Photo by Alex Perez on Unsplash

By Lucas Davenport

I started watching the NBA in 2013. This was when LeBron James was still on the Heat, and DeMar DeRozan was the best player on the Raptors. Pretty much as soon as I laid eyes on what unfolded on that TV screen, I fell in love with the game, and I wanted to be just like the players I saw. My dad signed me up for house league basketball when he realized this, and I went onto the court thinking I was a king. I was ready to get on that court and dunk on everybody. However, that didn’t exactly happen. I did not perform well my first time playing. Sure, everyone was pretty bad at that age, but I was especially bad. I was one of those guys that would dribble up the court, and then when a defender would come within 5 meters of me, I’d hold on to the ball like an NFL running back, and then, if I found an open guy, I’d pass it to him. If not, I’d get the ball slapped out of my hand, and the other team would grab the ball and rush down the court, getting an easy layup in the process. Unfortunately, about 75% of the time, the second outcome happened. Needless to say, no one really passed me the ball, and those basketball games were mostly just cardio sessions for me.

Though playing the game wasn’t the most enjoyable thing for me to do, given my circumstances, I still loved watching the game and playing NBA2K. I still had dreams, not just about the Raptors finally beating the LeBron James-led Cavaliers, but also about making the NBA. No, no, even after 6 years and the fact that I could count the number of baskets I made in basketball games with my two hands, my dreams still didn’t die. And when the Raptors won the championship in 2019, my love for the game was at its peak. Therefore, I kept working on my game with my basketball net at home, and I was ready to come back better than ever.

In the fall of that year, the new house league season had started, and I was ready to cross up as many people as possible, Kyrie style. Although I wasn’t necessarily doing that, I was no longer getting scared and picking up my dribble. Sure, I could be a ball hog at times, but I could still put the ball in the basket at a much higher rate than before. As a result, my confidence was sky-high. I “knew” that if I kept progressing at that rate, then surely I was going to make the NBA, and I did not shut up about it. Pretty much every conversation I had with people was about basketball, and more often than not, it ended with me telling them about the NBA career that I was going to have in the future. By the end of that season, I was the best player on my house league team and had even started a YouTube channel where I talked about basketball.

Unfortunately, about a month later, the pandemic hit, and I was essentially confined to my house for the next several months. We went to our cottage to wait out the pandemic, and in the meantime, my dad got a basketball net I could use there. I continued to work on my game, in particular, my handles and my confidence was even higher and higher given the fact that I was doing work during the pandemic while it seemed like nobody else was. I came back to school going into Grade 9 with my confidence in my basketball skill booming. I told even more people I was going to the NBA, and the stories of my future career I’d tell would get even more crazy. I was not just going to make the NBA, however, but be an NBA star! No, no, not just being an NBA Star, being the G.O.A.T. People were taking notice. I had even earned myself a new nickname; people still call me LD to this day. There were caveats, though; people would often make fun of me and talk about me behind my back. One source that I will not name even said that I was the most talked about person in the school. However, my confidence in my abilities was still sky-high, but due to the pandemic, I didn’t get a chance to test them. Well, now I had the chance!

Sam Andersen, the best athlete in the grade, had taken notice of my stories and words, and he wanted to see what I had. In early November of that year, he challenged me to a 1v1, and I gladly accepted. A large percentage of the grade had also gathered to watch this epic match. The stage was set. I was given the opportunity to shoot the ball to decide who would start. I shot it, and it clanked off the rim–not a good start. Sam quickly put two points on the board as he blew past me with his elite athleticism for the easy layups. Luckily, I managed to get a stop on the third attempt, and it was my turn to score on him. I dribbled on the spot for a bit, then I attempted a simple hesi-cross (a hesitation in the dribble followed by a crossover), but he anticipated it and managed to get a hand on it. Luckily, on the next play, I managed to get another stop, and I got the ball back. The first play was just a warm-up, I thought; this time, I’ll get the bucket, then I’ll get another and tie it up, then I’ll get another and be winning, and so on and so forth. I attempted a similar move that I did the previous time, but it got deflected. However, I got the ball back. I got a second chance to score. This time, however, I attempted a shot. I put up my signature step-back jump shot, which I made about 20% of the time when a defender was not guarding me. Therefore, to my shock, the shot went careening off the backboard. Sam then got the rebound and made a shot, so the score was now 3-0. Possession went back and forth, with neither of us scoring a single point for the next couple of minutes. Almost every attempt I made to score, the ball got blocked or stolen, and by around the 8th possession, every shot attempt was my signature step-back shot. Every time I shot it, I missed, and half the time, I didn’t even hit the rim. It was humiliating. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, we were booted off the court as it was recess for the Junior school.

My dreams of making the NBA gradually died out after that, mostly because I didn’t grow as tall as I was hoping to and wasn’t that athletic, but also, I felt like my lack of skill until a later age wouldn’t make up for the players that started playing as kids. Overall though, it wasn’t all bad. The experience humbled me, which I may or may not have needed at the time, and it helped push me to focus on things that mattered, such as academics. Although even now, whenever I’m playing basketball alone, I always imagine myself in Game 7 of the NBA finals, with less than 10 seconds left to go in the fourth quarter. I do my hesi-cross, I dribble down towards the right of the free throw line, and I pump-fake, sending two defenders flying. Then I shoot a wide-open jumper, and it goes in as the buzzer sounds. Then, a few minutes later, I hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy to the sky.