’re told to get into isn’t made to serve them. Not to self promo too hard in my own newsletter, but I just wrote about a tournament Danny Green and the NBPA run for public high school athletes that made me feel like there’s still folks out there who want to make the experience a lot less gross, if you’re interested to read!
https://www.sbnation.com/nba/1108208/danny-greens-the-throne-is-creating-a-national-high-school-basketball-championship-at-the-mall
Thank you! I will certainly read this
The push-pull of the Sunshine State is fool’s gold. Kathleen Edwards fell for it.