I’m starting a new called “The Asphalt.” It’s life from the perspective of basketball and what we can learn from it. I’m not talking about a particular play or game, but topics such as defense and offense strategies, real world stories, and my personal experience. Look for posting every other week on Tuesdays.
Let’s Tip Off:
There’s this regular guy who’s playing basketball. He’s being very careful. All he can think about is not getting injured again. It causes him to change his play style to play more timid. As he runs on the break after a steal, his teammate passes him the ball. But when his teammate puts the ball behind him, he plants his foot and reaches back to get the pass. When he planted his foot, the angle was off and his knee popped. In excruciating pain, all he heard a player say was “OH man!” The player knew he messed up and that he had just injured himself again. In the NBA, star player DeMarcus Cousins just suffered a heart-breaking injury. He tore his achilles tendon which is a very serious injury. DeMarcus may not play the same ever again.
The crazy part of injuries isn’t that they happen, but it’s the internal part that’s in your mind. You may play that injury back to back in your mind. Thinking and wondering what went wrong and how you thought things were okay. Sometimes playing them back, also brings memory of the pain. It can also change how you behave after the injury; making you more timid just like the gy I wrote about at the beginning of this post.
How can this relate to you if you don’t play sports?
I’ve seen the same behavior that I see in athletes in people I know. After we get hurt we are more cautious. To some degree our behavior can become irrational because we just don’t want to be hurt the same again.
The crazy thing about that, and even what happens with athletes, is that we make jokes or even go as far as to call them weak. We never take the time to understand where they come from or the pain experienced. Imagine if we took the time to understand these individuals, they may actually heal past the injury they suffered.
If our regular player had someone who helped him to heal properly, he could come back strong to continue playing again.
As a society we could actually bring healing to so many people if we took the time understand them. So check up and take the time to understand and help someone out. You could be the difference between them being back to normal or always being afraid to not play in life again.