Giving...

Spend enough time with your teammates, and words become unnecessary.  Communication is elevated from the direct to the non-verbal, simple, subtle nuances in body language being enough to express a broad range of emotions to those around you who are now much more than teammates. So we sat, my brothers and I, around a small laptop, with an internet connection so poor that only 1 or 2 of every 6 or so seconds of the 2013 Finals could be seen with any clarity. We sat around this small laptop, on a small table, in a small corner of a small town in Senegal, sweat dripping off of our weary bodies, mosquitoes gorging themselves on our swollen limbs, heads heavy from the heat of the day.  We sat, and were silent. We are teammates and brothers not by birth or by chance; we call ourselves the Big Bangs, a misleading name at the best of times, and are united in our passion, dedication and love for this not for profit which uses basketball to fight youth poverty and social disadvant...

In basketball, coaches often worry about chemistry.  Chemistry is a difficult concept to adequately describe and even more difficult to cultivate. Bringing people who are often very different together is so counter-intuitively difficult in spite of their common goals. Chemistry also ebbs and flows; where there may be a week or two where the team operates as though they are the cogs of the same machine, there may also be a couple of weeks where everyone seems to be on different pages of different books… the mixed analogy is on purpose. Fostering, developing, nurturing good chemistry is a long, arduous process, with a level of commitment involved above and beyond any other aspect of the game, which in and of itself is complicated and intensely grand in its scope. I’m sitting in front of my laptop this morning, working on several things at once, and watching the San Antonio Spurs, my hometown team, the team upon which my beloved charity, the Big Bangs, my philosophy o...