Beyond The Rim

As a schoolboy I had heard myriad times from my teachers and parents of the need to be a ‘confident individual’ in life. That mantra has been reverberated in my mind ever since then. I was the blue-eyed boy of my teachers. So how can I ignore their advice? I was very keen to take to heart any advice from them. And even now I am too much conscious of following it. Remember, you may encounter grave perils, if you don’t imbibe such advice in its right sense.

I used to play basketball every day. Among us there was a player who had played for the Indian team. He was an extra-ordinary player with highest temperament. We hogged the limelight during practice sessions which were like war. Fringe teams in the ground would watch us training and they had a kind of admiration towards us.

One day my friend, the national player, and I reached the basketball court earlier than the usual time. We slowly began warm-up drills while the teammates were yet to turn up. Suddenly I noticed four boys, aged between 12 and 14, watching us. Now they came close to us. We pretended as if we were concentrating hard on the exercise.

“After all, we are seniors and better players than them. May be they want to learn from us,” I thought.

“Brother, shall we have a match with you?” a boy asked suddenly.

“Now! no, we’re not in the mood to play a match with your team. We have practice match today. We don’t want to tire ourselves out. Let’s have it next time,” replied my friend without paying much heed to the boys.

“Please, we are great admirers of you all. We can play till others come. It’s an opportunity for us to develop our skills too,” they said almost like a chorus.

“Sorry dear lads, we shall play with you all another day. Right now, we need to warm-up,” I said.

But they were adamant and eventually we gave in. “Ok, we’ll finish it soon,” my friend suggested. They agreed to it. 

We let them to play with four boys. Both of us had no doubt that with our experience, it’s a snap for us to blow away their team.

We decided on a half-court game of thirty points and began. At the outset we didn’t try too hard and remained low to let the boys score a couple of points. We were confident that we could finish it off of our own will. By this time all our teammates and opponents had arrived.

They encouraged the boys and jeered at us. “It’s 20-0,” the scorer announced. It was only then we realised that we must do something urgently to save our face.

“We’ve to shift gear. It’s no more child-play,” I warned my friend.

As a result, we charged up and made a couple of good movements. But it all ended fruitlessly. Our shoots either bounced off or ended in foul. We were screened many times by the little players and couldn’t score a single point. Every attempt made was unsuccessful above the rim. Nevertheless, we were confident of winning the game. Meanwhile, our coach too had arrived. He also joined the spectators to support the boys and offered those tips on how to beat us.

Seeing this, our confidence started to whittle down. The scorer announced, “27-0”. We became nervous.

I saw my friend in shooting position and as it was half-court game, the distance I had to cover was very less. There were boys defending both of us, a chest pass could be fatal and so I pulled up the ball for an over-the-head pass and there was a swift movement and the ‘egg-headed’ little boy who was defending me had already grabbed the ball from me!

I rushed to corner him. I screened him so that a successful pass was impossible and I watched as he tossed the ball high in the air.

“It’s our chance. My friend could catch the ball and from there onwards we’ll have the game in our hands,” I thought.  

I literally felt the Earth being swept away from under my feet when I saw the ball in a perfect parabola dropping directly into the basket. Alas! A clean shot, a three pointer and they won the match convincingly by 30-0!

Thunderous applause and appreciations were showered on the boys who had been on cloud nine after tasting success against two ‘young tigers’ (at least for us) of the game.

I couldn’t fathom the intensity of the embarrassment. “I hadn’t taught you how to shed overconfidence. That’s my fault,” our coach remarked.   

“Well, now you have learned it with enough practical knowledge,” he added sarcastically. In fact, he succinctly concluded what had happened to us in the court.

On that particular day after the defeat, we could not perform well during the practice match. And it was obviously comedy of errors in the court. The aftermath of the whole episode was that we had neither dinner nor sleep in the night. For a couple of days, we had been the laughing stock of our teammates.   

 In one way, the defeat was a blessing in disguise; in the sense that it provided us an opportunity for introspection and shunning overconfidence. In the corporate world, confidence is vital. But ‘expect the unexpected’ theory is also important.    

“Take your challenges with equal priority; be it a veteran or a greenhorn,” this is my sermon nowadays to my friends. 

The chasm between confidence and overconfidence is tenuous. Now I bear it too in my mind.