Favorite Basketball Moments of the 2008-09 Season

The first thing you'll notice about some of these are that they really don't all deal with me. This list may discuss people/teams that I am just a fan of and don't really have any association with. They also are not in a particular order of importance. The 2008-09 season was a memorable one for me and I made many strides in gaining knowledge of the game. I hope to be able to put that knowledge to use soon in the future.

1. My mom and I got to go listen to Bob Knight speak in Green Bay. I love listening to Coach Knight speak. He is very articulate and has a great mind for the game that actually revolutionized it. He is one of the creators of the much used motion offense. I even got to ask him a question. "Coach, what did you think of the job that Coach K did over in Beijing with the Olympic team?" He gave a nice long answer praising Coach K and the work his staff did over there. I was also very excited when he told me he sat down and had a conversation with Kobe Bryant that impressed him very much so.

2. I went to Manitawoc and met one of my many coaching idols, Joe Rux. He is perhaps the most influential one that I have contact with currently. We sat down and had a great discussion. I plan on doing this again in the future. I hope he can become a mentor to me. It would mean a lot. I have great respect for him and his program. I also got the feeling that we both have the same "Basketball nerd" thing going for us where all we ever really think about is basketball. Right now, it's not football season; instead its the offseason. Players should be in the gym working on their game. Coaches should be in their offices watching film and going to clinics to learn more about the game.

3. Kobe Bryant won his fourth NBA title and he is slowly, but surely creeping his way up into the top 5 to 10 basketball players of all time list. A lot of people will ask me why I like Kobe so much. How could I like such an arrogant prick? The main reason is his work ethic. He is really easy for me to look up to. He is perhaps the most fundamental basketball player ever and it is simply because of the mixture of his natural talent and his strong work ethic. Another huge part is that Kobe is a polarizing figure. Many people continue to hate and hate on this guy but he still has so much respect from those people based on his skill. To the world, it is so much easier to look up to a guy like Lebron James who is much more outgoing and has great skill. Virtually, no one hates Lebron. Not even I do. But with Kobe, literally half of the country hates his guts. BUUUUTTT... his work ethic and amazing skill still allow him to be respected at the highest level. Many people consider him the greatest of this generation. Lebron, D Wade, Melo, CP3, Dwight and all of the other players who played on the Olympics with him continue to speak about how much they learned about preperation and work ethic with him last summer. They look up to him like an older brother.

4. I was able to run the Lourdes summer basketball program. It is safe to say now that we had the most successful summer that Coach Rudy has ever had in his 10 years coaching here. Every coach and parent in our program has at one point come up to me and told me so. The fact that I was the one running the show makes it very special to me. Especially since we put in a new offense starting at the beginning of the summer.

5. My cousin, Derek Semenas, of Laconia High School gained a Division One scholarship the the University of Green Bay. His work ethic and love for the game is something that I find very inspirational. I hope nothing but the best for him in the future.

6. Lourdes won its first conference championship in a very long time.

7. I went to my first of many basketball coaching clinics. It was ran by Nike and held in Chicago. My friend, Ross, went with me and we got to stay in a very nice hotel together. Many great minds of the game came to speak. The most memorable speaker definitely was Hubie Brown. I am attending two more clinics this year. One in St. Louis this coming weekend and another in Madison the next weekend.

8. Watching the 2008 Summer Olympics as the US brought back the gold. The "Redeem Team" was very fun to watch. D-Wade played extremely well bringing him back into basketball radar and Kobe was extremely clutch as usual. He came up bigger then anyone in the championship game when Spain cut the lead to 2 with 4 minutes left. Later, when asked about the moment the game got close, Kobe simply said, "This is fun."

Preconceptions

How many times in life have we had a preconception about who someone was or what type of personality that person had before we even took the chance to talk and really get to know them? If your life has been anything like mine, I would guess that this happens to you multiple times a day, hundreds of times a year and thousands of times throughout our existence. Coming to Fr. Carr's Place2B has changed the way that I see the world of homelessness and what a homeless person is.

