On the nights you don’t get on the court — and what happens when you stop wasting the wait.

I want to tell you about how I went to the gym for weeks and never once touched a basketball.

Last week I told you about the scale. The 242. The moment the urgency kicked in and I signed up for the gym same day — 9pm, because that’s when the street parking was free.

What I didn’t tell you is what actually happened when I walked in.

I went straight to the basketball court. That was the whole plan. Basketball was the only thing I’d ever known how to do with a body. It was the only framework I had.

The court was packed.

Half court. Three on three. A long line of guys waiting to play. And here’s how those courts work — you waited your turn, you tried to get picked up onto a team. The good players, the ones everybody already knew, they’d walk in and get picked right away. Best players stayed on. Win and you keep the court, lose and you’re watching again.

I was new. Nobody knew me.

Some nights I’d wait two, three hours and never get on at all. Games would run past midnight. Past 1am. I had to leave by 2am — not because I wanted to, but because that’s when the cops came to write tickets. The same street that was free at 9pm became a problem at 2.

Five hours. Some nights I used none of it.

I could have gone home.

A lot of nights I probably should have gone home — the rational thing, the comfortable thing. Instead I just stood there watching the people lifting on the gym floor. And I did what I’ve always done: I started copying them.

I’d pick up a Muscle and Fitness from the grocery store aisle when they had a program inside. Started a bodybuilding plan. Was it the right program for a basketball player? No. Absolutely not — I’d figure that out much later. But it was pointed in the right direction and that was more important than anything else at that point.

I learned the equipment. Figured out the movements. Took a spin class. Stopped being the unknown new guy and started being the guy who was always there.

Here’s the thing about being the guy who’s always there.

It’s not glamorous. There’s no moment where it clicks. You just keep showing up, and slowly the room starts to recognize you. The people who were strangers start nodding. You become a familiar face. Then a known quantity. Then — if you keep going — you become one of the guys other people have to wait for.

Over weeks. Then months. The court started opening up. I started getting picked. Started staying on longer.

Eventually I was one of the guys who got to skip the line.

All because the court was packed and I had nothing else to do while I waited.

That’s the part I want you to sit with. It wasn’t strategy. It wasn’t discipline. It was just: I’m already here, the thing I came for isn’t available right now, so what can I do with where I actually am?

The wait wasn’t a detour. The wait was the climb.

About six weeks in I noticed my shoulders were starting to look different. Not dramatically. Nothing anyone else would clock. But I could see it.

I went and bought a dri-fit shirt. Not a free one from a race bag or a team kit. An actual purchased shirt, with my own money, on purpose. The kind that shows your arms.

Before that I’d been wearing the same oversized stuff I always wore — the big shirts that covered everything, comfortable because nobody could see what you were working with. Buying that shirt was me saying: okay. I’m willing to be seen as this person now.

Nobody gave me that. I claimed it.

That’s the difference between waiting to be recognized and deciding you already are.

Look around at where you actually are.

Read isn’t about information. It’s about the moment you stop and notice — wait. I’m actually doing this. I’m higher up the mountain than I was. The air is different up here. That moment hit me standing at the gym floor with a magazine in my hand at midnight, watching my own reflection in the mirror between sets, thinking: I’m not the guy who just stepped on that scale anymore. Something had shifted. Read is how you catch that shift before it passes. It can happen in a magazine, a podcast, a conversation with someone further up the hill. But here’s the rule: don’t Read before you Run. If you’re researching and preparing and optimizing before you’ve actually shown up — that’s procrastination dressed up as progress. Go first. Then look around at where you are.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION

Where are you waiting right now — for the right moment, the right conditions, the right person to pick you? What could you be doing with that wait that you’re currently not?

The version of you that owns the court isn’t some future version you’re waiting to become. It’s the one that keeps showing up when the court is packed. That keeps lifting while the line doesn’t move. That buys the dri-fit shirt before anyone else notices the change.

You don’t build that person by waiting for permission.

You build them in the wait.

See you next week.

— The guy who owned the court from the first minute to the last

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