Photo Credit: ‘Steve Alford in 2009’ by Dirk Hansen
Used under Creative Commons 2.0

I don’t know what I ate the night before, but Thursday morning I woke from one of those lucid dreams wondering what I had done. The dream, from what I had of it still in memory at the time, went something like this…

I’m sitting in a lobby to the training room in an athletic facility with another player who is leaving the team. He’s done because he’s hurt. He compliments me on a body up play earlier in the week when I knocked him down in the post. He laughs and calls me “Vanilla Shaq”, and then he stretches his long body.

I’m there because I have been dismissed from the team, for no clear infraction. All I know is that sense inside of rejection and confusion, not understanding why the decision has happened. I know I am off the team and that I am leaving the facility for the last time.

Following a quiet moment, Steve Alford comes out of an office behind me and is heading towards an exit to my right- but he breaks stride to turn and walk over to the other guy, and he seizes his shoulder. “You’re gonna be alright”, he says, encouragingly, with an affirming smile on his face. “Thanks, Coach”, hurt dude responds.

As he wheels around to leave the lobby, he has to walk past me, but his eyes fix on the floor as he walks before me. I’ve stood and I step forward and offer my hand as a respectful salutation, offering a cordial farewell. He stops and looks at it in pause for a brief moment and then gives it an uncommitted head bob as he glances quickly over to the other guy, and then looks briefly at me with a stern face, and then makes a quick turn and step towards the exit.

“You do not like me, do you?”

He stalls and pivots in the doorway, but back steps. No eye contact, he looks to his left and just offers a hands out, expressionless shrug, and then he turns out of the doorway and heads off to wherever he’s off to with commitment.

I’m not sure what I was working on there.

Definitely hurt my feelings a bit.