three-on-one

Dads love telling their children heroic stories about themselves. It makes them look big and epic-like to their impressionable children. I'm probably no different. When the time comes that I'm blessed to have a son and he's reached the age where he can comprehend what I'm saying, then I'm going to bombard him with stories of what his dad did in his younger days. Sure, I'll leave out embarrasing stuff like my senior ball from the autobiography, but that won't stop me from telling little nuggets like my 3 on 1 game.

The whole point of that introduction, is to point out that even yeeeears and years from now, it still won't stop me from telling the story of how little ol' me beat out three man-childs in a basketball game of 3 on 1, myself being the one, in case you didn't get that.

So I played with two of my bandmates, Marc(Bass) and Fu(Electric), and my good buddy Wilson. Let me tell you something about them, just to get an idea of how stacked the matchup was against me. Fu was the smallest of the three, but still taller than I am. His name isn't Fu by the way, it's a nickname. Just like the Fonz, only... different. Anyway, he's about 5 foot 7 or 8, pretty heavy, he usually muscles his way for rebounds and he's pretty solid inside. He's got a decent jumper and sometimes, but rarely, shoots the 3. Wilson was around 6 feet. He's tall enough to go inside but goes outside as well. He's got a decent rainbow-looking jumper, tall enough to slash into the basket and is also effective inside. Finally, Marc, around 6 feet himself, has probably the best inside game of the 3 inside players. Though he's got footwork problems (note: travelling), he's pretty much unstoppable about five feet from the basket. So what about me? Little ol' me stood at five foot four and about 125 pounds soaking wet. It wasn't much against 3 players who exceeded a combined 450 pounds. Of course, I was in better shape then than I was now. Anyway, I was a scoring point, so I had a good mid-range jumper, I was a streaky 3 point shooter and I was pretty good breaking down defences and getting to the hole. So that was the matchup.

Now of course, I could take them and win individually back then, but there were three of them. They could just pass the ball to each other and I wouldn't catch them. And they were all taller, they could just throw it high. So how did I win?

Well I started by just standing my ground inside and let them have their jumpers, I'd be fine with letting them win with jumpers. They were all inside players so the percentages favored me. Of course, they could have just kept feeding the ball inside and I wouldn't have a chance, but there were a lot of underestimating and laughing at my expense, so I took advantage of that. They set up with a triangle with Wilson or Fu by the free throw line and Wilson/Fu and Marc to my left and right. My initial strategy was that I thought I couldn't defend them and I was pretty confident with my speed game so I thought I'd trade baskets with them and hope they miss one to give me the lead. But it didn't exactly happen that way.

I started missing shots early, which was a problem. It was a game to 12 or 15, so it was a short game and I could be losing fast. They built an early 2 or 3 point lead (the game was 1 and 2 pointed) as I started throwing threes which missed. They were passing the ball around me and basically having their way. But the momentum would change in an instant.

I started to increase my defense and forced them to take outside shots which they were missing. There were 3 of them so I had to defend like the tazmanian devil, running all over the place. Eventually, they started to miss and I made shot after shot, a three here and jumper there to take and extend my lead. When I was about a couple of points away, that's when they started to panic. They knew I had all the momentum and I was almost going to win. They tried to come back but it was too late. None of them had the speed to keep after me and I spent my entire four years of high school being double teamed, so I wasn't rattled. Finally, end game.

Years from now, my son is going to hear all this. He's going to hear about how his dad David-ed his way against three Goliaths. He's going to hear that it wasn't that his dad was better than the 3 players, because I wasn't. If we played the 3 on 1 five more times, they'd still probably win at least four times. But my son is going to hear that I came with a plan, then I had the smarts to alter the plan, and I also worked hard to be good enough to mount the comeback and most importantly, I had the heart to mount that comeback. Yes, it's just a pickup game and it's just a cool and bragging rights kind of victory for me. But for my son, it's going to be a life lesson.

Let's just hope I'm still buddies with Wil, Marc and Fu fifteen years from now, just so my son can see how huge were the people that dad beat. Thanks Wil, Marc and Fu! You've just became my yet unborn son's earliest teacher.