Perhaps the main responsibility I have in this role is to coordinate and supervise over the Men's Church Basketball season. It certainly is the activity that requires the largest time commitment from me, but I rather enjoy it.
All of that is just background information to set the stage for today's story.
Yesterday evening, I reiterated a few rules and reminders for both teams prior to both games being played. I specifically asked the brethren to watch their emotions and intensity during the game. I further encouraged them to remove themselves from the game if they found their emotions running high. This was brought on by an incident last week, which was the result of two players NOT controlling their anger.
Fast forward to the last 10 minutes of our basketball game, which was intense and had a close score. One of my teammates grumbled as he headed to the bench during a timeout "I'd better sit down or I'm going to punch somebody." Recognizing that he was trying to stop a bad situation from becoming worse, I put my hand on his shoulder and said "I appreciate you choosing to sit for a bit. Thanks."
His response stunned me.
He pushed my hand away and snapped back with "DON'T! Just DON'T! I don't need your appreciation so just shut up!"
After reflecting on this, I have come to the conclusion that he really made the right decision to sit out the rest of the game.If you're so upset that you will get angry at a teammate when he is complimenting you then you're clearly too out of control to be playing basketball!
Song Of The Day:
Although it is more of an anthem, I thought of Eminem's award-winning song "Lose Yourself" when writing this post. I think the line "you own it, you've got to never let it go" is appropriate for this brother who seemed to realize he shouldn't be playing any more that night. Also, we hung on to win the game by one point in overtime so I guess that ties in too. :)
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