In today’s Bite Size Pickleball Newsletter:
Stop Whining
Latest Pickleball Magazine Article
Full Court Shadow Show Update
STOP WHINING
I wanted to comment on a couple of things that happened on the court this past week. In short, there is too much whining. I get it, we live in a whiny, “victimized” culture and it seems to be trickling down to every level of society, even the pickleball court.
Not saying we all whine, y’all whine, because we don’t. But enough do for me to say something about it.
Incident #1: I was playing against a dude I play against frequently the other day. He’s about 20-something years younger than I am and he loves to beat me. I would almost say, he lives to beat me. Which is totally cool for me, a badger of honor more than anything. And he’s a good dude, he really is. And we have fun talking smack at one another. However, for me, sometimes that smack just gets out of hand and, I would say, both our games suffer because of it.
As for the whining, I was playing him the other day. He had a guy on his team, I had a woman. In the first half of the game we were hitting it to his partner and The Dude had about 5 poach points in a row. He is long. Before we knew what hit us, it was 6-1.
Many of you already have sensed the remedy for this. Hit it to The Dude, when they are serving, to keep him back at the baseline longer so he has less time to poach. Yup, you guessed it, we came back to win like 11-9.
After which, The Dude whined, “Well, if you ever hit it to me, it might’ve been different.” It didn’t even occur to him that we WERE hitting it to him, and THAT’S why we came back to beat them. He was too caught up in losing to me. Mind you, I didn’t say one word when we beat them, not necessary to rub it in his face.
I few minutes later, I did mention something to him about how I can relate to having my opponents hit it to my partner the majority of times. And instead of whining about it, I’ve figured out how to get involved. As I have mentioned before, in my writing, I call it “controlled chaos.” I poach often enough to keep my opponents off guard. Which was really the same thing The Dude was doing! He just needs to work on his drops and drives from the baseline so we can’t turn a game around by hitting it to him.
The other thing that happened this week was a guy I was playing with snapped and went after a guy on the other side of the net, and I had to step in between to calm the tensions. The guy had almost hit my partner with an out-of-control shot toward his face on a previous point. The point after that, the guy beat my partner on a point and then talked smack about it. Ignite explosion. Neither of these guys was in the right. The first guy should’ve never talked smack on a point directly after having almost beaned someone. And my partner never should’ve crossed the net threatening violence. IT IS NOT OKAY. EVER. I hadn’t even played one game, but I left for the day, full on buzzkill.
Please remember one thing. Although we all go out to the courts with our own agendas, and that’s cool, our agendas are ripe to trigger others if we aren’t aware of the energy we bring to the court. Which is, primarily, great energy. But there are those times when we need to rein it in and stop being so selfish in the pursuit of our individual agenda and recognize how it may affect the whole.
LATEST ARTICLE IN PICKLEBALL MAGAZINE
This is for the beginners in the audience. Or even the intermediates who find themselves repeating their same mistakes.
FULL COURT SHADOW SHOW UPDATE
Getting excited. The shooting portion of the show is winding down and I will be in the editing cave soon putting the show together.
A couple of weeks ago I was in San Francisco interviewing Gary Payton II. We had previously interviewed him in Vegas. The episode on him is going to be rooted in dyslexia. I believe I am going to tell the story largely in animated form, ala “Dear Basketball” which was Kobe Bryant’s short film that won an Oscar several years ago. That’s GP II below with my grandnephew (and top production assistant), Bob Marley and GP’s cousin in the background.
Here’s a little video on that suite setup in San Francisco. BTW, I got a text message on Wednesday night from Gary’s assistant saying, “How quickly can you be in SF?” We were there two nights later.
If you remember me telling you about it, GP II’s mom took him to meet this “famous actor” when GP II was in middle school. And the famous actor also had dyslexia and it changed GP II’s life forever. It showed him that anything is attainable if you get a) the right help, and b) the right mindset.
RICK: Who was that actor?
GP II: His name was Harry Winkler.
RICK: You mean “Henry” Winkler, the Fonz?
GP II: Yeah.
GP II has never been able to tell Henry what an influence he was on his life. Our story will hopefully facilitate that.
Yesterday, I was in L.A., with my crackerjack, VERY LARGE crew….
Where we were interviewing Jameer Nelson Jr. Jameer’s dad starred for the Orlando Magic and, to this day, is the franchise leader in assists. Jameer Jr was game for anything.
Which, ya know, as a director, I love. “Hey Jameer, let’s go sit next to that statue and f*ck around.”
Super great kid who is reporting for the Stockton Kings in the G League this week.
I texted him a thanks later in the day and a message for him to let me know if he needed a shooting coach. Flashback from our Philadelphia trip, shooting at the legendary Roman Catholic High School.
Back to the immortal Kobe Bryant to close on. Here, one of Kobe’s four favorite teammates ever, Ronny Turiaf, explains how Kobe’s dad Jelly Bean Bryant’s shadow had an influence on Kobe’s game and life.