MEMPHIS – There are three weeks left in the inaugural NBA 2K League regular
season, and Grizz Gaming currently sits at 5-6.
Eight teams will make the 2K League playoffs, and with the Knicks having
clinched a spot after recently winning ‘The Ticket’ tournament, there remain
seven spots up for grabs. As I write this, Grizz Gaming is currently one game
out of seventh place, with three contests left to play.
We have as good a chance as anyone to make the playoffs. And while there are
certainly some competing teams that could lose here or there to enhance our
chances, there’s really only one thing we can control: Our play.
So as long as we compete to the best of our ability, that’s all we can focus on.
Not magic numbers or power rankings or social media posts or any other stuff,
which is just noise. We need to play the best we can, and then let all the other
stuff fall into place.
When I moved from the concrete jungle of New York City down South to Memphis,
one of the things I was most excited about was the opportunity to have a garden.
I’d lived the last eight years in a lovely apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West
Side that did not have any direct sunlight. As a home chef, I go through a lot
of herbs, stuff like parsley and mint. I didn’t want to become the next great
home gardener – shouts to Alan Titchmarsh – but I wanted to get a few potted
plants set up, tend to them and use them.
I ended up planting rosemary, mint, thyme and oregano in my backyard, hoping to
have a fragrant garden come spring. My wife supplemented my efforts by mixing in
about a dozen different plants along either side of our house.
It was only after the plants were in the ground that I began to realize how much
work was required to keep them going. It apparently only rains about once every
three months here in Memphis, and during the summer days the temperature
skyrockets up around 140 degrees. So even if you do drench your garden in the
morning, by noon the ground is dry and cracked, like the surface of Mars.
I resolved to not let these plants die, not on my watch. So each morning I woke
early and went outside and spent half an hour carefully putting water on every
green thing I could find. At night, after work, I’d come home and repeat the
process. It was time-consuming and even in the moment seemed pretty inefficient.
But I really didn’t have any other options; these plants needed water, and if it
wasn’t going to fall out of the sky, it would have to come from me. It was me
against the sun, and even though it was probably unwise to choose to battle
against a 4.6-billion-years-old ball of fire, if I didn’t put in the work, it
wasn’t going to get done.
So I did the best I could, day after day, standing and spraying. And then one
evening, I was out there and I heard a hushed hissing sound from next door. I
turned and noticed my neighbor’s yard plants, which were a vibrant green color,
being watered by themselves. By which I mean, a sprinkler system was taking care
of the same job that I was doing by hand. My friend, Khalid, is always weary of
machines taking our jobs. But this is one task I happily handed over after a
trip to the hardware store to buy my own sprinkler system. And now, my garden
looks pretty great, without me having to actually do any work.
I know that there are books you can buy about gardening that will teach you
every fact you need to know. Because gardening is a science, right? Plants need
water and sunlight to grow – these are facts. But like life, I have found that
gardening is inexact. Plants also need nurturing and a little TLC and not too
much sun and not too much water. Science may provide concrete answers to many
questions. But I also strive to appreciate and embrace the art in situations,
the understanding that a straight line might be the shortest distance between
two points, but it isn’t always the most interesting journey.
I don’t know exactly what it will take to get Grizz Gaming into the NBA 2K
League playoffs. Even if I did know the exact combination of wins and losses we
need, I don’t know the combination of words that could inspire ultimate success
from our team. At this point, all we can do is put in the work and be prepared,
and then take advantage when opportunity presents itself.
And until it’s over, we ain’t gonna stop.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Memphis
Grizzlies. All opinions expressed by Lang Whitaker are solely his own and do not
reflect the opinions of the Memphis Grizzlies or its Basketball Operations
staff, owners, parent companies, partners or sponsors. His sources are not known
to the Memphis Grizzlies and he has no special access to information beyond the
access and privileges that go along with being an NBA accredited member of the
media.
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