Basketball Primary School Championship: Fill & Download for Free

So…Antipoedean Australian atheist here. Hi! Or g'day even, if that helps make it more authentic.Lifelong atheist too — never believed in gods of any variety, never been a member of a church or follower of a religion. I'm also a parent, and think I've done a fairly decent job of raising my boy for the past 18 years (the last dozen of which as the primary care-giver, so much of his moral bankruptcy (that bit is sarcasm, by the way) might be laid at my feet. Though his mother is also an atheist, so who knows?).I think that sorts out my bona fides to answer this question: Do some atheists feel guilty about indoctrinating their children with atheism and not giving them hope and a moral compass?I think the best way to answer this is to tell you a bit of a history and maybe a tale or three about my lad.Ok, it may not be the best way, but y'know, it's how I want to answer it — I'll let you be the judge.My basic approach has always been to be as honest as I could when answering any of his questions, tailoring it to his current level of knowledge and understanding and if I didn't have an answer, we'd hunt it out together.It seemed to work pretty well. And it even allowed a bit of “moral indoctrination” along the way. Horrid stuff like being responsible, sharing, being helpful and caring and curious, judging people by their actions rather than their appearence or possessions, critical thinking, hard work and learning, accepting critique with grace where applicable and standing by his values when he believed it right.Anti-social of me, I know.Up until he was in third grade I was pretty laid back in my responses to questions of religion my son might occasionally float my way. Not that those questions were all that common, but given that most of his school friends and teachers were church goers, such queries popped up every now and then.Most of my answers ran with the basic theme of, “Well some people believe…” (where that delightful series of dots would be me non-critically stating what said belief was), and if he asked, as he sometimes would, what I thought or believed, I'd answer without reference to the religious belief or making any “value” judgements either way.So far, so hoopy. Much patting oneself on the back for raising tolerant child. Go Team Ross and have another brownie.Then his nightmares started.Turns out, a local evangelical church had scored the gig of teaching “Religious Instruction” at his school. We parents were not informed this was happening (counter to Education Department guidelines in my bit of Australia, by the way — informing parents is a requirement before such “classes” begin).It also turned out that said R.I. was more of a scripture class, of a somewhat proscriptive, indoctrinational variety — lots of God loves you with a touch of fire and brimstone thrown in for good effect - context and detail of their scripture, and understanding, knowledge or acceptance of comparative beliefs be damned.It took me a few nights to get beyond his nocturnal terrors to the source of his nightmares.It seems he was being told each week that if he couldn't make his father believe in God, his father — uhhhh, that'd be me — would be burned forever in Hell.To this day I cannot get my head around how utterly, unspeakably, vile and immoral those people were to not just threaten me with Hellfire, but to place the burden and responsibility for it on an eight year old child.The metaphorical gloves came of at that point: I felt not one iota of guilt at passing value judgements regarding matters religious, not a jot of remorse at commenting on contradictions or outright idiocies of religious texts, and not a tittle of restraint at speaking forth on the current standards of knowledge, understanding and human decency as opposed to the dictates of theocratic thugs.You might say I was a teeny bit annoyed.Outside of this subject though, my approach to raising my boy remained the same.Which reminds me…I digress. I was talking about my son.Tall as he was for his age, it's probably no surprise that, in spite of having no athletic skills or tendencies whatsoever, people encouraged him to play basketball (I was trying to get him into surf life saving or martial arts — not even remotely interested). One game and he was hooked.He loves basketball.No. You're not hearing me. He loves basketball.(As I write this he is upstairs hammering out fifty applications to U.S colleges for a chance to play ball there.)So back then he started playing and practicing and playing and practicing some more, dragging his dad hither and yon across the state, always making sure he stayed on top of his school work and always, always, making time for Pop (his maternal grandfather).Eventually he makes the regional U14 team, and that team wins the state championship. That win takes the team interstate to a national competition.So there he is. In Melbourne. The incredibly multi-cultural second biggest city in Australia. With not just his peers, but boys all the other local boys in our rural little backwater want to emulate. A few of them laughingly start playing the delightfully racist game of “Spot the Aussie” — the “Aussie” of course being the white person.And my lad has none of it. In the face of being mocked and ostracised by the “cool kids”, he tells them to stop being racist dickheads. They do indeed mock him, but he stands his ground and the “game” dies unplayed.Miles from home, in a groups of twelve kids and four (church going) adults, he was the only one who not just saw something was wrong, but did something about it.The years go on. He studies and practices and plays. He gets A’s, gets awards in maths and science comps, gets nominated as a Student Leader — complete with bottle green blazer and badge (yeah, even the public schools wear uniforms here). He actively mentors and encourages the year 7 kids and helps out at the breakfast club for the kids that don't get breakfast at home. And every weekend he helps Pop with his house and yardwork and keeps him company.Part way through the year he is invited to go to Cambodia with a humanitarian aid group. This is not something he sought or applied for. He is selected out of the whole school unanimously by a panel of teachers, administrators and the organisers for the one subsidised placement, based on his character.The organisers? Would you believe it? It's the same church who gave him nightmares as an eight year old. Small town, what can I say?After much discussion, he agrees to go — wanting both the experience and to do some good for children in need.In Cambodia he was the favourite of the children with his lanky 6′3″ red-headedness, the person relied on to do the hardest work, and the confidant and comforting shoulder for his fellow students when they found it all too confronting.The experience had a profound effect on him.He is offered a chance to pursue a higher level basketball training group when he learns Pop's cancer has returned.He turns it down. As we're driving home from school after he tells me this, he sits quietly for a while and then says simply, “Pop needs me more.”