By almost all measures, I am in the best shape of my life. I gym five times a week, doing heavy compound lifts. I eat clean. My bodyfat percentage is at its lowest since my senior year of high school. Hell, I even sleep and wake early now.
But yet, 23 year old me, the Carls-Jr-every-night, the never-lift-a-weight, the 180-pounds-with-a-belly me could absolutely destroy current me in basketball. One on one or team, doesn’t matter. 2005 me is superior.
I know this because I’m typing this post on an iPhone at a basketball court, frustrated at my lack of legs on my J and inability to move laterally.
And so, I watch guys like Tim Duncan and Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, and I am in awe that, they have hung on so diligently to their basketball life. Basketball is a young man’s game. One of the rare arts in which, no matter how great you once were, you’ll wake up one day and realize it’s gone. Father Time is undefeated.
For KG, Truth, Kobe, and TD, they know the end is coming. They must feel it in their bodies. But they’re going down swinging.
For me, 2013 is the year I learned that my days of playing competitive basketball at a level to my own standards are over. It’s finished. I can never compete like I once did.
Fuck.