It has even changed how I would define homelessness. To look into this topic further, one must first ask the basic question... "What does it mean to be homeless?" or "How can you tell if a person is homeless." What does it really mean? Are there certain qualifications? Does it mean you don't have a certain amount of money? Does it mean you're a criminal? Does it mean that someone is really lazy and decided they didn't want to do any work? Therefore they don't have money for a home... Does it mean that they have a mental illness or that they just grew up in a bad neighborhood without a decent family or a home with food? For all you know, someone could be homeless because of a declining economy that led to them being laid off or they just simply got fired.

I have lived in Oshkosh the entire 22 years of my existence and I have been aware of Fr. Carr's Place2B almost the entire time because of random oppurtunities I have had to help out periodically as well as Fr. Carr coming to mass at school. The entire time before I decided to move in, I had these ideas that Fr. Carr's was an extremely disgusting place and although I never would have said it out loud, I considered the people there to be 2nd class and almost not worthy to be in the same car as me. I remember feeling an uneasiness anytime that one of the "homeless" people were even in the same room as me. This really makes me seem like an awful person and maybe I was a more awful person at that time of my life... but why? Why did I have these ideas or preconceptions? What was the cause of this discomforted feeling everytime I was in the same viscinity as a Fr. Carr's resident?

I truly believe that the society and upbringing that I went through had a big part to do with it. Anytime you see a homeless person on tv, you never get to know them as a person, you see someone in an old, dirty jacket and had who is beggin for food and if he cannot get food, than he is taking the next step to steal it. I think I began to create images in my head to what I truly thought homelessness was. All of our childhoods were filled with our parents, teachers, and pastors telling us to never talk to strangers and stay away from anyone who we didn't know well. Don't come to the door unless you looked through the window and knew who it was. If you actually sit back and think of how deranged and backwards that actually is... What kind of a world do we live in that we grow up learning not to talk to people we haven't met before?

It has been right around 370 days since I first moved in and stayed my first night at Fr. Carr's and wow... things have changed. I can only explain this change in one way and I feel that it really covers my whole preconception. Before I moved in, I saw the homeless people at Fr. Carr's as 2nd class citizens and as sick as it may sound... I really didn't see or understand they had humanity.

But when I first moved in, my boss asked me and the other newcomers to treat everyone as if they were Christ walking through our doors. Now this is a very good way to go through life and really helps in working here, but it never really worked for me. I have images in my head of what Christ is, right or wrong, and what I would do if he really walked through our doors. I can assure you that I never fall to my knees before these people or pray to them as I would if Christ actually walked through these doors.

So what does this mean? Have I actually changed? Christ came down and taught us a few central things. One of the main ones was to love all of mankind and treat everyone equally no matter what their past may contain. I feel that I have been able to exist here and treat the homeless well because of this general teaching Christ showed the world. It was not an overnight process though. In the beginning few months, I was never really that close with any of the men and I definitely fell short of creating any sort of relationship with any of them. Over the last half year or so though, I think that I have begun to see humanity in these men. It is easy to say that you're going to treat them well but it is another thing to actually do it. It was not that my boss told me to treat them as Christ that really lead to my change. It was just that eventually, after spending time with them, and having real conversations with these men that really resulted in the change.

Once I began to develop a relationship with a few of the men, I started to understand that these were actual human beings. This helped me begin to look at all of the men better too once I understood a few of them. I could tell people over and over that these men were real people who deserved our service and respect but it wasn't until I truly understood it and experienced it myself that I feel I came to %100 believe in it.

I definitely have begun to ramble on here a little bit, but the point of all this is that sometimes we have these ideas in our heads of what someone or something is. I think that we need to free ourselves of these preconceptions because they can trap us. They will prevent us from getting to really know people and even can stop us from meeting new people. They can halt us from seeing people as they really are and even sometimes, as in my case, lead to this idea that they are 2nd class citizens. I came to realize this through a series of experiences where I live but I urge everyone else to take down their walls before they meet someone new. The general goal is to treat everyone you meet as an actual person just as Christ would have. Remember that no matter what situation another person is in, it doesn't always define them. That could as easily be me or you someday.