I played varsity basketball in my senior year at the University of Ottawa. Once, we went down to Utica, New York, to play an American team. We were scheduled to play them Friday night and Saturday night. Friday night they beat us by about forty points. They were giants. Our tallest guy was six foot three. We were pissed.
We said, “We’ll show them tomorrow. We’ll do a lot better. Might not win, but we’ll do better.”
The next night they beat us by a bigger score.
I was six feet tall and played point guard. I had a good set shot, but I wasn’t the best player on the team. I was the one who settled everybody down, kept them even-tempered, didn’t let them get too despondent. You always need somebody like that on a team, and those were traits that would serve me well in my professional career, which was just about to begin.