I used to play a lot of basketball in my life and I used to coach a lot of basketball in my life, and since COVID and my two knee surgeries, I’ve been out of the game. And it just so happened there was a practice over winter break in my hometown, and I went and saw a few old friends of mine there, former teammates and former players I coached. And I just thought while I was there in my street clothes that maybe I could shoot a couple of flat footage shots as I recover from knee surgery, still rehabilitating, etcetera. And the shots felt pretty good, and I felt good enough at some point, where I was getting a little warm in my jeans and whatever else, that I was like, “Gosh, you know what? I have some shoes and some shorts and a shirt in my car.” And I went ahead, and I went out to my car to get my basketball stuff, and I came back in and over two hours — this is a very drawn-out story, I understand — but over two hours I began to try a little bit more and more.
And I actually had my first shootaround in probably two years, which is a huge deal for me. I still have a weak knee, and there’s still things that I can’t do, I’m not close to playing in an actual game. But I couldn’t believe that I could actually shoot jump shots, not just flat-footed jumpers, but I can actually bend my knees with really just soreness in the way that like my left knee has not been used in a while. Not pain where I had my surgery per se. Was able to bend my knees and rise up and, and shoot, and it felt good. Somehow my shot hasn’t left me. I know that some people might say it’s like riding a bike, that you never forget, but I figured there’d be some rust involved, but my shot was strangely on. And for most of the practice, I stayed to like mid-range jump shots, from 10 to 18 feet away. I didn’t want to mess with three-point shots, I figured it would take too much lift and explosion, but toward the end, my friend kind of encouraged me to give that a shot, and I can shoot three-pointers again.
And maybe most importantly, besides the fact that I can shoot, when I missed and the ball ricocheted, you know, sometimes you can miss and it stays by the hoop, but other times it kind of really pops out and you have to go chase it down. It wasn’t super painful to go chase the basketball down, which I know sounds so rudimentary and normal to all of us, but I haven’t been able to do something like that without pain or discomfort in surely two years by now. And I didn’t know I was ready to do it either. I, I figured that I would still be too sore and whatever else. So that’s something that I’m incredibly grateful for.