Free Values of the Game by Bill Bradley Page A

human spirit is indomitable, and that all of us are stronger working with one another than we are working alone.
    In basketball, there is no misfortune greater than injury. A player’s career can end with one twist of the knee or ankle. In few other activities is such finality so closely wedded to such physical virtuosity. While most injuries are temporary, the healing process isn’t complete until the player returns to the game. When you are injured, your first thought is “How soon can I play again?”—followed by fear that the answer is “Never.”
    The very thought that injury can end a career focuses your energy in a peculiar way. When you’re recuperating, life looks different. It did for me in 1961, in the summer after my senior year in high school. I had broken my foot in a baseball game, and as I sat with it in a cast I contemplated a world without basketball. Where would I go to college if there was to be no more basketball? A few weeks after I posed that question to myself, I decided not to go to Duke, where I had accepted an athletic scholarship, but to enroll instead at Princeton, where I had none. If I hadn’t injured my foot, I might never have made the switch.
    Amy Cook is the daughter of a friend of mine. Her father was a high school track coach, whose teams had won six state championships. His greatest satisfaction, however, came from seeing his daughter grow up to be a great 100-meter high hurdler. In her sophomore year in high school, she had the fastest recorded time in the state of Missouri and won second place in the state championship. Then, in the winter of her junior year, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament during the district basketball finals. She had surgery and reconstruction of the knee joint. The doctors said that it was uncertain if she would ever run again. The cast stayed on for eight weeks and then she began the rehabilitation—the weight clinic, the stretches, the jogging—hoping to get ready for her senior year season. Her parents accompanied her every morning to her 6:30 workouts. She returned to competition in March of her senior year, but she didn’t do well. Sometimes she couldn’t even finish a race because of the pain. She barely qualified for the state championships—and as she and her father drove to Jefferson City for the state meet, they knew they had both done everything they possibly could to prepare her for the event. When the runners took their mark, Amy’s father was close to tears, afraid that his daughter would be crushed by a poor performance. The gun went off and Amy jumped out ahead, holding the lead to the finish.
    Amy Cook was the state champion. She had reached deep into herself and found the confidence and drive that enabled her to win. It was partly physical—she had done everything she could to get ready. It was partly mental—she had prepared herself to risk everything in order to win. But it was her resilience that put her over the top.
    A part of being resilient is understanding that there are some things in life that can never be gotten over, no matter how many games are under your belt. I felt sad on many levels on November 7, 1991, when Magic Johnson reported to the world that he was infected with HIV. I mourned the loss to the game. Yet Magic’s terrible misfortune reminds us that each of us harbors self-destructive impulses and urges, along with all the qualities we’re proudest of. By standing up in public and telling young people, “Don’t make the mistakes I made,” Magic shed some light on a part of our human nature that is too often hidden. For that gift from him, we must be grateful.
    It may be that by accepting the limits to resilience we can celebrate it, using it when we can and cherishing it while it lasts. I’ve made it through more than a few tough moments in my life by drawing on the resources of my basketball years. Resilience is what allows us to struggle hard and long with tragedy or loss or misfortune or change