Duke and Arizona were, in my opinion, equal winners in last week’s final NCAA game because of their team-play.

Monday, April 09, 2001

Duke and Arizona were, in my opinion, equal winners in last week’s final NCAA game because of their team-play. Which would win interested me slightly, but I enjoyed the well played game. What is important in sports, because sports ought to be life-enhancing, is not that some individual gets the glory of stardom but that the team plays well even if it does not actually win the game. Life is people working together for the common good and doing the best we can with what we have.

Although an unusually talented player threading his way down the court with the ball skillfully under control and through opposing players and then laying up an impossible shot thrills, the whole team working the ball to a successful goal pleases.

Many times in this particular game I saw a player approaching the basket within a difficult shooting range. Will he go for it? If he could make this shot, what a thrill it would be. Sometimes they did, and the most articulate word I could muster was "wow!" How in the world could a human being manipulate such a large body through a herd of equally large bodies without committing a crashing foul? How could he have worked the ball through so many waving arms forming a maze of fast-rotating fan blades? Such thrills there were, and I enjoyed them all.

What impressed me the more, however, was a player – sometimes Arizona and other times Duke – being in a position to risk a shot but then spontaneously passing deftly to a team mate – and, often, he to yet another-and the ball going into the basket with apparent effortlessness. The shot itself was almost routine, certainly ordinary. Nothing spectacular about it and my reaction was, "Of course." Nonetheless, it contributed to the game’s score the same number of points. The impressive factor was the team-work it took to get the ball into position for a sure shot. The five had played with one mind and as if in one body.

A herculean try that fails contributes nothing-except often giving the ball to the opposition. It matters little for a player to be the game’s high scorer if his stellar performance cost his team the game.

What pleases me is a team working together to accomplish a common goal rather than a self-indulgent hot-shot seizing all the glory. The latter’s interest is how many individual points he can rack up, while the former is concerned with the team winning with no necessary reference to who makes the points.

Life is very like this. There is no end to what a person can accomplish if the person does not care who gets the credit. Not infrequently more satisfaction comes by enabling or inspiring another person to accomplish something than doing it oneself. Joy is doubled when, not only is the task accomplished but, I have succeeded in helping someone himself to achieve.

Being called "a good team-player" cannot be thought the equivalent of winning a Miss Congeniality title. It is, in fact, one of the grandest compliments a person can earn.

Basketball was designed in a YMCA as a team sport, and as a team enterprise a beautiful thing it is. If a person is obsessed with performing as a star, let the person go to Broadway or all the more to Hollywood. Stay off the basketball court and make room for a team. Whether on the court, field, track, or in the work-a-day world, let us live in community for the common good.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays.