Plan Or Play, You Can Win Either Way

Are you searching for the larger meaning in 18,000 men, women and children imagining for a weekend they will be remembered as the champions Michael Jordans of street basketball?

Simple.

Hoopfest provides an opportunity to ponder one of life’s eternal questions:

Can success best be sketched out of a playbook, or is free-lancing the key to happiness and becoming the champion?

And you thought Hoopfest, the largest 3-on-3 basketball tournament in the world, was just a whole bunch of basketball games that made it more difficult to find a parking place in downtown Spokane.

At one level that’s true.

About 4,700 teams from third-graders to grandpas will be shooting bricks, spraining ankles and spending the rest of this week reliving great moments from the games they played.

As in all human creations, however, beneath the obvious lies the not-so-obvious.

Or so a great basketball philosopher might have said.

If you wonder why Spokane has become the world’s No. 1 destination for 3-on-3 basketball, consider this:

It could be that this is just all for the love of the game.

Or, Hoopfest might represent the acting out of the unresolved struggle between those who make a plan and follow it vs. those who go with the flow and see what happens.

For the Northwest Ballers, a team of soon-to-be-freshmen at Mt. Spokane High School, it was no debate at all.

“We just think it’s more fun to go out and do it and not have to remember anything like a set play,” said Kelly Barnes, 14, a member of the north Spokane team.

Added teammate Matt Langston, also 14, “We’re going out there to show our stuff, not run plays. There might be a high school coach scouting us or something. Or maybe a girl is watching.”

So go the arguments for living life as it comes.

Don’t fence yourself in. Don’t live in a rut, a silo or as a character in a paint-by-the-numbers existence.

Live! Experience! Go for the gold!

Most certainly this attitude isn’t confined to pick-up games of basketball.

Many people operate their checkbooks in much the same fashion.

Why plan?

If you see the perfect convertible advertised in the paper, go for it. You can always sell the furniture later.

Spontaneity, adventure, the possibility of making a score all feed the mind-set of those who see what can be done with energy, imagination and the quirky hand of fate.

But that’s not a game plan for everyone.

“Our team has plays,” said Tina Ghirarduzzi, 12, from Woodland Middle School in Coeur d’Alene.

“Our team likes to know what we are doing,” said the first-year Hoopfest participant. “And it’s the same in my life. I like to know what is going to happen before I do it. I’m more comfortable that way.”

Ah, yes.

The checkbook is balanced to the nickel.

The car is picked out and the money saved before purchase.

Martha Stewart has a plan.

Erma Bombeck didn’t have one.

Martha Stewart is rich, rich, rich.

Erma is long gone and nearly forgotten.

Those who have plays in Hoopfest and plans in life might be considered Stockton-to-Malone aficionados.

John Stockton and Karl Malone, two professional players for the Utah Jazz, had a play and ran it, and ran it and ran it all the way to the National Basketball Association finals the last two years.

And what would the free-lancers say to that?

They would say that in the end, Michael Jordan stole the ball from Karl Malone, dribbled the length of the court and shot the winning basket with six seconds to go.

The lesson?

Well, if you are Michael Jordan, free-lancing might be the best.

And if you’re John Stockton, you need a play to run.

Each school had a team in the finals.

Each school likely will have teams in the finals of the Hoopfest brackets.

Sometimes the free-lancers win, sometimes the winners have a plan.

Those who try to just go and play often spend their private time agonizing about their lack of a plan.

And those who have a plan often spend their darkest moments wondering why they don’t just let it out more often.

This dynamic crosses all the terrain of our lives.

Take money and finances. Some people save, plan. Others bet it on a whim.

Think of love and family. Some people elope in the night. Others revere the thought of their 50th wedding anniversaries.

Don’t forget job and career. Some people go for writing the next big movie script. Others sit at a desk and count on the gold watch.

Hoopfest isn’t over yet. There is no way of drawing a conclusion about which style will win out in the finals of each bracket.

Here is a prediction.

A profile of the winners probably would be a composite of players who sometimes just go for it, but who have a general plan for how to play the game.

Winners usually have a solid idea, a blueprint, of what it takes to win.

Their victory, however, often comes from elements of surprise and unexpected opportunity.