Have you ever been bullied as a kid in school, in the work setting or even by friends who don’t mean it?
Soul Trotters was born from my love of sports but also from learning to persevere in the face of difficulty or when the future looked bleak. And so here is my BaselineBrad’s Blog.
This is the first in a series of stories where I learned to persevere and also learned that the Lord had gifted me with the ability to connect with people from all walks of life and to have a positive influence on many of them.
Connecting with positive people and not dwelling on negative people. When I think back to my childhood, I recall some instances where I had to persevere because of my academic challenges due to cognitive issues from my childhood disease of Bacteria Spinal Meningitis.
I recall waiting for the school bus in third and fourth grade and one of my classmates, a particularly smart kid, would grill me nearly every morning on academic problems from math, English or some other subject he had mastered. He would put me down because I didn’t know the answer or couldn’t come up with it as fast as other kids. I wouldn’t add fire to fire, but concentrate on other friends around me.
Connecting with people using innate gifts (mine being humor, friendliness and athletic ability). I learned to persevere through these difficult challenges and mental bullying by connecting with other kids also waiting for the bus and putting them at ease with my friendly approach and my humor. This would serve me well the rest of my life because, although I later became a very strong athlete, I still have had to endure the mental bullying from others. (Those who bully others are insecure and have a need to feel good about themselves by putting others down.) Although others were impatient with my slower ability to process technical information or large amount of information, my humor and smile helped many situations.
I also found out that I could be good at basketball This is one of the way I have coped with the stress and also could feel good about excelling at something, since the academics wasn’t a strength.
Connecting with people who have something in common with you helps us to not feel alone. I have learned from others who have survived bacteria spinal meningitis on social media meningitis pages that they have experience these same slower processing skills due to the effects from the disease. It encourages me and I have a chance to encourage others.
Connecting and drawing people together through persuasion. In the early years of playing basketball, the Lord further developed my ability to connect with people and influence them. In junior high I would call my friends on Friday evening or Saturday morning who played basketball and ask them if they wanted to play at the school that day. I would say so and so is coming and we need you to come to make it 4 on 4 or 5 on 5 to run full court. This is where I started to develop the art of persuasion.
Connecting by just being genuinely interested in them and starting conversation. When I think back to when I first started putting my God given gift of connecting with people and my ability to be persuasive together, the experience I recall most was in my early twenties. I just got back from playing professional basketball in Europe and just turned 23. At this point I did not have an AA yet or much later a BS degree since I opted to play basketball overseas in what would have been my fourth year of college.
I really had no skills that I could point to at this point, but knew I was physically strong. I started applying for jobs locally in the coastal area of the South Bay in California. One company CEO was so impressed that I came in just off the streets that he called the President of an in- bond- freight company near LAX. (In- bond- freight is cargo that had been imported by wealthy clients, stores or brokers that needs to be signed off by US Customs in order to be released to the individual, broker or retail outlet.) The president of this company was impressed with my communications skills enough to hire me to work in the warehouse and to start sending me over to international airlines to pick up this in-bond air cargo. Before picking this freight up, I would first have to meet with the airline rep in receiving and also with the US Customs Inspector assigned to that airline that day. Well, very early on, I started building relationships with all these US Customs Inspectors as they rotated around to the various international airlines located at LAX. Before long, the US Customs Inspectors started seeing me through the window, would call me back to talk to me, and clear my paperwork ahead of other brokers and folks picking up airline containers of in-bond air freight.
They trusted me. I was respectful and not demanding like some others were on why I needed my shipment to clear customs. They just recognized my integrity and enjoyed talking with this “young man.”
The only bad part of this was, that it created a little bit of tension with some of my coworkers. Because what use to take them 5 hours of their day waiting for shipments to clear customs and load up the bobtail truck, or airline container on the roller flatbed truck was taking me less than 2 hours in many cases.
This made for more time for them to unload the truck and work in the warehouse doing manual lifting as we unloaded the airline containers before they returned to the airline. And because I would get shipments cleared faster, management recognized this and would send me more often than some of the experienced reps of our company. I couldn’t help this, I was just doing what came naturally to me, connecting with people, building trust and influencing them to work with me first because I didn’t bring them any aggravation.
I learned early on to treat others the way I wanted to be treated, with honesty, integrity and fairly.
Look for more tips and stories on persevering in future blogs.
