home court advantage

Unlike many of the so-called (and self-appointed, I might add) basketball "purists," I really enjoy watching the NBA. It's not that I don't like watching NCAA basketball. I do. But I just don't buy the whole line about "The college players play team basketball and really want to win for all the right reasons. The pros just don't care. They play for themselves, and for the money."

Lest this introductory rant (which is really a set-up for my point, and not the point itself) get too lengthy, suffice it to say:

1. The teams that have won NBA championships for the past 5 years or so have done so not because of their individual superstars, but because of their team play (see the entries entitled "Spurs", "Pistons", and "Kobe 2008", and cross reference with the entries entitled "Lakers post-Shaq", "Mavericks," and "Suns 2008").

2. The USA Olympic team, post MJ, has finally figured this thing out, and is beginning to craft teams instead of throwing together slam dunk contest winners who shoot about 28% from the field and turn the ball over every other possession because, as it turns out, the international community hasn't let go of that ancient rule called traveling.

3. O. J. Mayo. Enough said.

All of that to say: as I watch this year's NBA playoffs, a striking trend leaps out at me: many teams are unbeatable at home, but those same teams can't seem to win a game on the road.

The Celtics are the prime example of this trend: having had the best record in the NBA this year, they are 7-0 at home in the playoffs... but are winless on the road. In the Jazz/Lakers series, both teams are undefeated at home, and winless on the road. Same holds true for the Hornets/Spurs series.

Now, I've never personally considered "home court advantage" to be a very significant advantage. Sure, most teams play better in their home setting than they do on the road, and that makes sense to me. Home is where you practice all those hours. It's where you feed off of your crowd. It's where you feel the most comfortable because you didn't have to travel there... etc. All of those factors transfer into better and more consistent play. I get that. But how this year's playoffs exaggerate the advantage caused me to think: is this "home court advantage" true in areas outside of athletics?

I often tell people: I've found that it usually takes me about 3 years or so before I really feel comfortable in a certain place, doing a certain thing. It was that way in college. It was that way in seminary. It's been that way at my current job. For some reason, it takes me about that long for my current setting to start feeling like "home." But once it does, I become more sure of who I am, of how I fit, of how I'm growing, of how I'm developing... as does the community around me. Thus, I go from being a "visitor" playing on the home team to being a "role player" who is a familiar face to perhaps even being the "go to" guy.

And it sucks to go from being the "go to" guy back to being a "visitor" whenever God decides to move me on to what's next... but I've learned that, eventually, what was strange at first will feel like home. I just have to give it the right amount of time, and learn how to be a good "visitor" and "role player" in the meantime.

Which gets me to thinking: in today's very transient and hurried culture, how many of us are constantly "visiting"? How many of us ever stick around somewhere long enough to feel like we're at home?

"Wanderlust", in all its trappings of culture, diversity, and well-roundedness, seems to have somewhat of a dark side: you never stick around anywhere or anyone long enough to be known--to be truly known--and to know yourself. We search anxiously for that fit, that feeling of home, that romantic notion of a utopia, but we never seem to give ourselves long enough to find it, because the journey to it is a difficult one. Of course, nothing is ever "perfect"... but I think we can get a lot closer than we think, if we ever were patient enough to let our current environment become our home court.