With the 24th pick in the Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, Martin Rickman selects... CONFIDENCE

I met Martin Rickman at Summer League, we half stood, half sat on the ledge of the media tier behind us so the writers and agents there could lazily flick their eyes over our heads to the game spilling across the late-afternoon court below as our introductions quickly and easily shifted into career goals, whole life stuff. Partially I was overtired, overwhelmed and running on weird vapours of the desert, but Martin, as I now count him as friend and colleague, is easy to unpack yourself around. He has a knack for cutting to the heart of things, often at a glance. The kind of gift and curse of deeply empathetic people. He did it for a long time as a writer, I’ve seen him bring that closeness and guard-down warmth to scrums, seen him instantly settle people in hectic gyms. He mainly does it now as an editor, the big heart behind Dime, joyful and protective of his writers, letting us circle stories til we’re dizzy and often bringing the brightest parts out in a easy shift of his hand, panning good. There are people you picture in your life long before they actually got there and Martin, a kid eyeing the bright blue tourmaline of a backyard pool from a diving board somewhere out under a wide open Ohio summer, breathing and bracing himself for the jump, was placed so clearly as a scene unfolding in how he started his pick of CONFIDENCE I could feel the catch in my lungs from his launch.

People aren’t born inherently able to do a flip off a diving board. It isn’t something nature provides the way dogs are built with instincts driven by millennia of DNA. Flipping off a diving board into a pool is a binary: at some point an individual flips the switch from “I am not going to do this” to “I am going to do this,” and jumps fearlessly.

Success in this instant is relative; it’s less about how the flip looks, or even about the fact that a flip is executed at all. Instead the choice is the success, that hard wired rush, the adrenaline from choosing to try at all. If a belly flop is the result, it’s the worst possible one, and even that sting and embarrassment passes quickly. If that’s the worst that can happen, that’s the baseline. Fear is erased and the empty space that was once filled with that fear enjoys a gentle breeze.

What follows then is the purest form of confidence: the belief that failure can’t exist. Any move thereafter is uninhibited. This person can do a flip off the diving board. This person could always do a flip off the diving board. In this moment, it’s safe to assume this person will always be able to do a flip off a diving board.

This triumphant moment is one of the last times I felt like I had confidence. I’ve been spending the better part of three decades trying to reclaim that.

There’s a certain archetype in the NBA that thrives on chaos. When everything breaks down, things slow down. Bending time isn’t a skill reserved for Doctor Strange, rather certain players showcase this superpower on a regular basis in front of a viewing public. Dame Time isn’t a cute nickname; it’s an alternate reality where time is constructed according to Lillard’s own rules.

Success in this instant is relative; it’s less about how the play looks, or even about the fact that the play is executed at all. Damian Lillard has made the choice to engage, to tap into his ability to stave off death and mortality and slow the world around him. If a missed shot is the result, it’s the worst possible one, and even that sting and embarrassment passes quickly.

Lillard, along with many before him, and many who will come after him, are the keepers of time. They’re the stewards of confidence. They’re the ones who hold vigil at James Dean’s crash site wedged between the drought cracked Central Valley and the excess of Paso Robles. Youth alone doesn’t breed thoughts of immortality; youth plus confidence is what creates the top of the inverse hyperbola, the exact moment when one is flying and falling at the exact same time.

I think often of Jordan Clarkson. Of JR Smith. Of Damon Jones, who used to call himself the best shooter in the world. If LeBron James signifies our constant reminder of mortality and our eons-long quest to measure up to the creator, the cast of characters LeBron has chosen to surround himself with over the years serve as his demigods. They create mischief and are as flawed as any mortal man, but at any given moment they tap into legend. There’s an ability to elevate beyond their own stature and perform well above their own capabilities, to play their part in the epic and etch their names in myth.

For that brief moment — replicable or not — the sprites sing. James draws power from that, from the Dionysian gluttony of those whose defining characteristic is to get buckets. For one who has never been able to shed the responsibility of shouldering a Sisyphean burden, the untethered souls of Clarkson, Smith, Jones, and others bring him comfort. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the Green Light, and such beautiful shirts.

No actions have consequences when you have supreme confidence. You exist in an unending It’s Always Sunny season where you wake up each new day with the same belief that this will be your day regardless of what happened the night before. There are no regrets when you have immortality. If the present is the only time you have, there’s no reason to fear what comes next or to dwell on past decisions. Confidence places us in our very own Groundhog Day where we’re free to carve ice sculptures, learn French, play the piano, to live, die, and rise again.

Confidence is vibrating at a frequency not unlike transcendence, with no obsession over the decay of our bodies. Confidence is the closest we’ll ever come to being truly free.

Someday I hope to have my own Jordan Clarkson Time; but until then I’ll be standing at the edge of the diving board, waiting for my moment to jump.