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The play's the thing St. Bonaventure kids don't realize what they gave upPosted: Monday March 10, 2003 10:10 AM
Broke my thumb the other day. In what may have be an unprecedented display of individual clumsiness, I managed to close the sliding door of a minivan with my right hand and mangle my left. I share this with you not because I'm looking for sympathy (although hitting the space bar with a busted digit is, to my mind, the very definition of playing in pain) but because the first question I asked the doctor who patched me up was, "How long until I can play basketball?" That's how people like me, people who love to play hoops, think. We keep a Spalding indoor/outdoor and a pair of hightops in the back of our cars at all times because you never know when a pickup game might break out. We drag ourselves onto the court at every opportunity, despite the sore ankles, jammed fingers and puffy knees that scream to us that our aging bodies can't take the pounding the way they used to. We do it because we know that every game is a small treasure, whether it's a three-on-three against guys wearing deck shoes or a serious run on city blacktop. Some hoop rules vary from gym to gym, region to region, but one rule is universal: Whenever humanly possible, when the game calls, you answer. Which brings us to those foolish young men, the scholarship basketball players at St. Bonaventure. Forced to forfeit six conference victories and barred from the Atlantic 10 tournament for using an ineligible player, the Bonnies simply decided to skip their final two games. The players are protesting the school's lack of support for their program, or they are too emotionally devastated by the punishment to compete, or the dog ate their gym shoes, or something. The reason really doesn't matter. Forget for a moment what the players' decision says about their character or whether the school should have forced them to play or found other students who would. All those issues are debatable. What isn't arguable is that the St. Bonaventure players disappointed not only every weekend hoopster, but also every athlete who laces them up just because they love to play. There are thousands of office workers and teachers and sportswriters struggling up and down the court on Wednesday nights at the junior high who would give up their 401Ks to put on a real uniform again, or for the first time, and take the floor with referees and a scoreboard and people in the stands who actually care whether they win or lose. I'm guessing that those Bonnies will realize all of this sooner or later -- most likely later. It'll be when they're 40 or 50 years old and can no longer join the guys for the weekly pickup game because they have to have dinner with a client or watch the kids, or because they smashed their thumb in the family minivan. That's when they'll think back to when they were young, way back to March 2003 when they let two games, two precious chances to play, just slip away like sand through their fingers. They will realize that it wasn't about wins and losses, or eligibility requirements, that the hypocrisy of the NCAA was really immaterial. They will finally see that all that mattered was the game, any game, every game, and they'll wonder what they were thinking when they just walked away from a chance to play. The games may seem like pennies now, plentiful and not worth much. But someday they will seem more like diamonds, rare and precious. One day the St. Bonaventure players will regret having given up on the season, not because they got roasted on sports talk shows and in newspaper columns, but because they will finally have realized that once a game is squandered, it is gone forever. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on SI.com.
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