You can’t fly away
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You realize I’ve done what you want right?
I think you either:
1 Suck at basketball and got cut
2 Were a pain in the ass player who thought he could coach better than the coach. Or,
3 You’re trolling
I bet your Instagram is full of shit like this.
You sound like a stubborn shit who doesn’t listen to anyone and isn’t coachable. As someone who has met D1 coaches, skill is a piece of the puzzle. If you’re an asshat then you won’t go anywhere.
I was homeless in college too, What’s your point?
My good friend was accidentally killed by his brother, who was also a good friend, all during my sophomore year. I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate here. There is a 100% chance of dying in life. It happens, sometimes tragic but always sad.
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isn’t this the kid that kept getting hurt squatting and shit like last year? Honestly, your parents are probably tired of the arrogance, cockiness, and taking you to the doctor for hurting your back or whatever multiple times. Get over yourself. So fucking ridiculous. If they won’t let you go to the gym anymore either move out, or start doing plyos and sprints. Obviously lifting will help a ton, but if you’re as talented as you think or say you are, you’ll probably get better doing anything, so just do a fuck ton of jumps, crawls, and sprints. Step one has to be to stop bitching about your situation and make it work though.
Also, this shit doesn’t matter. You’ll have zero time to explain what happened to the college you wish to play for, nor will they care. They’ll see a charge and move right past you.
My last point is for you to stop bitching about no one believing in you. Again, NO ONE gives a fuck. A vast majority of people on forums such as this have had extreme adversity, a tough life, and/or absolutely no one believing in them. Leave that shit in the past. You’ve mentioned quite a few people who actually do believe in you, so that leaves me to believe you’re a stuck up kid who thinks the world is out to get him. Same with the loser comments. Fuck off with that. Again, there are people here who i’m sure were actually pegged and bullied as a kid growing up while ALSO being terrible at school. You say you have a great GPA, so you’re not a loser in school. You say you have D1 ability, so you’re not a loser in sports. You have parents that put food on the table, a roof over your head, and pay for you to have internet, so you’re not coming from a loser home. Shut the fuck up, and figure out what you need to get to your goals.
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Both 1 and 2. And I’m saying that they’ve been in far worse situations than me and still pulled through, so I should be able to, too.
Tell me how to not be stubborn.
Help me fix my mindset. Everything that you and dchris just said is actually true.
I bitch a lot.
I don’t listen to people because people contradict themselves a lot. My father once told me “never go easy on yourself” then went I go 100% I find him trying to stop me. My coach told me I “had a guaranteed spot on the team” then I got cut. My ex told me she was serious then sent nudes to other people. People contradict themselves. Then different people give different advice then get mad when I have to choose whuch way to go. I’m don’t understand coachability. My coach coaches the team but the team loses.
I’m cocky for no reason, I have no actual accomplishments to make my cockiness reason. Whenever I come on the court people immediately get the vibe that I think I’m the best player on the court, before I even say a word. I don’t know why. I guess it was a way to cope with being cut from the team.
You seem to have completely misunderstood what I wrote and have responded with hysteria.
I’m not surprised you find yourself where you are.
You may appreciate reading “The Catcher in the Rye”
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Why?
I imagine you will find it relatable.
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Have you gotten a job and moved out yet?
A method to convince your parents to let you keep playing more would be to show something for it. Right now you have nothing, no team, no jersey, (any trophies?). He gave you really good advice that sucks to listen too. But understand that somethings in life are just not attainable unless you’re in a perfect situation or have god given talent. You have neither of those.
You can keep practicing all you want and striving to get better, but just know what you’re up against.
Jimmy Butler is 6’7 and a lock down defender. Westbrook is one of the most athletic PGs of all time. You think you can relate to them?
Their struggles were personal and family based, yours right now are both personal and talent based.
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I have the athleticism of a new-born baby and can confirm that this is 100% true.
I was going to try again to parse some of this, but jeepers, after reading more of this drivel, I’m not sure that it will have the desired effect. I’ll try to hone in on the specific thing that I can actually help with:
Regardless of you feel about the other responses you have received in this thread, I am not telling you to give up on your dreams of continuing your basketball career. I am attempting to give you a realistic path forward. Let’s establish a few facts:
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Division 1 basketball teams do not give scholarships to people who are not playing on their high school team. This is just a cold, hard fact. If you are not currently a member of your high school team, as a junior in high school, you are not going to be recruited to play Division 1 basketball. Full stop.
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If you are not going to receive a scholarship to play Division 1 basketball, then you will have to “walk on” to a team, which is going to be another problem in your specific situation. First, many Division 1 schools do not accept walk-on players at all; second, those that do accept walk-on players usually are still recruiting them, or at least establishing contact with the kid and/or coach to let them know they are welcome to show up and try out, with a realistic possibility of making the team. It is very uncommon for a player to show up and “try out” for a D1 basketball team entirely out of the blue with zero prior contact from the coaching staff (the rare stories that you do hear about are usually something like “Joe spent 4 years in the Olympic Development program as a high jumper before giving up his track dreams” or “Johnny was a junior lacrosse prodigy before concussions forced him to stop playing, but when he started playing intramural basketball he was so athletic that the coaches heard about him and asked if he wanted to join the team for a few workouts to see if he could keep up” - and even these are extremely rare).
