With the 26th pick in the Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, Seerat Sohi selects... FEAR

I met Seerat Sohi in a Thomas & Mack tunnel at Summer League. Nick Nurse had just done a sort of clandestine scrum for mostly Toronto media, but also anyone else who was paying attention. Clandestine because the title was still so fresh but actually the more that I think about it probably because the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was where Kawhi Leonard was going. Anyway, what was more pressing then and still now considering how Leonard’s season went, was Seerat coming up to me and introducing herself. Seerat is intensely casual only in the way people who are so at home in their element are that its exact orientation fades. It doesn’t matter what arena, scrum or tunnel when it’s so second nature that familiarity becomes sensory. It’s the same kind of ease that gives her an intuitive sharpness that never slakes. She works hard.

I was the opposite of all that in Las Vegas, just then. Foundering badly from a migraine I quickly lost track of what was coming out of my mouth. How long was I there for? Seerat asked. I repeated her question back to her and she said a couple days less than I was. “That’s too bad,” I said, in my head going why, maybe she has other places to be, maybe you are the only one who wants to stay in this weird place for weeks, so I stuttered the strangest correction of my life, “… for me.” Meaning, but without explaining it, that it would have been nice to hang out other than in a dark tunnel half out of my mind. She laughed, I left, crawling into bed as the Kawhi news came out. And while now I know her sharpness is tempered by warmth, ease cast from compassion — and you will too reading her pick of FEAR handled as a means to move on — I’m still lucky as hell she did not file me as “tunnel troll” and call it a day.

Fear is one of the most prevalent emotions in sports, but athletes hate talking about it.

They will chalk losses up to anything but: X’s and O’s, inconsistency, even laziness. 

In the biggest game of their careers, the Houston Rockets collectively missed 27 threes in a row. The explanation? Math. 

27. In a row. Math. Abacus stuff.

When teams crumble after being ahead, I wonder if it’s collective imposter syndrome rearing its head. That would explain the Lob City-era Los Angeles Clippers. Maybe even the current Clippers. 

Fear rears its head every game. We take note of it in the playoffs because here, fear is final.

Hesitance is probably the most common, low-grade way that fear manifests in basketball. It’s the open shot turned pump-fake turned pass turned turnover. It’s a team or player out of flow. 

You saw it in Denver’s first two games against the Lakers, in Jamal Murray not taking it at Anthony Davis, in Nikola Jokic passing shots against JaVale McGee’s outstretched arms. Fear is always rooted in assumptions. I can’t get the shot over him. I’ll get blocked. I can’t hit that pass in stride through those arms. Fear is at the root of all decisions that don’t get made. We saw that fear evaporate in Game 3, saw Jamal Murray rise up and double-clutch and when he knew nobody else was there but him, unfurl shot after shot that the rational mind would not dream of taking.

When fear is so prevalent that it must be acknowledged, announcers tap dance around the words. There is “rattled” and “in their heads” which often gives a hat-tip to the opponents defensive tenacity and lasts until their competitive sensibilities are offended and the gloves come off.

“Player/Team X is playing scared.”

Not that they are scared. But they’re playing scared. Huge difference, obviously.

It’s the way they say it. The accusatory tone, the evident disgust that suggests fear is something to be ashamed of. One can empathize with a struggling shooter or an overmatched defender, but not this incredibly human failure that we all loathe in ourselves. 

Fear makes us lose control of of faculties. Knees go weak, arms go numb, focus drifts. We zone out and twitch. Our hearts race. You can call it being prepared for the moment. Or urgency. What is urgency but fear? Sometimes fear is useful. 

Before Game 4 of the 2011 NBA Finals (yes, that game) LeBron James told his teammates in the huddle, “Even though we’re up 2-1, I still feel like our backs are against a wall. This is a must win game.” 

There’s desperation in his voice. See, even I don’t want to tar him with that four-letter F-word.

It’s hard to tell what kind of fear is good and what’s bad. But this seems bad: feeling desperate even when the odds are in your favour. You could argue he was right, since the Heat lost that game and the series, but maybe if he was a little looser, a little less worried, they might have won.

Everybody chokes. The moment, at times, gets too big for everybody. So why, after the Finals, was James called a “choker” in a way that curdled blood and made necks crinkle? Why was it the worst possible thing he could do?

The notion that we couldn’t be relied on when it matters most obliterates us. We reject it. Me? Never me. Other people, maybe. Not me. What are we if not useful? Left for dead. That’s how they did it in the old days. 

Is it something seething deeper within ourselves? When fear is the gap between who we are and who we could be, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Living in fear is a rejection of oneself. But so is rejecting one's fear. It means we cannot forgive ourselves or really even live with ourselves.  

Because one of those days that summer, James had to go back and watch that series. He had to watch himself fail, watch himself play scared. Imagine that. Imagine watching your most embarrassing moments on tape, knowing the world saw them too, and loved watching you fail. Imagine knowing that was the only way out of the room. Would you ever fear anything again?