Years ago, my brother sent me an image with these three lines on it.
The idea is simple: get 1% better every day and it compounds into something huge. Get 1% worse and you slowly fade into nothing. Stay the same and, well, you…don’t move anywhere.
For some reason it really stuck with me. I wrote the equations on a sticky note and put it somewhere I’d see it every day. The sticky note, unfortunately, did not stick. It kept falling off. So I did what any reasonable person would do and got the equations tattooed on my arm instead.
Most of the time, the 1% change is invisible. Last Saturday, I finally got to see it: my team won a basketball tournament. Before you wonder how that is the case and also get too impressed: it was student-run, and there were three teams. The entire bracket could fit in a group chat. But it meant a lot more to me than its size suggests, and to explain why, I have to go back to May.
The tournament runs once a semester. In May, someone asked me the night before if I could fill in on one of the four teams. I said sure. The next day we went 0–3 and finished dead last.
Losing I can live with. What stuck with me was watching the team fall apart a little more each game while I stood there with no idea how to stop it. I left the gym feeling pretty helpless, and that feeling stuck around a lot longer than the scores did.
So when I heard it was happening again this fall, and that this time I’d get to build my own team, I set a very reasonable goal: don’t finish last.
That lasted about a day. Then I remembered how May felt, and the goal became winning the whole thing.
Before I get to the recruiting, a quick detour into Slam Dunk, because it explains a lot about how I approached this. It was the first sports manga I ever read, and it’s still one of my favorites. The main character, Hanamichi Sakuragi, is loud, overconfident, and at the start, genuinely can’t dribble. He’s never the best player on his team. What he does is find the one thing he’s good at, rebounding, and do it harder than anyone else while the actual stars get the highlights.
I’ve always related to him, and going into this tournament I knew what kind of team I wanted. Not one built around me, but rather, one built to win. Everyone wants to be the guy. Everyone wants aura. But if winning meant contributing in all ways I can, recruiting people better than me, doing the dirty work, scoring less and defending more? I was more than fine with that.
So for four days I basically lived at the gym. I watched pickup games, figured out who might fit together, and walked up to people I’d never talked to. By day four, my pitch had gone from “Are you interested in competing?” to “Are you going to be on campus Saturday?” Very professional operation, I’d say.
I signed our ninth and final player the night before the tournament, which, if you’re keeping track, is exactly when I’d been recruited in May. Apparently “the night before” is just how this tournament works. People kept telling me the roster looked stacked. What they didn’t see was four days of me rearranging names in my head like a fantasy draft I had no business running.
Friday night I went to bed early and barely slept. Saturday morning I had a big brunch and took my dog, Ryo, for a walk, which I counted as my first warm-up. He thought we were just going outside for a walk, and a walk is always fun for him. Well, I let him think that.
I got to the gym at 2:30, way earlier than I needed to be. Our first game wasn’t until 4, and most of my teammates didn’t show up until the tournament’s opening game was already halfway through. So I warmed up, then sat and watched the other two teams warm up. Full disclosure: they were good. Really fucking good. One of their shooters hit six threes in a row, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even trying that hard. The confidence I’d built up all week started to thin out, and a voice in my head kept asking whether I’d gotten ahead of myself. Whether I’d spent four days building a team just to relive May, this time with people I’d personally talked into it. Then my teammates arrived one by one, and I kid you not, this is how I felt:
But you already know how overconfidence can backfire. In our case, we played our first game and lost by 16.
We never led, not for a single possession. Every time we started to close the gap, they’d pull away again a few trips later. It felt exactly like May.
…Except this time, we still had games left to play. It was just the first game of the tournament for us.
I’d love to tell you I gave a speech like Maximus in Gladiator – a speech that turned everything around, but if you know me, you would know there’s just no way I could do that. Here’s the spoiler alert of what changed: a lineup switch, conversations in the huddle, a defensive adjustment, and just being much more aggressive.
And we won. First place, out of three teams. Yes, I know exactly how that sounds – but honestly? I was proud anyway, because I knew what those four days had looked like, and how badly I’d wanted this one to go differently. For once, it did.
I’d love to say I pulled a full Hanamichi and went from can’t-dribble and no-layup to meaningfully contributing to a contending team in five months.
I didn’t.
I still miss shots I should make, and my brain and legs still aren’t always on speaking terms. But what I love about his story was never the dunking. It’s that he never had to become the best player on the floor for his growth to count. Watch him on any single day and you’d barely notice it. Put him next to the guy who couldn’t dribble a few months earlier, and it’s obvious.
That’s what happened to me, just not on the court. In May, I was the guy who got the call the night before and then watched a team fall apart. This time, I was the one making the calls. I went back to the gym that humbled me, asked strangers to bet their Saturday on me, lost by 16 in front of all of them, but kept going anyway.
In May, I walked out of that gym in last place. On Saturday, I walked out in first place.
I’m not going to pretend it was some huge accomplishment. If anyone told Kai in May that I’d write an entire blog post about a three-team tournament, he would’ve said “…the fuck? That’s too much, my guy”. Yes, he’d have a point.
But the tattoo on my arm was never about being extraordinary, or being that guy. It’s simply a reminder that I can always be a little better than I was before, even if only by 1%.
And when I think about the guy who walked out of that same gym a few months ago feeling defeated, I can’t help but smile.
I walked out this time, feeling a little different.
