This Basketball is much more than a toy to me, it does more than bounce, and fly through the air spinning backwards toward a metal hoop. Growing up in Decatur Georgia, sports were a very embedded part of our existences as young men, and they are still that way today. Everyone went to school, and everyone played a sport, things like band, chorus, or any other extracurriculars were treated as just that, extra. But the sport you played? Well that was more attached to you than even your own arms and legs. When you introduce a friend to someone, you put the sport they played within their description somehow. ”This is my bro, Johnathan, we used to play little league baseball and football together.” And that is legitimately how the two of you met and became friends. It leaves me to wonder just how many friends I’ve made through school, and basketball respectively. Of those two groups, it is undoubtable that of the friends with whom I’m still close, the closer and more endearing relationships are with those who I ran suicides with, or did dribbling drills until my arms were numb along side. To me, it is almost like going through battle together, win, lose, or draw (Though a draw is unlikely in basketball), that’s your brother, and in his moments of grief, you pick him up, and he does the same in return. When you play to win, there’s an intensity that bonds you to a teammate, you are allowed to blow up at them, you are allowed to criticize and receive criticism, ultimately pointing you all towards one goal. Mentally, the game teaches you patience, trust, being precise, being able to maintain efficiency, and resilience above all other things, and these are all skills that i’ve taken with me into academic settings. And the thing that basketball has taught me, which is more applicable to life than any of those other virtues, is that you only succeed for as long as you continue to better yourself and those around you.