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we took in our family revolved around basketball, so naturally I wanted to excel at it, earn my parents’ attention and praise. That’s not to say that they withheld those things from me; far from it. Neither did they pressure me into playing the game. I developed a passion for the game, but I was also involved in a lot of other activities and sports. Experts tell us that we don’t really choose whom we fall in love with, but that some kind of chemical attraction brings two people together. I can believe that when it comes to basketball; on some subconscious and perhaps chemical level I must have felt a magnetic attraction. The hollow ringing sound of a ball being dribbled on a hardwood floor, the squeak of basketball shoes on a highly polished court, the feel of the pebbled grain of the ball in the grasp of my fingers, and the sight of the ball arcing in the air, its backspin seeming to pull me toward a simpler time in the past, still entice and enthrall me.
    I didn’t think about those things then. I’m not even sure I felt them. I had a lot to learn and was an eager and willing student, but I wasn’t ready to fully commit to the game, to declare my abiding love. A sturdy foundation was being laid, but it wasn’t as if my family and I had a blueprint for what the structure would be like. My parents were great believers in our doing things, as I said, and much of that belief was founded in the old line about idle hands being the devil’s workshop. More than that though, my parents believed in the value of sports and how they could contribute to a young person’s development as a human being, a well-rounded and respectful human being who understood sportsmanship and the benefits of hard work and the reliance on self and others. Sounds pretty basic and by the book, but that was our reality back then.
    Even if I hadn’t demonstrated any real competency in the game, I’m pretty certain my parents would have still encouraged me to participate. They wouldn’t have pushed me in a direction I clearly didn’t want to go, but they would have made certain that I found something else to do with my time. I know this next point: my parents had no desire to live out their dreams through me. Even when I was in college, we didn’t really discuss a possible NBA career for me. I was in college to get a degree, to do well in the game, and to learn something about how the world operated and how to get along with a wide variety of people. Basketball was a means to an end, not an end in itself. That was true when I first laced up my shoes in a league game in 1980, and it’s just as true today. Fundamentals are fundamentals because they are less likely to change than anything else.
    What I like about the idea of boxing out is that it doesn’t really require a tremendous amount of athletic ability to be good at it. All you have to do is understand a few things about your body—to lower your center of gravity and to use the strongest muscles of your body, your legs and your butt—to help you move someone the way you want him to go. To succeed requires mostly focus and desire, a willingness to put the effort into something for which you won’t likely earn attention. Even today, in the sophisticated world of the NBA, with our love of statistics and the endless hours of video players watch, blocking out is mostly noticed only when it doesn’t occur. Just as we sometimes take for granted the love of others and feel its absence more than its presence, the same is true of most of the fundamentals in the game and in our lives.
    Paying attention to even the simplest things, the most ordinary of things, can help us reap substantial rewards—first among those is the satisfaction that comes with knowing that you’ve done the right thing. That simple lesson in cause and effect shaped my early experiences in the game and with my family. It has never left me. It helped me to take possession of the things I value most and eased my transition