Adjacent News

Oh, dear me. I do hope nobody minds me bringing this up, and please, if anyone is in the middle of a very nice cup of decaffeinated coffee or finding a comfortable spot on the sofa, just completely disregard these few paragraphs. I would feel simply awful if my inquiring about the state of the Mabee Center storage annex caused a single person to furrow their brow or feel pressured to locate a missing key. It is just that, during this quiet Saturday morning on the campus of the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles, while the rest of the conference enjoys a standard autumn lull and our own schedule remains blissfully, peacefully empty of any competitive fixtures, a small matter has come to my attention. Well, not a matter, really. More of a mild discrepancy in the physical universe, or perhaps just a slight oversight by someone who was very busy and quite important. You see, the reserve inventory of practice basketballs—those trusty little round items we bounce during the week—seem to have taken a little holiday. Now, please do not misunderstand. I am not pointing a finger at anyone in the athletic department, nor am I suggesting for one tiny second that our defensive footwork or our spiritual alignment during the recent offseason workouts was somehow deficient enough to warrant the sudden vanishing of twenty-two official-weight leather spheres. That would be terribly presumptuous of me, and quite frankly, my own jump shot from the perimeter has always been so dreadfully inconsistent that I am hardly one to cast stones about missing equipment. It is just that when one wanders down the hallway near the auxiliary gymnasium, hoping perhaps to admire the neat rows of orange leather just as the good Lord intended them to sit, one finds only an empty shelf and a rather dusty floor mat. One naturally worries—entirely in private, of course—whether the lack of bounce in the building might indicate some larger, unseen turbulence in our collective journey toward righteousness. But then again, maybe the balls simply rolled away on their own because they were feeling a bit shy. Who can truly say? Modern analytics writers and various folks on the internet who understand true shooting percentages much better than a timid soul like myself will undoubtedly say I am making a mountain out of a molehill, and they are almost certainly correct. My apologies for even typing such a thing. It was terribly uncalled for, and I promise to take down this column immediately if the sound of my keyboard clicking is bothering the nice gentleman at the front desk. We must always remember that basketball is just a game played in a brightly lit arena under the watchful gaze of officials who are doing their absolute best, and if a few items go missing from the supply room, it is undoubtedly part of a much larger, highly sophisticated plan that we mortals have no business questioning.

Before I conclude and scurry back to my corner to avoid eye contact with anyone who might find my inquiries bothersome, I would like to offer a very gentle, hyper-polite thought to our esteemed athletic director and the wonderful folks who manage the facilities. If it is not too much trouble at all—and please, only if everyone feels completely comfortable and has finished their lunch—might we perhaps consider a tiny moment of quiet reflection, or perhaps a very brief, low-volume prayer circle near the lost and found box? Again, there is absolutely zero pressure whatsoever, and if we simply want to ignore the missing rack and pretend it never existed, that is entirely fine by me. I am so sorry for taking up your time.