Wayne Ellington looked at the post-it note he had placed in his locker, the little pale-yellow square that gave him strength before every game. It read: “You’re a starter now. Go out there and make sure you keep it that way.”
In the middle of his little moment of self-motivation, Jeremy Lin appeared at Wayne’s shoulder. “You know that’s crap, right? Coach’s rotations are totally illogical. You could play your mind out and not even see the court for whole stretches of game.”
“Shut up Jeremy, if it helps me perform better, what’s it to you?”
“Just look at Ed Davis over there. If he got the minutes that Booze got, he’d be averaging a double-double easy and giving us way more defense than that old bald guy. But you can see it in his eyes, Wayne. Ed’s given up.”
Wayne had noticed that Ed was looking rather morose that past few weeks. “Well, as long as coach trusts me, I’m going to go out there and play hard for him,” he responded defiantly.
Jeremy shook his head at his teammate’s optimism. “Look around, Wayne. You’re the only person in this locker room who cares anymore. When your coach doesn’t know how to coach in the modern NBA, doesn’t know how to identify and utilize talent, doesn’t know how to win a game, doesn’t know how to get the most out of his players, what’s the point of playing hard for him? Let me know when you figure it out, because I’ve been working on that one for years and I still don’t know.”
Jeremy left to get his jersey on, leaving Wayne alone with his thoughts. Taking out a pen, he crossed off the words on the post-it note. Below them, he wrote: “Get traded ASAP”.