The end of our season …
We played our final game of the season last night.
For those of you who haven’t heard, I coached my son Nathan’s middle school basketball team this year. Kevin Livengood, the assistant coach, and I have spent the last couple of months with a great group of young men.
Throughout the season we’ve done our best to teach and demonstrate leadership, godly character, and team work. It’s been fun … and it’s been difficult.
We spent the majority of our practices working on basics, or as some would say, fundamentals. We spent the first month teaching and practicing left handed layups. Every practice in the first month for 30 minutes — left-hand lay up drills. And 15 minutes at every practice since and it’s our basic warmup before each game, left-handed layups. We’d spend 90% of our practices working on layups, boxing out, passing, and proper defense. Good solid fundamentals win basketball games.
During our season we’ve been blown out by 40 points and we’ve won nail-biters in overtime. Our losses came when we didn’t execute fundamental basketball – layups, boxing out, and bounce passes. And we’ve won when we properly executed those same skills. Our entire season could be measured by the failure and/or success of these fundamentals.
Seems a lot like life. When I practice fundamental life skills – loving God and loving others, I win. And those around me win too. And when I live selfishly, choosing to love me only, I lose and those around me lose too.
Jesus knew this, and I don’t think he ever played basketball. When he was asked what was the greatest commandment, he said love God and love others. And then he said, everything else is dependent on those two things. They are the fundamental skills of life.
Loving God and loving people – for some of us, as difficult as a left-handed layup. For all of us, a skill we need to practice more.
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