Age does not defeat joy, even in sports

After her last event in the Olympics, Simone Biles was asked if she would compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Her response: “Never say never. But I am getting really old”. She is 27 years old.

I started writing for Pounding the Rock almost ten years ago in October of 2014. My first post was about when I coached against Gregg Popovich. That occurred when I was an assistant coach at Claremont McKenna College, and Pop was the head coach of our rival school, Pomona Pitzer. Both schools were and are excellent Division III programs just east of Los Angeles.

I will get back to Pop later in this post, but for now I will tell you that I was in my 50s when I wrote that first post in 2014. If you do the math, you can figure out what decade I am in now, ten years later. Maybe that and other stuff is why I have been thinking more about aging.

Other “stuff” that has happened this summer included my lovely bride Linda and I attending a Bruce Springsteen show at the Fabulous Forum, home of many Laker wins and championship. Bruce and the E Street Band put on an energetic and joyful show for all of us in attendance, so much so that Linda — not a huge Bruce fan like I am — said it was one of the best shows she had even attended. For purposes of this post, the important number is 74. Springsteen is 74 years old and put on a stunningly great three-hour rock and roll show. My friend Mighty Max Weinberg, drummer extraordinaire, and a year younger than Bruce, played his magical drums for the entire three hours — drummers are the one musician in the band who never get a break.

Sometimes, a bit of age — and joy — is better. As demonstrated by the “Old” Simone Biles, who absolutely radiated joy throughout, and the Springsteen concert, age does not defeat joy.

Because this is a basketball post, I also need to talk about the two basketball gold-medal games. Both were joyous affairs, even for the losing teams.

The men’s gold medal game went first, and the two best players on the gold medal winning USA squad were two of their oldest players, in both the semi-finals and the finals. Age does not defeat joy, and LeBron James and Steph Curry were both magnificent and joyous in what will surely be their last Olympics. LeBron’s quote before the gold medal game fits perfectly here:

“I mean, I’m 39 years old, going into my 22^nd season. I don’t know how many opportunities or moments I’m going to get like this, to be able to compete for something big and play in big games.”

Steph’s shooting performance in both of the medal games, and in particular his last four three-pointers in the gold medal game, completely justified his sheer joyous celebration, especially the shot clock buzzer beater with a minute left that had no chance to go in — but did anyway.

The losing French team, who destroyed the 17.5 point spread for the game, competed evenly with the vastly more talented USA team. The French team had a legitimate shot to actually defeat the 2024 version of the Dream Team — USA sometimes had four former MVP’s on the floor together. Of course, the French had Victor Wembanyama (20 years old) going toe-to-toe with his elders. Yes, that helped, and brought much joy to French fans and Spurs fans all over the world. And even in defeat, Victor and his teammates had one of the highlights of the Games. During the medal ceremony, they all sang their national anthem (many with tears in their eyes) along with the home crowd. That too was a joyous and unforgettable moment. We have a saying in my poker game: “They don’t play your anthem for the silver”. In Paris, they did.

The USA women were also expected to blow out their French counterparts. The Vegas line was 16 points. Absent some great free-throw shooting by USA down the stretch (every made free throw did not touch the rim), France might have broken the USA women’s 59 game Olympic winning streak.

I really enjoyed USA point guard Kelsey Plum, who made four consecutive clutch free throws down the stretch. She also did something that I haven’t seen — before each free throw, she flashed a joyous smile. She was genuinely happy to be shooting those free throws in a gold medal game. I also believe she smiled because she absolutely knew she would make each one, and that each would help her team win gold. She did, and her team did. Very cool. (She has made 86% of her free throws this year in the WNBA.)

When I first thought of writing this post, I envisioned a much darker piece about people in all walks of life getting older but refusing to move on, refusing to recognize that their time had passed. That was actually the subject of an excellent Bill Simmons podcast with the wonderful Derek Thompson, a writer for The Atlantic and host of his own podcast called “Plain English” (highly recommended).

That topic made me question whether my former colleague Gregg Popovich is holding on too long — is he too old to be coaching an 82-game NBA season? I am no longer asking that question. Like the “old” Simone Biles, the LeBron James and Steph Curry exuding joy at the 2024 Olympics, Pop still has it. Like me continuing to play full-court hoops twice a week with much younger players, coaching still gives Pop joy. Indeed, he smiles much more now than he did when he was younger. And he is only one year older than Bruce Springsteen, who clearly also still has his fastball.

When coaching no longer brings him joy, and he is no longer great at it, Pop can and should walk away. But that has not happened yet. I am looking forward to more seasons with Coach Gregg Popovich on the Spurs bench, joyfully coaching up the young Spurs players.

I am dedicating this post to my mother who joyfully turned 85 this summer. We spent her 85^th birthday visiting the small Oregon town our family lived in when all three children were young. I wrote about Silvertown, Oregon in my Winning After Losing post last year:

My first distinct basketball memory came when I was 9 years old. We lived in Silverton, Oregon: a town of only 4,000 people whose lives revolved around the high school sports teams, the Silverton Foxes. While we had state champion wrestling teams, the basketball team was … not good. But on rainy winter nights, which was all of them, we went to the games.

In the game that I remember most, the Foxes had not won a game all season — I think we were 0-18 at the time. But that night, against a team from a similar Oregon small town named Sandy, things looked a bit brighter as the home team kept the game close. And with the score tied 46-46, one of the guards (whom I remember as wearing glasses) made a free-throw line jumper at the buzzer. Pandemonium! The crowd cheered and cheered, and then cheered some more. Someone got the idea to go to the local church and ring the bell — and they did, 48 times, one for each point that made the team now 1-18 on the season — but the Foxes were 1-0 that night.

My mother probably won’t be able to read this when it first comes out — she is taking the train across Alaska with my brother Mark to visit Denali and Fairbanks, two places she has never been. By the way, my mother’s name is Joy.