I love basketball. How the game unfolds is relative to where it is. When you go to a local park, the better players on the court are doing crossovers, taking things behind the back, and any assortment of moves. Street ball soon takes the form of a lower speed AND1 game. But when you watch an NBA game, which features far superior players, the game is much simplier. In fact, the game looks extremely basic, just the fundamentals.
Lets introduce Brain Scalabrine. When he spent his time in the leauge, he was known as nothing other than a barely there, bench player. In fact, there are a ton of memes commemorating that. If you needed reference to someone who would barely make a team, or didn’t add much, a picture of Scalabrine is perfect to have in your mind.
But, Brian stars in one of my favorite stories when it comes to how people underestimate people. It isn’t a secret that he saw the memes, he had fun with them. When he retired, he set up an open game, when anyone could challenge him.Here is “Mr 15th Man”, who people often joked looked big and slow on the court, open for a challenge. Should be easy right, he doesn’t do anything fancy, in fact he always looked so slow.
The TL;DR version – It was utter domination. Scalabrine took the opportunity to show he could do everything on a court. He shot threes, he dunked, and he played scathing defense. The opposing players, combined, from all the games scored only twice – as in two points.
It is a great lesson in life. Don’t underestimate someone just because you see them not do well. Competition is relative, and even if Scalabrine looked horrible next to Lebron James so be it. But, don’t underestimate what he could do on the court when it comes to you. Likewise, in life, don’t judge someone who does things at a higher level when it comes to their competition, look at them compared to you.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 