Last week, I’m at the basketball court running in a pickup game; and unknowingly running into a realization of one my pet peeves, as well as a borderline personal/work life changing epiphany. It’s a 4-on-4 full court matchup to 12 and we were getting dogged out early. One of the guys on the team I’ve played with in games before, and he gets a little emotional when things go wrong; he’s gotten in my face once before and needless to say, it happened again. After we get scored on, I’m taking the ball down the court and get picked up at half court. I turn the ball over and ol buddy is yelling out, “You’re not a ball handler.” So I replied a phrase worthy of posting as a Motivational Monday quote: “Set the pick!”
Why is that such an important and enlightening phrase? To me it illustrates certain things about work that we all go through.
Somebody has to do Something
In a pickup game, you play with what you have and against who’s in front of you. I’m honest enough to admit I’m not a ball handler (pause) and need some work in that department; but our team overall was just as careless with the ball no matter who went brought it up the court. A few days earlier, I played a game in which I made a coast-to-coast fastbreak score; I felt that magic would transfer over into this one. It gives the defense a different look and adjusts their focus on who to cover and how to implement it. In this situation, “set the pick” is just you following my lead to see what can be done for a successful play. It sounds cocky, but at this point, we’re all on the same level of trash. Either make yourself open to get the ball or set a pick where I can get space to either make a pass or take the open shot; in other words, the right play.
I’m not too fond of Vocal Leadership
I’ve always believed in the “actions speak louder than words” mantra. It’s like a rapper telling you everything about how they are the top in the game for a variety of reasons, but when it’s time to prove it, their mic is on mute. I really can’t stand vocal leaders when a team is getting the dog crap beat out of them. My teammate gets emotional a few times and that’s fine; but channel those words into some defense or ball handling (pause). A perfect example of how actions should work with vocal leadership, comes with the next game I played. It was the same team I started with that day, but minus one player, so we picked up a new guy. The new guy comes in, and takes over by getting teammates involved, setting up open shots and communicating, something that was missing from the first game. Looking at those differences, you would think that we won but we actually lost. However, it was the actions of the new teammate who came in and propelled everyone to play their best when they could have just went home.
It brings Confidence
After that moment, I felt a renewed energy for the rest of the game and the games to follow. I was more enthusiastic to find myself in an open shot position as well as hustle hard to grab rebounds and play defense. I had somewhat of a fire going inside me despite the fact my team was getting our faces kicked in. My invigorated efforts contributed to putting my team in a position to come back and save ourselves from a demoralizing loss.
What does it All Mean
Saying “set the pick” wasn’t me trying to be on some Russell Westbrook foolishness; it was me trying to get a better outcome than what we were headed. Sometimes there are situations and tasks that go at you and your team, leaving everyone on the same level of helplessness but there must be a person willing to step towards a better solution. Trust me, I do believe in a leadership hierarchy. but sometimes, even if the leader is clearly defined, it may call for the direction of a lesser ranked individual to bring about that spark to successfully complete objectives. And when that happens the right way, achieving the goals of the task at hand can be a slam dunk.