Winning isn’t everything, or is it?

Last Saturday was a day like any other. The sun rose, the birds sang and my daughter’s basketball team lost. They lose with vexing frequency, having been defeated in 20 of their last 22 games spanning three seasons and 29 players. They have lost in all and sundry ways - at the buzzer, on a disputed call, because of a competing Bat Mitzvah, and most grievously, by a score of 33-3 in a playoff game. To paraphrase Tolstoy, winning teams all win alike while losing ones find unique and dispiriting ways to come up short. 

To be fair, though, it is not just them. It is me, too. I am the losing coach. 

Now, intellectually speaking, we can probably agree that it doesn’t very much matter in youth basketball which team wins and which loses. It is, after all, a “recreational” league and the time commitment per week amounts to little more than a couple of gym classes. If you look at the league’s mission statement, it touts fundamentals, fair play, exercise, sportsmanship and all other bromides that have been kid-tested and mother-approved. I agree whole-heartedly with these values. Yet, before every game, somebody flips a switch, winds a clock and the electronic points start mounting incongruously. Just have fun, some say. But the girls, who are in seventh and eighth grade, are done with fun. They want to unleash hell and post the results on Instagram. #winning 

Before this season began, my daughter pulled me aside and we had this exchange: 

EM: We’re going to play a game. I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to give me an honest answer.

ME: Okay.

EM: When you said I would score this year, were you telling me the truth?

ME: Yes, with a caveat.

EM: What’s a caveat?

ME: It’s like an asterisk.

EM: What’s the asterisk?

ME: Well, take last year’s team. You guys were always talking about how bad you were and how you always lost as if you had no agency in the outcome. As if effort and execution were entirely in vain against these cosmic basketball forces. In that same spirit, if you keep dribbling aggressively to the basket, concentrating on your footwork, putting up good shots in the lane and refusing to become discouraged in the face of failure, you will score this year. You will score often. The ball is entirely in your court.

EM: Um, okay. 

When I look back on this conversation with the wisdom of retrospect, I see what I’m trying to do here: abnegate responsibility. I want to have it both ways. I need for the girls to both understand that the ability to succeed lies within their grasp while simultaneously realizing that they’ve been dealt a bad hand; that their winlessness is not a deficit of character or ability but rather a misappropriation of talent by the league office. I want to tell them it’s not you, it’s them. 

Basketball is, of course, a zero sum game. For every win, there must be a loss. The standings are symmetrical like so many beautiful things in the universe. This is what they looked like at the halfway point of the season: 

Team A 4-0

Team B 2-2

Team C 2-2

Team D 0-4

It doesn’t take a beautiful mind to project the records over the course of a full season. With all due deference to the department of recreation, I would submit that a league composed of four teams where one is unbeaten and another completely battered has failed its constituents. Intramural youth sports are not meant to be meritocracies but rather messy democracies. While all teams may not be created equal, surely we should strive for a more perfect balance. I’m reminded of Bruce Springsteen’s refrain for the common man: Nobody wins unless everybody wins. Perhaps we’ll start an Occupy Basketball Movement.

Until then, there’s another game on Saturday. I like our chances. Conclusions are rarely foregone. Still, losing consistently gives the game a different perspective, one that privileges moments over outcomes. For instance, in the last game, Emma took a pass from the point, dribbled into the lane, jump stopped and banked the ball in for her first basket of the season and a 6-2 lead. She raised her arms to the sky. Freeze that moment.

Victories are not achieved through winning alone.