During the inauguration hoopla, I read that Michelle Robinson Obama, back in Chicago in the day and before she had been too very long originally dating Barak, asked her brother to play basketball with him and give a report. The thinking was that if Obama had genuine character flaws of any kind they would probably surface in a pick up game. I think that is a sort of street smarts; I like the idea. The idea that you study a person this way - it's almost Shakespearian to ask your brother to run the ploy. With that in mind I asked old buddy pick-up game all stars of yore for their take on suspect traits in a pick-up game player - traits that could divulge deep inner traits of character - ugly ones - ones you wouldn’t want to endure for a lifetime. How did they gauge other players? I invited my b-ball buds to forward the question to their team mates too.
Jeff DeMark says:
I haven’t been playing basketball for a few years now but I can think of a couple things:
1) If a person drives to the basket and misses or misses an outside shot they call “Foul” when they were clearly not fouled. They blame the miss on someone, not themself .
I used to just hate that and always looked at that person as a cheat.
2) Some one who is a ball hog, who will not pass and constantly shoots even if teammates are open. I always looked at them as selfish and egocentric, the opposite of a team player.
3) People who flashed anger quickly or took the game way too seriously I thought were out of balance and immature. If they had to win at all cost I usually thought I would not want to be their friend.
I saw people’s character flaws revealed many times of the court.
1 comment:
All true enough, but it's pretty simple stuff. Jerks seem to feel free to act jerkishly on the court. The details of how they do it aren't so important or complicated, or tied to particular off-court character flaws. It's just easier to tell in the game than at a cocktail party.
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