Lessons from Camp: Get in the Gap

I apologize for the 2 week hiatus - June is basketball camp month, and I've pretty much not been home for the last several days.

Having said that, it was a good week of camp in many ways. It's a good time to teach the game to players at all levels, and many lessons were presented. As I look back upon the week, I see that many of these lessons are transferable to life in general. So for the next several posts, I will discuss the top lessons from basketball camp. Today's post will focus on the phrase, "Get in the gap."

Our defensive philosophy that we spent time teaching last week asks for defenders who are one pass away to "get in the gap." Basically, if the man I'm guarding doesn't have the ball, it's my job to get in the gap between the person with the ball and my man so that the man with the ball can't drive to the basket, even if he gets by the man who is supposed to be guarding him.

This idea asks a lot from our players, and it's a tough idea to buy into. We're asking them to not only be responsible for their defensive assignment, but someone else's also. If someone else gets beat, we make it our other players' jobs to fix that mistake. Therefore, they've got to avoid worrying so much about their own assignment that they fail to see the bigger picture of what's going on with their teammates.

We need more people willing to "get in the gap" in life. Good families do this for each other. So do good friends. But it's rare. Too often we're too worried about our own assignment, our own problems, our own personal success to see the bigger picture of what's going on with those who are right next to us. We want to guard our own man, not help with someone else's when they happen to be struggling.

It's easy to do that when it's convenient, whether we're talking about on the basketball court or in life. On the court, when someone is guarding a horrible player who has no chance of scoring, it's easy to help off of them because the individual assignment isn't as tough. In life, it's easy to help when we've got time in our schedule or money in our bank account. When we are facing no challenges of our own, we're more than willing to get in the gap.

But on the court we're looking for every possession players, players who do what we ask of them on every possession, whether it's easy or hard. That includes being in the gap. Whether there's a big crowd on game night or no crowd during a practice drill, we need guys to get in the gap.

Our families, our communities, and our churches need the same thing.