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Along with Larry Creger, Paul Pierce and James Worthy also said the same thing on a TV special and radio program that I recently heard – that Rogers Park was where the real talented players competed. Paul Pierce, as you know, was the long time Boston Celtic Great and NBA Champion that just retired from the LA Clippers in 2017. In a TV special, after Paul’s last game as a Clipper, he shared about his youth. He grew up in Inglewood and went to Inglewood High after moving from Oakland, CA. Paul said, “You weren’t anybody in the basketball world if you couldn’t hold your own at Rogers Park.”
And in a recent radio interview on 570 AM in LA, I heard just the other day the former LA Laker—three-time NBA Champion James Worthy being interviewed. He mentioned where all the greats played to prefect their game in LA area. Yes, again Big Game James stated Rogers Park as being at the top of his list.
I mention these examples just to let you know, you had to be able to compete at a high level to play at Rogers Park. The first protocol was getting your name on the board. When you entered the gym, you saw a large chalkboard, which was where guys would write their name down for the next game. If you weren’t on the board and in order, you were out of luck.
Rogers Park had hoops outside in the actual park area, but the real talent competed inside the gym. (You can tell that the LA Lakers used to play there because on the main court they had the hoops that came out of the floor just like you see at all the NBA arenas at that time and even today.)
Also of note, in all the times I went to play at Rogers Park, I never once saw another light skinned guy (white guy) like myself in or near the gym. I knew I had to be ready to play. I had similar situations in my past -- leagues I played in after high school in Portland or in Southern CA -- where I was one of 1-2 token white guys playing in the league. Anyway, I never saw color, just had an attitude to compete! It was funny, if I was having a particularly good game that day, invariable, someone on the opposing team that had never played with me before, would call out, “Block his shot!” And one of his teammates or mine that had seen me play before would stand up on my behalf say, “He can play now, he play.” It was great to get that validation of your game. I am telling you, though, there were some great players there that were head and shoulders above the rest. Fortunately for me, I had put in the time for many years practicing my shooting. My leaping ability was also above average because I really worked hard on it by running hills, steps and a lot of stretching to stay limber. When I was focused on stopping a guy, I could really defend well because most of good defense is just hustling and moving your feet rather than reaching (and picking up fouls). I learned early on from good coaching, to defend and study players that were right or left hand dominate and overplay their dominate side which forces them to dribble with their weaker hand. If they could not do that confidently and competently, they would be forced to pick up their dribble and fire a long shot or pass the ball.
I lived a distance away from Rogers Park, but tried to get there early, because if you were in the first 3-4 games on any given day, you might be able to play alongside a current NBA player from the Lakers or the Clippers, someone who was working on his game in the off season. And some of the guys who played there were guys like me, who had played in Europe or some foreign country, hoping to compete again at the professional level.
I recall, in between games during a shoot-around, guys were showing off their dunks, etc. Since I could rock the rim pretty good in those days, I would throw a few down that usually got a second glance or so. It was incredible to watch some of these small guys who were only 5’6” to 5’9”. They could really get up and dunk a few through.
Yep, I will always have fond memories of Rogers Park, playing and competing with some of the best competition I have had the privilege to put on my game face and run with. “Hey man, do you want to run next?” “Yeah!” “Right on! You’ll run with us.”
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When I was in 7th or 8th grade in my early years of playing basketball, I would call my teammates and say, “Do you want to play some basketball at Morningside Elementary?” This was my first experience in sales. I would try to convince the guy I was calling to join us because “so and so is coming if you’re coming.” The goal was to have at least eight guys to go 4 on 4. Many times, just like sales, I would have to call back and confirm to say, “Yes, Joe is coming if Rick and Paul are coming” and so forth. One of the reasons we liked to play at Morningside was that the hoops were only 8 ½ to 9 feet tall. We liked those or at least I did because I could dunk the ball on a fast-break or maybe even in traffic. (Again, we were only 7th & 8th graders.) This is where I first developed the Art of the Dunk. I believe this early training enabled me to be a much more prolific dunker because I mastered it on a low hoop. When I was able to do it on a 10 foot hoop, I already had the skills and timing to really throw it down. It was in 8th grade PE that I first started touching the net with my head while other kids were jumping and touching the net with their hand.
