It's comforting, in a way, that I'm echoing so many people who feel the same way I do. I don't watch a lot of sports (I actually do enjoy basketball and baseball, just not enough to devote the time it takes to follow them), but I love reading about them. There's a cliche that the best writing in the newspaper business is in the sports section. Since what actually happens in a given game isn't all that momentous or exciting, the writers have to find ways to make it interesting.
Anyway, that's a roundabout way of explaining why I enjoyed this story so much. It's not really about basketball as it about basketball as a reflection of aspects of the narrator's personality. As he says near the end, you don't play basketball against the other team; you play against yourself. In the same way, each of the players he describes illuminates a little more about his own struggles. Good stuff.