“Basketball was my first love” - a sentence it seems I utter often when trying to describe myself. For whatever reason, the sport of basketball has captured my heart from a very early age. I can remember watching the Rockets (my favorite team!) and the Bulls battle it out constantly in the ‘90s. I can also remember my first basketball team (the New Territory Suns) and my first basketball game (I air-balled the first shot I ever took). I have always loved talking about, thinking about, watching, and playing basketball.
Basketball has changed my life in many ways. One way is that it most assuredly kept me out of (even more) trouble by giving me something to be busied with. Who knows what kind of mess I could have made without such a time consuming hobby? Another way that it changed my life is that it taught me the art of discipline and self control. I would schedule out training sessions, dates, times, work-outs, and rigorously follow them in order to be the best that I could. As a kid, I kept a few journals that I would constantly jot down new plays or ideas on. At one point, I had well over 300 different plays.
Perhaps the largest way that basketball has changed my life has been the therapeutic effect it has had on me. During the hardest times in my life, basketball has constantly been there for me. During my junior year and my struggle with panic disorder, one of the few places where I could forget it all was in my driveway shooting baskets. During panic attacks, my greatest and most effective strategy to calm down was to think about the Rockets and my favorite player, Steve Francis.
While there are other sports I appreciate and enjoy, basketball will forever be my favorite. It has, without a doubt, changed my life.
Have any sports changed your life? How? Please comment and share!
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