Things are bad right now for a lot of people. A war is raging in Europe, leading to skyrocketing energy prices, high inflation and a slowing economy. In other parts of the world, conflicts and natural disasters force millions of people to become refugees and even more people suffer from depression or other serious illnesses that affect their quality of life and the people around them.
We all have problems, big or small, and everyone is struggling with something.
But as basketball fans, we’re lucky – some would say we’re blessed. Because when things get bad, even really bad, and we lose our jobs or mourn a loss, we have basketball. The beautiful, entertaining and frustrating game that we all love, a sport that brings us together and gives us joy, light and community in a world that can sometimes seem very dark.
When we struggle with our privacy and feel lonely, basketball is there to keep us company. When basketball is at home, you’re never really alone.
I can testify to that personally. A year ago, I decided to return to the world of basketball. Not as a player, but as something else. I decided to leave the sport I had left behind in my life. I had no idea what it was going to be like, but I haven’t regretted that decision for a moment since.
You see, after playing competitive basketball at club and national team level for 15 years, I quit. I stopped playing and left the basketball world. With this decision I lost who I was, my identity was erased and I was homeless. If basketball is your identity, who are you when it’s no longer in your life?
I was 8 years old the first time I found myself on a basketball court with a ball in my hands. I didn’t really know the rules or what to do. But I knew it brought me joy, laughter and friends.
Later it gave me company when I didn’t know where to go. When I didn’t want to be home, I stayed and watched the other teams practice. At my club in Denmark, some 8-year-old teams at the senior elite level always practiced on one or all of the three courts in the building, so I spent my nights watching the older teams play.
I sat on the bleachers watching the drills, listening to the coaches and the sounds of the gymnasium. The creaking of moving shoes, the bouncing of balls. It has become my refuge, my comfort in a confusing world.
In the basketball hall, nothing was confusing. Everything was easy. What to do, how to act, each new exercise was explained. In the gym, you didn’t have to try to fit in and be a certain something, like most teenagers do. In the gym, it was about how you moved your body to your advantage, and if you did it wrong, you kept training until you got it right.
In real life, I was a big kid. I was always the tallest in my class and I wasn’t skinny, I was strong. But strong isn’t something you want to be as a teenager, unfortunately. On the pitch though, strong and big is good. And so I found a place to belong, a place where I didn’t get noticed.
I grabbed it and didn’t let go until I felt compelled to. More information on this here.
Because what basketball has essentially given me is hope and community, something that is a rare and precious gift. And since I left basketball, I missed this community.
I had started to feel hopeless. What was I really doing for a living? Why did I never really seem to fit in anywhere?
Then a sportswriter and my brother-in-law unknowingly teamed up to give me an epiphany: If I loved basketball so much, why didn’t I come back to it in another capacity?
Just start writing about it, the sportswriter said. Well, I don’t know how, I’ve never written about sports before, I said.
But you know what you’re talking about, get to work.
And that’s what I did. I wrote an article about the Mavericks for a Danish media. Then I joined NBA Twitter and to be honest I never looked back. Because the feeling was strange, I had found my way back. I suddenly felt part of a community of like-minded people who cared about the same thing as me.
I found my way back a year ago and I’m so grateful to everyone who helped me get here and for all the support people have shown me along the way.
The sport we love can be a stabilizing force in turbulent times, if you let it. No matter how badly your team tears at any given moment, the pure joy of basketball remains and the hope it gives us is a precious gift.
This Christmas, if there’s one thing I wish, it’s for everyone to have something like basketball in their lives. A place that belongs to them, that brings them joy, laughter and community. A place of belonging.
Find last week’s Maverick Feelings here.