Play to Win...

I was a senior in high school, and it was late February. We were playing a rival team in basketball sectionals, a team that had beaten us twice earlier in the season and was simply better than us. Throughout my career, I was never a starter; though I did I get a fair amount of playing time off the bench from time to time. I would consider myself a pretty good shooter, I remember there were days in the summer where I would shoot baskets outside all day, and I remember many times not going into the house until I had scored 700 points (that’s 350 shots made in a day). Why 700 points? I’m not sure, I guess it seemed like a good round number, but I would do this type of thing every day. I loved to shoot baskets (and still do to this day). But on the court, I was just not as aggressive as I should have been. I was a role player, and found myself often playing “not-to-lose”, rather than playing to win.

But on this night, in the first half, we were getting beat pretty bad. I remember at half-time, coach was so upset he told all the starters they were sitting to start the second half and myself and 4 other guys from the bench were to be on the floor to start the third quarter. I had a different feeling this night. I was a senior, and this was tournament time. We lose and we’re done. Here I am, potentially playing the last half of my basketball career. I didn’t have anything to lose, and I remember the following events clear as day. I was relaxed. At first, I’m open for a 3-pointer. Swish!  A couple minutes later, I hit a 3-pointer from the baseline. Swish! I start to get a little excited, I hear our fans start to yell and we’re going on a run. A few minutes later, I get the ball at the top of the key, take a couple dribbles and knock a shot down at the foul line. The tempo is picking up, we’re chipping a way at a 20-point deficit, and then a few minutes later, I hit another 3-pointer. Swish! Playing better, but unfortunately not stopping the other team. Finally, I get fouled and hit a pair of free throws for my 12^th and 13^th points of the half. We’re not able to stop them and chip away at their lead, and we end up losing. Game over. Season over. My last high school basketball game. But yet, this game was one of the most satisfying events to ever happen to me, and one of the most disappointing. Not disappointing because we lost, but because I waited until my last game to play the best game of my life. I waited until I knew time was running out, until I felt I had nothing left to lose, until I didn’t have to worry about having to run suicides the next morning if I messed up. I waited until this last game, when I knew it was it, before I finally relaxed enough like I did when I was shooting baskets in my driveway, and went after it and just had fun. I wasn’t playing not-to-lose, I was playing to win! 

This game was in 1995. The lesson has stuck with me for almost 20 years. Not because I like to relive the memory of playing well, but because this game was one of the biggest life lessons I have ever been taught. This motto, “Don’t play not-to-lose. Play to win!” has stuck with me since those days. You see it all the time in sports, where teams get tentative because they’re afraid that they’re going to make a mistake, or turn the ball over. This is why the prevent defense in football doesn’t make sense to me. How many times do you see a team play the prevent and let the opposing team march down the field, get momentum and score. Or how many times do you see teams go away from their game plan and what works, stop attacking and simply try to run the clock out and lose momentum and get out of sync? And in life, how many times do we take the safe route and fail to open ourselves up and go after things in life – a job you really want, a personal relationship with someone you love, or a spiritual relationship with God? All things we may desire or feel we’re called to, but are afraid to go after because we don’t want to be rejected or are afraid of failure. Before you know it you’ve been going through the motions for 20 years and you realize you could have done so much more. 

You have to live life like you have nothing to lose, like we’re not afraid to fail. You have to live life all out and forget your fears and play to win, rather than play not-to-lose. You have to be aggressive and go after this life and go after the desires and callings in your heart. I’m not talking about money, power, and material things or being spontaneous and jumping out of a plane on a whim, or crushing your peers on our way up the corporate ladder. I’m talking about something more. We need to love like we’re not going to get hurt. Even if that means that those closest to us do indeed hurt us. We need to use our gifts and our talents we’ve been given to better this world and others around us, even if that means getting out of our comfort zone. We need to realize our God-given potential, even if that means failing along the way. We need to seek what our purpose is in life, the path that God has laid before us, and the steps we need to take to get there, even if that means we stumble and fall from time to time. We need to lose all of those fears, take it one day at a time, and go all out. Go after those mountains in your life, those challenges that seem insurmountable. Don’t be afraid to let your guard down, to be excited, to show that you care, and have fun. Don’t take the game too seriously, but don’t be afraid to put in the work to get where you want to go, to do what you were put on this earth to do, to do the things you have been called to do. There will be hurdles, there will be pain. There will be ridicule. There will be days where you won’t know how the hell your going to be able to do it, or how your going to get there. But don’t look at your life and think “What if?”  Don’t think about what you should have done, or what if I would have done this, or what if someone would have done that? Don’t blame things on other people or society. When you start to ask “What if?” and think of the past, ask “What now?” What am I going to do, now, at this very moment? Life throws you’re a curve, or you’re not realizing your potential in your career, or your life seems to be spiraling out of control, or your relationships are out of sync? Ask yourself, what can I do now to get back on track and make a difference in this world? What can I learn from this?

Sure, I could have asked myself, “what if I would have been more aggressive in basketball all along and what if I would have done this or that back in high-school?” I could have probably started and scored a lot more points, or we could have won more. What if Andrew Luck wouldn’t have thrown that interception last week to end the game, or what if the referees would have not blown those two calls?  We can think about “what ifs” forever. The only thing we can do is try to be the people that God wants us to be and when we mess up or don’t apply ourselves, or the referee blows the call, we can simply be humble and say, what now? What’s next? How will I respond? What am I going to learn from this and do to improve myself or the others around me? I believe you only truly win from losing, and in the end, we really never win anything from playing not-to-lose.