Let’s start with the good news, which is that Grizz Gaming finished the 2K League’s pre-season The Tipoff tournament as one of the Elite 8 teams. We were in a group where literally nobody picked us to advance, having to play against quality teams in Atlanta and Toronto. Last Friday night, we lost our opener against Atlanta by 9, but bounced back to win game two by 24 points, giving us a hefty point differential advantage over the Hawks. We then beat Raptors Uprising in back-to-back games, first by 1 point, then by 20.
We celebrated, hugging each other and sharing pounds and high fives. The last month of work had paid off with something tangible: We finished our group 3-1, and moved into The Tipoff’s Final 8 as the tournament’s third overall seed, where we would face off against T-Wolves Gaming. It felt great! As I explained to someone recently, those were the moments that make all the work that goes into Grizz Gaming so worthwhile.
And then we ran into a buzzsaw. On Saturday night we squared off against the T-Wolves, and after playing Minnesota even in the first half of game one, the T-Wolves basically thumped us for the next six quarters in a row. It felt like we couldn’t make a shot, we couldn’t get a rebound, we couldn’t string together stops. It was a perfect storm of which we sailed directly into the teeth. As well as we’d played over the first night of games, as consistently as we’d been able to play the type of game we’d wanted to play, it all up and vanished.
When the games ended, we sat in silence for a while, then vented our frustrations a bit, and then eventually the guys trickled out into the humid Memphis Saturday night. I packed up all my stuff, turned off all of the lights in the Grizz Gaming facility, hopped in my Jeep and drove out onto Beale Street, where I was met with standstill traffic. Nature is healing, apparently—it was a Saturday night in downtown Memphis, and it was gridlock. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so I put on D’Angelo’s first album and sat there stewing in my thoughts as I inched my way toward home.
Even though I was listening to D’Angelo, a phrase that’s been bouncing around in my mind the last week or so kept coming to mind. It comes from my favorite rapper of all-time, Andre Benjamin: “You can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather.” I’ve sung along to that line from the OutKast song “Ms. Jackson” a million times over the decades, but for some reason that line has hit different recently. It’s such a perfect metaphor for life, for everything. All the planning, all the preparation, all the work—at the end of the day none of it really means very much if you can’t adapt and adjust.
I was disappointed that we’d lost, sure, but as I told the guys, what mattered now would be how we reacted. The loss was over, and we couldn’t get that toothpaste back into the tube. Feeling sorry for ourselves wouldn’t help anything. But we could grow from the experience. We could learn from the situation, and the next time a team plays that way against us, we could be better prepared and have answers that work better than the stuff we tried on Saturday night. Our picnic might get rained on, but we could at least pack some umbrellas and parkas. You know, just in case.
Life isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was, we’d all be happy and rich. (And, probably, bored.) Winning rules, but losing sucks, and for me there’s nothing fun about having to comfort six frustrated young gamers in the immediate aftermath of a loss. But time helps provide perspective, and allows us to find bits of levity. On Saturday morning, before our game, my son found a dime in my car, which he pronounced to be a lucky coin and handed to me, ostensibly to help Grizz Gaming. Just before we tipped on Saturday, I put the dime on Vandi’s desk and told the guys we were going to have a little help from this lucky coin. On Sunday afternoon, after our loss, I sent a note to the group chat: “Hey guys, so it turns out that lucky coin was a bunch of crap.” That helped us laugh, but it didn’t really even ease the pain when the T-Wolves went on to win the entire tournament.
The thing about tournaments is that they’re like beauty pageants—in the grand scheme of things, they don’t really mean anything. Winning some extra money would have been terrific, sure, and it’s always fun to have everyone giving you extra attention, but now we head into this week at 0-0, the same as the rest of the 2K League. Is there some comfort in knowing we belong in the conversation with some of the best teams in the league? Certainly.
But for now, it’s back to work we go. It’s early on Monday morning as I write this, and I’m at my desk about to watch film of our losses and our upcoming opponents. Sometimes it feels like the work never stops.
Which is fine. We are built for the grind.