The game of basketball is a funny thing. When you are on the court, you and a team of foul-mouthed, rough brutes try to best another team of equal ferocity. In the heat of the moment you sometimes get carried away and let all inhibitions loose. Funny thing about it is that after the game, all that display of machisimo and warrior mentality is quickly suppressed back to its dormant state. Everyone is back to their refined, “responsible-citizen” persona.

I had a basketball game last night, in a league I’ve been playing in for the last few years. I sorta got into a little elbowing match with another player. He was going after a loose ball and I “sorta” held him so that I can gain an advantage on getting the ball first. Rightfully so, the ref called a foul on me and I conceded knowing full well that I committed the infraction. The opposing player, however, did not appreciate me holding him and from then on, he made it a personal mission throughout the game to “express” his feelings towards me. Every chance he got, he tugged on my jersey (one time, so hard that it ripped a seam), elbowed me in the back whenever I posted him up, and talked trash to try to get into my head.

Of course, I returned the favor.  

The point  isn’t really about  barbarism or heroism on the court (or the field, if you like football). It really is about knowing your place at the right time and the right moment. The opposing dude and I were going at it for the duration of the game. But we also realize that this is a game. Just a game. This has nothing to do with what life is about or what the outcome of the game has to do with you in the real world – they won by the way. We may try to get the better of each other through intimidation, aggressive play, or pure skill. But in the end, we are all the same and equal.

After the game I went into the restroom to wash up and change. The same person with whom I was scuffling with just earlier entered the rest room while I was… well doing what most do when in the restroom :) After a brief moment of silence, we just started talking like we were old friends. As if nothing ever transpired between us just moments earlier.  There was no “I apologize I was a little rough out there” or “my bad for introducing my elbow to your face” or “you suck”. There was an unspoken code of conduct that we just instinctively understood.

What the hell am I talking about?

I’ve been getting a lot of opportunities to interact with different engineers (networking, Cisco, etc) in my profession with whom I hold certain admiration for – via twitter, blogs, etc. These are folks who have greater experience than I; some even CCIEs. These are people who I want to be like someday – like that 80s jingle, “I wanna be like Mike”. The more I get to interact with them the more I realize their humanness and that there is not much that separate us outside of our profession. They may be a whole lot better than I in maximizing efficient BGP routes and configuring prefix filtering. But in the real world, there is an understanding between us engineers that what you know in your profession doesn’t make you any better than the next. We all discuss things like cars, movies, the weather, etc like nothing separates us despite our paygrade or skill level. It could be intimidating to even talk to them or ask them question sometimes for fear of sounding stupid. But take away BGP, take away OSPF.. or IS-IS or anything networking… and we’re all the same scared and unsure people trying to figure out the next step.

It’s kinda like basketball.