When I was in my teens, I played a lot of basketball recreationally and did a few of those sport camps where they would you take you through drills and teach you to play fairly seriously. Serious in the "play for real" sense and not in the professional sense. I played street ball up until the end of high school but I also wasn't very good at it being a short asian.
I played in a children's intramural during this time as well, hosted by the St. Anselm church near where I lived. It was an interesting mix of kids who took the game super seriously and kids who were there for recreation. The coaches did their best to try and draft the teams evenly and give every player some time on the court, but no amount of good coaching makes up for skill gap and dedicated practice, and the players knew it.
Each team would often have a clique of 3 to 4 better players, who also knew each other because they went to the St. Anselm high school. They ran the plays up and down the court and passed the ball exclusively to each other. I can forgive it now knowing what its like to be a kid and have everything in the world matter so much to you, but it still sucked being one of the kids who ran up and down the court and played defense, but never got a pass on offense or had the chance to make a play.
There was one disabled kid with motor control issues who joined the intramural league one year (I'm just going to refer to him as John in this story). Everyone had the tact to not really defend him too hard. They knew it was also fairly safe to just let him shoot in the rare instances he got a fumbled possession. John didn't have good form either, and barely knew how to dribble, but I think his parents just wanted him to be a part of something bigger.
All in all, I think the players treated him quite fairly, and to my knowledge he was never bullied.
I remember one game mid-season where he was subbed in for the final quarter of a game. I could feel the atmosphere change because it was a tight game, both teams were neck and neck with 5 minutes left on the clock. John's team visibly tightened, and they knew that they had to keep the ball on the opposing side because defense would be impossible.
For the last five minutes of the game, they stalled out the shot clock whenever they had possession, but despite their best efforts, the opposing team snuck in a layup and pulled 2 points ahead.
In the last ten seconds, John's team made a final push to try and score a three pointer. The kid driving down the court must've gotten desperate, because he made the shot and it rebounded hard. Both teams dive for it, and in the ensuing kerfuffle, the ball fumbles into John's hands.
Astounded at having the ball for the first time, John pauses for a second to consider and looks around wildly. His team is yelling at him to pass while the opposing team is in shambles trying to block a pass. In the last two seconds of the game, he yeets the ball from a good two feet behind the three point line and sinks it, winning the game.
The court explodes and John instantly becomes a celebrity.
Now, this doesn't mean the kids begin to pass the ball to him more. I think everyone recognized that it was a insane fluke. A good story, but nothing more.
Until another game two weeks later.
John is on defense this time, and for some unfathomable reason, someone sets a pick on him. (John is defending the player with the ball, another player comes up and bodyblocks John's side so that the player with the ball can get around him). It's a common strategy in regular games, but it's just mean to do to the disabled kid.
Somehow, the kid on offense still fumbles the drive and loses control of the ball. If the ball hits the ground and you can't restart your dribble, the defenders will surround you and try to wrestle the ball away from you, which is totally valid as long as they touch only the ball (maybe this isn't a real thing, but its definitely something every player in this league did). You just have to keep control until the ref blows the whistle, and the team that's determined to be in possession passes the ball back in from the sideline.
The ball gets smacked away and lands in John's hands, and John does the only thing he knows how to do. He yeets the ball and sinks it, nothing but net, and cheers for a good second.
Now, keep in mind, dear reader, John was on defense. He just sank the shot into his own team's net.
Now it would've been really funny if it was the game winning point, but John's team was already down by 10 or so points, and the resulting basket dug them another two points deeper.
After the 10 game season ended, I never saw John again for any of the following years. I hope he's doing well wherever he is.