During this same time, a number of us would go early to school to play in some pickup games at O’Leary Jr. High School where we attended. One particular morning, I was feeling pretty springy after playing pickup games of basketball in the gym. I went up to touch the rim and ended up grabbing the rim and hanging by one hand. Man, did that feel good to this skinny 6’ 1 ½” kid. I hung there for awhile as I recall, partly in amazement and partly wanted to show off. I still remember some kids I knew saying, “Wow, look at “Vilen” (referring to me by my last name as kids often do when you are at school). Eighth grade was a very good year for us and myself athletically. We were undefeated in football; in fact, only one team scored on us. And in basketball we only had one loss. But we faced that same team in the playoffs and beat them with me leading in scoring with 17 points. This win led us to the championship game, in which we won by 3 points.
In 9th grade, I could only successfully dunk a volleyball on a 10 foot hoop. Occasionally in 10th grade I could get a basketball in. I could jump high enough with one hand to drop it in, but didn’t have large enough hands to control it. By 11th and 12th grade at a new school, I was able to dunk two handed, but had to get the timing just right. When I was first in college, it was much the same thing, until transferring over to a new college my 3rd year. It was there that along with my running and stretching, I realized that running hills and doing light squats (from 225 lbs to warm up to 385 and occasionally around 400 lbs), my power to get up off the ground started to soar. I could not only dunk the ball, but started getting some real height up there. After working at a Salvation Army camp in Calabasas near Malibu for the 2nd summer in a row, I realized I was becoming a pretty good ball player. It was much like the original movie Meatballs starring Bill Murray. We were the poorer kid’s camp playing the wealthier rich kids that attended UCLA and USC for the most part. They challenged us to a basketball game and we were pretty much outmatched for the most part, but we did have a few good players. I say humbly, I was the best player out of both teams and we managed to beat the rich kid’s camp on our court which was great. Later that summer, some folks from the English Basketball Association contacted me to play with their team near Manchester England. Many people have asked me, how did they know if you were good enough to compete? I didn’t, but I saw several players being sent home after 2 weeks in the country because they couldn’t compete. Fortunately for me, our team was involved in a tournament the 2nd weekend I was there. And I played pretty well and even jumped up high enough under the backboard to block a couple of shots off of the board.
When I played basketball in high school and some college, you were not allowed to dunk in the warmups, because everyone was trying to dunk which resulted in broken backboards from guys hanging on the rims. (Not everyone had spring-loaded rims yet) What was nice and very fun for me was this: You were allowed to dunk in warmups in the English Basketball Association. I usually warmed up with some layups and then went onto 2- handed dunks, my patented double pump reverse dunk and then the crowd pleaser. What I call the crowd pleaser is a very common dunk today, but in the early 80’s not everyone had the skill or the timing for this unless they were in the NBA or a big time college player with some hops. I would dribble in usually coming down the lane slightly on the left side and bounce the ball hard off the floor in a forward motion in the middle of the key. When the ball was getting towards the height of its bounce, I would meet the ball in the air with 2 hands over my head and thrust it downward into the hoop. This felt good, because at 6’3” plus, not as many guys my height were able to get up there like me to execute a dunk like that.
My most memorable dunk came at the Salvation Army Youth Center in Pasadena warming up before a game. I believe I was probably 26 or 27 and played in an all - black league except for me and one other guy. One of my teammates played for the International Globe Trotters team that traveled and played in other countries and not the USA. This was a very competitive league and probably the best one I ever played in. Anyway, while warming up early with jump shots before many of the players got there, I started doing a few slam dunks since my legs were feeling pretty springy that evening. Once warmed up well, I used to take off from the right or left side going forward and would twist in the air and double pump the ball into a reverse slam dunk. One of my more showy dunks for back then. On this particular time I really got up and it seemed like my head was nearly at rim level. After reverse slamming the ball through the rim and net my momentum carried me backwards on the way down and I hit the back of my head on the pad on the bottom of the backboard with a slight jolt stopping my momentum backwards. Fortunately for me the backboard had a pad, otherwise I may have been knocked out or cut my head open. I was Ok, but I knew I had really gotten up for that dunk. Unfortunately back in the mid-80’s, no one had cellphones equipped with a camera. I wish I would have some pictures of me dunking the ball like that. Although many dunks of recent years are spectacular, I can live with the satisfaction that I can reminisce and others can recall some of my furious dunks and how I mastered this skill.
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