With the 14th pick in the Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, Yasmin Duale selects... RATTLED

Yasmin is someone whose voice I’ve come to know by having the good fortune of cohosting a podcast alongside her and now have the rare opportunity to hear in an entirely new way, through her writing. She launched her blog, The Neon Playbook, a little over two weeks ago and is already putting out some of the most thoughtful and decisive perspectives on basketball and its larger social, political, emotional and personal implications. ‘Blog’ doesn’t really do it justice because much like her writing, it’s an entirely immersive experience. She took that lens and focused it here on Rattled, a pick that she walks through its sonic qualities to its psychic ones, all to say strap in, buddy.

Rattled is an interesting word, because not only is it a feeling we experience and induce, it’s also a sound we hear. The sound we think of represents a collection of pieces encased within, or resting against, a vessel or surface which creates an audible noise when a destabilizing shaking motion is introduced. Weirdly enough, I don’t think I can define the feeling of being rattled better than the description of the sound. To be rattled is to lose control of your emotional innards. We train ourselves to construct and maintain invulnerability as well as the façade we evoke, but to be rattled is an intrusive dislodging of this control. You gradually begin to hear the loosened bolts keeping you whole...rattle. Like hearing the distant growl of a train before seeing the headlights at the end of the track, deep within the tunnel. Feeling rattled precedes feelings of anger, sadness, disappointment, embarrassment, fear etc. The appetizer before we unpack the main course.  

There’s something refreshingly analog about basketball. It’s especially notable in an increasingly digitized world. When you strip away the frills, the social media posts, the subsequent reviews and the television exposés, you get a very simplified display of human disposition (basketball feelings™ omg). A natural desire to win, impress, dazzle, express and communicate with other people. Desires that ultimately act as the bolts and screws keeping these performers poised and intact. As fans of the game, we know that there’s no clearer demonstration of this psychology than playoff basketball.  

Playoff basketball is considered unique compared to the motions of the regular season. Formulaic executions that may’ve succeeded during a February matinee in Denver may not work in a seven-game series versus a division rival. Just as it becomes a game of playbook nuance, it becomes a game of mental fortitude. Weaknesses are exposed to the elements in an attempt to interrupt chemistry in a sport that relies so heavily on predicting the behaviour, motion and decision making of your teammates. If basketball is an improvisational dance troupe (oh God), to be rattled is a notch in the hardwood, a bum spotlight. That split second of self-doubt is all the difference in a successful defensive play and unsuccessful offensive play.  

There are a couple of examples of this coaching PsyOps we often see; dizzying young players with veteran moves, triple teaming main scorers, severely sagging off non shooters and lastly, funnelling the entirety of the offence toward a single player. For a long time, I used to think that the psychology of NBA basketball was a platitude used to feign intellectual interest in the game, but then I quickly realized that in the heat of a 48 minute, high intensity rumble, it becomes a little harder to plaster on the poker face.  

We regularly see young, rattled players in the postseason, shaken by the roar of the crowd and the tactics employed by teams, coaching staffs annually stressing the importance of experience. Experience creates comfort and confidence. We age and become more familiarized with our surroundings. Our passions become muscle memory. The unknown becomes well known. It’s truly a common milestone for all of us. The older and more experienced we become, the more difficult it is to rattle the bolts keeping us stable. Instead of being wrenched in place with a Hail Mary they’re welded against our internal structures with credence.