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If you are not going to play Division 1 basketball - and you’re not - then you will need to find a place where you can continue playing basketball. While Division 3 programs are much more competitive than most people think (see case study below), their coaches are far more willing to accept a few “I’m a good kid with good grades who will work hard and be useful to the team” guys who may, for whatever reason, not have been accomplished high school players. This is no guarantee of playing time, but at least it’s a place where you can probably get a jersey and have the opportunity to show that you belong on the team. If you really, earnestly believe that you have the ability to play in the NBA, the most important thing for you to do is to find a team that you’ll actually be able to play on. After next year, when high school ends and you’re out in the world, you’re either going to be playing in college or playing nowhere-that-will-get-you-closer-to-an-NBA-team (nobody is trolling random playgrounds in Chicago looking for NBA talent, and there’s no market for 19-year-olds that didn’t play meaningful minutes for their high school team to show their wares). At least if you’re playing on a college team there lives on a 0.0000001 percent chance that you can develop your game (and more importantly, your attitude, which is a whole other ball of wax that I am not even touching) sufficiently to the point where you might be considered a “prospect” of some sort.
Useful Tangent 1:
You said that you’re from Chicago. The University of Chicago is a decent Division 3 basketball team in a good conference. They’re 13-12 this season. Their leading scorer this season was a two-time all-conference high school player that averaged 22 points per game as a senior. Their second-leading scorer averaged 18 points and 11 rebounds per game, was the captain of his HS football and basketball team, a football state champion and basketball state finalist. Their third-leading scorer was First-Team All-Conference and Honorable Mention All-State as a senior. The fourth-leading scorer was an Illinois Mr. Basketball Finalist and Third-Team All-State with a long laundry list of other honors. The fifth-leading scorer averaged 20 points per game as a senior, was their team MVP and team captain and multiple-time all-conference selection. The sixth-leading scorer averaged 21 points per game as a senior and was a two-time all-conference selection. The seventh-leading scorer averaged 15 points per game as a senior, was two-time all-conference and team captain. The eighth-leading scorer averaged 21 points per game in high school and was two-time all conference.
This is a middle-of-the-road Division 3 team. Notice the list of high school accomplishments that everyone playing meaningful minutes has? Every single kid getting time on that “middle of the road Division 3” team was a star player for his high school, maybe in the short list of the best players in their conference. If you’re not getting minutes right now for the high school team, this is the mountain in front of you. Posting quotes from Gandhi and ranting to strangers on a forum about how misunderstood you are really won’t do anything for you. Keep putting this legendary work ethic of yours while adjusting your attitude and following the advice above, and maybe you will actually have an opportunity to play college basketball.
Useful Tangent 2:
Honestly, the best example you might read about for inspiration is Kermit Washington. Sadly, he’s become remembered for one event (throwing an infamous punch that nearly killed Rudy Tomjanovich, although this occurred back in an era where basketball games had a lot more hockey-style brawls than they do today) that has obscured a very interesting back-story of how he worked his way into the NBA. He was a very skinny, shy, awkward high schooler that barely played for his high school team. After his senior season ended, he went to a tryout for a local all-star game, and while none of the coaches were especially impressed with his ability, one of them noticed the tall gangly kid hustling for every loose ball and offered him a chance to come and try out for the college team. Once he got to school, he got beaten on by the upper-class players every day as a freshman. He made slow and steady progress that quickened in his junior and senior year, and eventually became an NBA draft pick.
That’s the kind of story that you’re looking for. It’s a much longer shot than you probably realize (for one, Kermit Washington was 6’8" by the time he graduated high school and actually played on his high school team, even if he wasn’t very good) but no doubt this is the story you’ll read which convinces yourself that it can happen. It has to start by actually getting yourself onto a college basketball team.
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I genuinely want to post this in the local high school, that was extremely well written…although I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was excited to see his response, ha.
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Op, two questions:
- Can you dunk?
- Did the HS coach ask you to help him coach, but ‘you don’t conjugate with sheep’ so you said no?
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I mean, as a lifelong football player that harbored dreams of playing professional football as a child, was fortunate to play for a very good high school program and then put in four years of Division 3 football, I’m a passionate advocate for collegiate athletics (in general) that also tries to give people a realistic understanding of the landscape and environment. I think a lot of people who are D1-or-bust do themselves a disservice by dismissing the possibility of playing D2/D3 ball (although I certainly respect the decision to go ahead and just enjoy being a college student if you can’t play at a high level - one of the guys who lived down the hall my freshman year had been a two-way starter on a state championship football team and surely had opportunities to play at our school, but he just flat-out said that he was ready to be “just a guy” in college); I also think a lot of people consider D3 glorified intramurals (in doing so, are inherently disrespecting all levels of collegiate athletics because they don’t realize that even D3 teams are mostly full of guys that were the best player on their high school team). If you’re not playing very much for a high school team, you have a 0.0 percent chance of attaining an athletic scholarship. Better for OP to understand that and start trying to figure out if there’s any way to play somewhere in college than maintain this illusion that you’d be a D1 player if only the coach would play you.
(this, again, puts aside some obvious life issues that OP has besides just basketball)
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This needs to be emphasized to juniors and seniors, you’re still getting such high level athletes, it’s wild, it’s not, “I was pretty good, I can be pretty good at D3/NAIA.” It’s I was a stud that didn’t have the size or the grades, so I ended up here, but I still run a 4.4 at 5’ 10" 210 (actual friend of mine).
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