BY: STEVEN WILSON
BREAKERS MEDIA DIRECTOR
If
not by force, most every basketball player chooses to warm up before a game.
They shoot around and get loose before they have to go full speed. Some guys
are jokesters and mess around. Others need to get in a zone and don’t want to
be disturbed. Others don’t believe in warming up, but do it anyways.
Breakers
guard Tim Taylor makes it a competition.
Before
every game last year Taylor and 7-foot-3 center Keith Closs would play a
friendly game of Horse before the
game. No matter what time either of them got there and without really setting
any rules or saying anything at all, the game would start and turn into a
competitive duel in the blink of an eye.
“I
didn’t want to lose a game of horse, just like I didn’t want to lose a regular
game,” Taylor said.
Taylor
wasn’t just satisfied with beating Closs though, he didn’t want to miss a
single shot.
“I give myself ten shots,” he said. “If I
don’t make nine out of ten, I’m pissed off.”
A
miss in warm-ups would drive Taylor to monster numbers throughout regulation.
His mind would constantly think back to his mistakes before the game and he
sought for redemption.
That
kind of competitive spirit is seen in some of the best professional athletes
ever. In just the game of basketball, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron
James come to mind because they are so competitively driven.
“I’m
very competitive,” Taylor said bluntly. “Whether it’s golf, bowling, scrabble,
monopoly, or thumb wrestling – I don’t like to lose. I’m not okay with people
losing and being okay with it.”
Taylor’s
competitive instinct has made him the Breakers all-time scoring leader, but it
almost brought him to his demise back in 2010. After one bad game and an injured
wrist, Taylor contemplated calling it quits.
“At one point, I told [Santa Barbara coach]
Curt [Pickering] I wanted to be done,” he admitted. “Curt and I had an hour-long
conversation on the phone. He told me to believe in what you do and stick to it.
I had a bad game and things didn’t feel right – I told curt this might be my
last year.
“He
just told me to stick to it and watch what turns out.”
Taylor
kept at it and two years later has his team on the verge of winning a fourth
West Coast Pro Basketball League Championship Title in just five years.
Regardless of hype, it’s just any
other game to Taylor.
“When the ball goes up, it’s just another basketball game –
it’s just that this one is for the championship,” he said.
Whether it’s a championship game,
or a pre-season game, Taylor is instrumental in leading his team to victory.
“That’s his greatest asset,”
Pickering said, “Leadership – knowing when and what to say at the proper
moments.”
It’s not hard to see where Taylor
gets it from either. Growing up, he was always in second place, behind his
identical twin brother Thomas.
“He was Mr. everything in high school, I was the short, fat, chubby
kid,” Taylor joked. “I led California in rebounding in my senior year and he
was named Mr. California.
“He was named league MVP, I was
named to the all-league first team.”
The
competition drove the two to be inseparable.
After high school, they went to the
same college, until some questionable choices came between them.
“I got kicked off the team for
being a terrible individual,” Tim said of his first year at community college.
“My brother made the same choice, so he got kicked off too. That was the first
year we split up.”
Thomas went to play basketball at
Orange Coast College before breaking his leg. Tim went to Golden West Community
College and that’s when their roles as brothers and competitors changed.
Tim went on to break every major
scoring record at Gold West, which in turn helped him earn a full-ride
scholarship to Wayne State Nebraska that next year. But Taylor was in for a
surprise when he arrived.
“Midwest basketball is completely
different,” he said. “It’s more of a slow-down-we-need-to-run-sets type of
basketball. You play as a group – it’s not about individual skills.
“That was the hardest thing to
adjust to. I was the leading scorer at Golden West. Those two years at Nebraska
were hard.”
Taylor thought the next logical step after college was to go
pro.
“My goal was always to go pro,” he
said. “There are so many guards, though, you have to stand out. The NBA is
still a business. You have to be business savvy to advance in life. Your
[court] skills are just one side of the basketball world.”
Taylor had one workout with the
Cleveland Cavaliers before taking his game overseas.
“You didn’t need to pay me to play basketball,” Taylor said. “I just
wanted to play, but if you weren’t winning [overseas] then you could be shipped
out the next day.
“As a foreigner, you get the best defenders every night, but
you [were] still expected to produce. They bring you in to dominate a team.
[They want you to be the] top scorer, playmaker and star. You’re not coming in
to be a role player.”
Looking
back at recent Breaker finishes one might think Taylor has moved away from the limelight
of stardom and let someone take his place– not so.
“I’ve always been the person where
you put the ball in my hands and watch the magic,” he boasts. “I’ve always been
that player for the Breakers and for any team.
“No matter what the score is – if
we’re up or down – we’re going to win.”
If it’s not clear yet – that’s all
Taylor wants.
“All I do is win,” he ends with.
No comments:
Post a Comment