Middle School Moment: NBA Finals Edition

Category: , By Christian
Throughout my life I have loved basketball. I watched a lot of it with my dad, both in person and on TV. He took me to high school games as well as Portland Trailblazers games, and I became a passionate fan at a young age. I would pour over my Blazers media guide, catch all of the games on the radio, and even call into the local sports talk shows with my questions about the team.

One thing that has surprised me about working with my boys is how little they know about sports. They don't know many of the rules of basketball. Even though they love to play, they don't follow it that much. The same goes for football and baseball. Stacy surmised that it is because so few of them have dads around. It's a good point. There are a lot of dads in America who spend time with their kids over sports.

Even Elli will sit down with me and watch parts of soccer games. She'll sit down and watch for about 5 minutes, and then jump off my lap and play with me while the game is on. If the crowd goes wild, she'll usually stop what she's doing and clap herself.

Look, there are many other more serious byproducts of the fathering epidemic in the urban core. I fight against them and pray about them every day. So when I have conversations like the one I had with three of my boys yesterday, I find it both funny and sad.

Kid 1: Mr Christian, did you watch the Celtics-Lakers game last night?
Me: Yeah. Parts of it, but I didn't sit down and watch the whole thing.
Kid 1: Did you know Kevin Garnett plays for the Celtics now?
Me: Yeah, dogg. That was big news last summer.
Kid 1: Dang. The Celtics are going to be good now.


At this point I'm cracking up inside. For one, the kid is about 325 days late on the KG memo. But I'll give him credit for at least knowing that KG would make the Celtics good. Nice call, considering they had the best record in the league, and are now in the NBA Finals.

The boys went on to explain to me how Kobe is a ball hog, selfish and cries too much to the refs. For a guy who has been trying to build his street cred over the past few years, he clearly isn't doing a good job seeing as those kids view him as a selfish punk.

As the conversation went on I explained to them how the best-of-seven NBA finals work. They had no idea. I was glad I could help them out and see them, to a limited extent, get fired up about something I was fired up about at their age.

I just wish their dads were there to get them fired up as well.

Fair Dinkum
 

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