Many people know that I’m a big Detroit Pistons fan. Shannon asked me what the one thing I wanted to do on my birthday was, and I said go to a Pistons game. I’m not really sure why I like them so much, or why I like following the NBA so much. It’s not really a sport that a person like me (or people in general, I guess) can relate to. A lot of rich guys play a game where most of the time it seems like money comes before the love of the sport. But I like the match-ups, I like the stars, and I like the coverage. I like how it had that edge to it, and I love watching big plays happen.

Right now the Detroit Pistons are playing the Philadelphia 76ers in round 1 of the NBA Playoffs. In game 3 and the first half of game 4, they were looking pretty bad. They were giving up the ball a lot on mistakes, taking bad shots, and losing their cool. So at halftime the coach said to them “Are you having fun? Because it looks like you’re not having fun.” That and a little speech by Antonio McDyess (fresh off a broken nose) turned things around and now, a game and a half later as the Pistons are on the cusp of winning the series, they’re having fun. They decided to not worry so much about winning and worry more about whether they are enjoying their work.

I found this to be in common with the sand volleyball team I played on last year. It was me and a bunch of my buddies. We thought it would be fun to get together every week and play some volleyball. We were all pretty capable players, and we all liked playing. But a lot of the times, we sucked. Bad. We made mistakes, we got in each other’s way, and tempers flared. A few times we left after the games without saying much at all to each other. We’re all pretty competitive, and things weren’t going the way we’d like.

But I think the thing that got us the most is that we didn’t have fun with it. We worried so much about winning, about getting every point we could and beating each team that we forgot to just have fun playing ball. I’m definitely one of the biggest culprits, because I want to win so badly. I wanted to prove to my friends and the people around me that I could be a winner, and that I could be good at volleyball. And it’s tough, man. You want to have fun, and maybe things start out that way. But there’s always a score, and that feeling of embarrassment when the ball hits the ground in front of you and you were supposed to hit it. So fun gets thrown oout the window as you get a little more serious about things.

I don’t know, maybe I’m not good enough to have fun and do well at the same time. But I’ve done it before, somehow. And I know it’s much easier, and a much better time, to just have fun. So I’ll try to remember that in the future.