(Don't be mislead by the shirt, he's actually a Trailblazers fan)The year rolls into the next and we're in the hospital. Pop is there, ravaged and devoured by the cancer, hooked up to morphine and oxygen, each breath a rattling struggle. He lasts three days there and his grandson does not leave his side. He talks to him and tells jokes and entertains all the visitors coming and going and helps the nursing staff when asked.He stays in that room until his Pop is taken lifeless from it at 5am on a Saturday morning.I have never seen such heartbreak.Three and a half hours later, that boy is on the basketball court in the State grade 11&12 Championships. He taps over his heart for his Pop and plays his heart out.His school team wins.Over the past four years, he has also spent time helping coach juniors — from tiny 5 and 6 years olds to kids on a little younger than he. When he coaches the teams he is all support and encouragement and enthusiasm. He helps out refereeing in the local primary school roster.He makes time for kids wherever he goes and listens to them openly and speaks to them in such a way that they feel important, and they follow him around the court like puppies.During those years he has also had two separate hand fractures — the last one during his stint at the Nationals with the U20 State team and required surgery. At no time did he stop training. When he broke his right hand, he worked his left, when he had surgery on his left this year, he worked on footwork and agility drills. He showed up to every training and went to every game, cheering and supporting his teammates every step of the way. When he healed enough to train and suit up, but not enough for significant minutes, he cheered louder and did not complain once.Not content with all that, realising that achieving his goals might take more resources than his somewhat impoverished old man can afford, he got himself a job. The manager of the store he works at found me one day and told me my lanky ranga lad was the best front of store person he has ever employed, and that he has a way of making every customer feel important.Which brings me to two separate incidents that occurred yesterday.We were on our way back to the car with a load of groceries when he says, “I'll be with you in a sec, Dad.”Thinking he's seen one of his friends, I continue to the car and start loading the groceries in. I turn around and see him helping a limping old man get his groceries into his car.(Apologies for making you tilt your heads — can we run with the fact that I live upside down instead of just being a technomoron?)That job done we head homewards when he gets a message on his phone. “Don't be stupid,” he says and puts the phone away.Turns out, one of his school colleagues - and I should add one of his church going school colleagues — asked if he would lend his ID to a mate so they could go out drinking. In Australia the legal age is 18 — my lad hit that at the start of the year, this other lad hasn't yet.Interestingly enough, though he is legally allowed to drink, he still to this day has not had, and, at this point at least, has no interest in alcohol. Nor has he smoked a cigarette (or anything else), and while he has had more than one occasion when he has had a run in with teachers over matters of principle he has never been subject of reprimand or censure by authority.No, he didn't lend out his ID so someone could go out underage drinking.That is a small part of the story of my indoctrinated atheist son; a young man with hopes and dreams, with humour and determination, with thoughtfulness and respect, with wit and compassion, integrity, individuality, principles and the highest moral character.So….What was the question again?Do some atheists feel guilty about indoctrinating their children with atheism and not giving them hope and a moral compass?Like fuck I do.I can't think of a single reason to feel guilty about this young man. If you can then I think you may be the one lacking a moral compass.As for me?I couldn't be more proud.

Before I arrive at a conclusion, lets review some stats:For the two primary NCAA sports, Duke and Stanford are split:Football: Stanford is markedly better.Basketball: Duke is superior.In football, Stanford won a national championship in 1926 and has been consistently better than Duke. Some basic stats: Stanford has winning percentage of .591 (compared to Duke's .502) and a bowl record of 10-11-1 (Duke's: 3-5-0). Neither team is historically great though - certainly not a top program.In basketball Duke has won four championships (1991, 1992, 2001, and 2010) and is the fourth-winningest program of all-time. Duke's four championships are 5th all time. Their 10 championship games ranks second) and their 15 Final Fours ranks third. Duke's .750 tournament winning percentage is the best ever.Stanford's basketball program is historically strong (winning championships in 1937, 1938 and 1942) but clearly does not compare to Duke's... which is arguably the greatest recent team and second or third ever (behind UCLA).If you include all sports, Stanford is better. They have won the Director's Cup for 16 straight years. Duke is the only other school besides Stanford to finish in the Top 20 with student enrollment of < 10,000.Duke seems to be stronger in lacrosse, baseball and women's golf. Stanford is consistently stronger in the others.So top to bottom: Stanford wins.For NCAA revenue sports: Duke wins. Basketball is a historically excellent team. Their football team is inferior to Stanford's but neither is historically great.

If you were going to design the world's best basketball player, you might do something like this:Make him big enough so that he can play either wing spot and even climb into Power Forward should the need arise. Magic Johnson was 6'9" and famously played center for an injured Kareem in the 1980 Finals. Ben Wallace was only 6'9" and he was the most dominant defensive C in the game for a few years. Larry Bird was 6'9" and he was the most dynamic forward in history. You don't want to go much shorter than that because you start to give up size, and if you want to play inside out size is critical. Not just height, but having the kind of frame that will support the weight needed to bang inside. Guys like Ron Artest, and Shawn Marion are good modern day equivalents.LeBron James is like Magic Johnson, only with 20lbs more muscle, better conditioning and diet (in Magic's defense he came up in an era where it was still OK to go out drinking and do a non-trivial amount of coke the night before a game), and a football wide receiver's hands.This perfect player will need to be a student of the game and understand it from a coach' perspective. He'll need to know how to assess other players and motivate them; how to game plan and how to build a plan for skills improvement. When LeBron James was 9 years old he was sent to live with a youth football coach. This coach taught him the game of basketball, and with no father in his life, LeBron became a student of the game from the various local coaches he had until he graduated high school. LeBron didn't come into the league as a starry-eyed kid thinking about earning a few bucks, but a student of basketball for 10 years.You'd want him to be able to score at will, but also understand how to feed his teammates. It turns out that in basketball, five people take the court at the same time and effort and energy seem to be among the primary indicators of success. One way to motivate a team and get the best effort out of them is to feed them precise passes in places where they're likely to score. Get them a few buckets early and they'll kill themselves for you all game.When LeBron was in high school he played for a team coached by Dru Joyce II. LeBron's teammate was Dru Joyce III, and DJIII got most of the good touches. LeBron's first taste at organized ball was keeping the coach' son happy so he could get more playing time and more coaching attention. LeBron's basketball genesis wasn't about how to score, it was about how to win with four overmatched teammates against the toughest teams in the country. LeBron's job was to equalize as distributor, and then eventually as lead scorer and left right up down left left right right God Mode.At some point, you need to introduce pain and humiliation. And not just the pain associated with being born of a single teenage parent who had to give him up when he was 9 to family and friends that could afford to take care of him. No, I'm talking about the kind of pain and humiliation that happens to an adult. The kind that makes you question reality. Not the kind that can be forgotten, but the kind that introduces a fight or flight mechanism that makes you rethink your whole life and that maybe everybody who ever believed in you was just making a horrible mistake. The kind of pain that Jordan felt when the Pistons shut him down over and over again and Isaiah shut him out at the all star game. The kind of pain that makes you hate. LeBron hates the Celtics. And Tyson Chandler. And Derrick Rose. And probably Michael Jordan, at least a little bit.LeBron was reading everything anybody said about him in the media, and a handful of guys were saying stuff on the court. And then they'd beat him. This of course culminated in the most un-self aware series of PR events in recent memory, something that resulted in him and his team getting boo'd in every arena they played in for a solid year.No hero narrative is complete without a fall into the depths of despair. James' fall resulted in him spending two weeks at his house in drawn-shades, beard-growing, isolation.After James left the arena that night, he said he immediately went into a two-week depression, walling himself off from everyone. He didn't play basketball, he didn't talk basketball to pretty much anyone. He didn't even shave. Looking in the mirror after days of not shaving and daring himself to watch a few minutes of that hideous Finals game film -- especially Game 4 -- can apparently cause a man to admit it was time for some changes. - Brian Windhorst of ESPN: LeBron James' other decisionThe season after that he won the championship. Then he did it again. Then he got back for two more tries. LeBron James is, right now, still one of the most dominant players in the NBA, having an effect on the game through his own play but also making everybody around him 30% better.Where he ends up on the all time list is still in dispute; but there's no dispute now that he is firmly entrenched near the top. LeBron James is almost the perfect definition of what a basketball player should be, from his psychological makeup to his now famous ability to adapt his game quickly for any situation. He's one of the best ever, and those don't come around very often.