How to Get Respect in Basketball
Why You’re Not Getting Respect in Basketball
Respect in basketball is not given—it is earned, in real Rimpage matches, through performance, consistency, and dominance in real competition, governed by official 1v1 basketball rules. Players searching for how to get respect in basketball often focus on effort or attitude, but true respect comes from proving your ability in meaningful games where there are stakes and an audience. When you're ready we invite you to join Rimpage.
WELCOME
VIDEO 1 OF 16
Description: This webinar is a radical challenge to every player who feels overlooked and disrespected, promising to reveal the guaranteed method for achieving dominance. It tears down the passive "hooper" mentality of the "Zoo" and introduces the three non-negotiable Laws of the Wild—a code that turns skill into an undeniable threat.
VIDEO 2 OF 16
THE ZOO
Description: This foundational session, presented by Rimpage founder Patrick Johnson, immediately cuts through the noise to tell you The Truth about why your basketball dreams stalled and why your skills are not earning you respect.
We expose "the zoo"—the broken system of organized basketball that uses your ambition as fuel while systematically suppressing your individual greatness and capacity for success. You will learn the devastating math behind the Crisis of Capacity (why there was never a seat for you) and how the system hijacks your talent by conditioning you to chase the coach's approval instead of your own destiny.
VIDEO 3 OF 16
Welcome to the wild
Description: This section transitions the player from the flawed system of the "Zoo" to the revolutionary freedom of The Wild (Rimpage) by establishing a profound, ancient justification for ambition. It argues that the burning desire for success and expansion is not selfishness, but the fulfillment of a fundamental, God-given human mandate (Be fruitful, Multiply, Subdue, Have dominion).
Rimpage is presented not just as a new league, but as a restoration of the original blueprint for human potential, offering a true arena where athletes can break the psychological leash of the bench, conquer inner and outer territory, and finally align their careers with their innate design to rule and master their craft.
VIDEO 4 OF 16
THE ANCIENT PATTERN OF POWER
Description: This section explains why Rimpage operates without a centralized schedule, rooting its philosophy in the Ancient Pattern of Power—the separation of the powerless from the powerful via Land (Territory), Title, and Identity. It argues that traditional systems (the "Zoo") maintain control by deliberately denying players these three elements and controlling Game Day (the prime opportunity to earn them).
Rimpage's refusal to schedule matches is a radical act of liberation, giving players back the power over their progress by making Game Day when you say, ensuring every sanctioned match has stakes and a global audience, thereby restoring the athlete's innate mandate to conquer territory and ascend to self-sovereignty.
VIDEO 5 OF 16
Kings & queens, but without crowns
Description: This section provides a crucial emotional reset and then immediately unveils the systemic flaws Rimpage was designed to solve. It frames the failure of organized basketball as a "Crisis of the Uncrowned"—the inability to identify the best player in any city.
Rimpage is then presented as the only solution, built from the ground up with The Four Keys that no other league in history possesses: a deliberate Mission (to crown the world champion), an objective Method (The 1Champion Formula), a mandatory Format (1v1), and unlimited Capacity.
VIDEO 6 OF 16
THE LAW OF THE TWR
Description: This section introduces the foundational demand of Rimpage: replacing the passive "hooper" mentality with the aggressive, self-sufficient mindset of the "hunter." It defines the first law, showing why respect is only granted to a player who is a proven, undeniable territorial threat.
VIDEO 7 OF 16
THE LAW OF GLORY: STEAL THE STORY
Description: This segment reveals the formula for earning glory and attention. It introduces the critical "Desire Temperature Scale" to expose mediocrity and demands that the player commit to 500∘ desire—the necessary fuel for taking action that is impossible to ignore and stealing the main narrative.
VIDEO 8 OF 16
THE LAW OF WINNING: STEAL GREATNESS
Description: This section concludes the Three Laws by establishing winning as the universal language of proof. It details the necessity of achieving both quantity (Samson Principle) and quality (David Principle) in victories, ensuring the athlete's proven skill unlocks all future rewards.
VIDEO 9 OF 16
imagine you, in YARAK!
Description: This segment focuses on the necessary internal transformation, introducing the Yarak State—the ravenous, self-reliant psychological condition of the hunter. It serves as a strong reminder that without this internal hunger, no amount of skill or talent can lead to consistent success in the Wild.
VIDEO 10 OF 16
THE GREAT QUESTION
Description: This is the philosophical core, contrasting the excellence demanded by Rimpage with the obedience demanded by the "Zoo." It defines the athlete's duty to self and humanity: to push limits and offer the highest possible answer to the question of human potential.
VIDEO 11 OF 16
mastery is worth it
Description: This highly anticipated section reveals the unprecedented $1 Billion prize, reframing it as a "Crown of Dominion" rather than mere wealth. It justifies the reward by detailing the extreme sacrifice and rare psychological profile (The LAMAD) required of a true champion.
VIDEO 12 OF 16
rimpage's destiny
Description: This section serves two purposes: firmly setting the "Big Domino" belief that the Laws are the sole path to success, and establishing the founder's personal authority by detailing the prophetic, high-cost journey that led to Rimpage's creation.
VIDEO 13 OF 16
just take the next step
Description: This segment provides the raw, personal story of the founder's ultimate sacrifice. By revealing the moment of total collapse and survival, it cements the founder's authenticity and authority as someone who has endured the "goading" required to build this system.
VIDEO 14 OF 16
Case Studies: Ashton & Marcus
Description: This is the crucial proof-of-concept section, using real Rimpage athletes (The Lion of Dallas, Ashton Cook, and Marcus Billiard) to demonstrate how living the Three Laws transforms players from overlooked talent into undeniable champions.
VIDEO 15 OF 16
you are 2% away from mastery
Description: This highly educational section breaks down the fear of exposure by proving that skill development is a predictable, inevitable process (Law, not Lottery). It introduces the concept of the LAMAD (one who is goaded) to show that pain and failure are not punishment, but the essential tools for forging mastery.
VIDEO 16 OF 16
see you at the top
Description: The concluding call to action. This segment summarizes every major philosophical and practical point of the webinar, checks for final compliance with the core belief, and issues the ultimate command to "Burn the Bench" and join Rimpage to begin the journey to mastery.
THE TRUTH:
Why No One Respects You in Basketball
and the 3 Laws That Will Turn You Into the One
They Can’t Ignore — GUARANTEED.
You’ve put in the hours. You’ve trained. Everyone knows you’ve got skills. Still, something’s missing—RESPECT. And you can feel it. You’re nowhere close to where you hoped you’d be.
The truth is, basketball is a fiercely competitive game. The winners get rewarded. The rest go home empty. You get nothing for trying. Nothing for “almost.”
The world only remembers the hammer—the one who turns skill into dominance. Everyone else? Nails and noise. Background.
This material reveals The 3 Laws of the Wild—a code so powerful it will force the game to notice you.
You’ll learn how to define your territory, steal the story, and dominate so relentlessly that ignoring you becomes impossible. What you’ll learn is hard. It’s raw. It’s scary—but it works. If you’re tired of being invisible, overlooked, disrespected—this is where that ends. Guaranteed.
WELCOME!
I have a (NEW) dream: yours!
Hey everybody! Welcome to this training. I’m Patrick Johnson and today I’m going to show you how to become a highly paid, deeply respected professional basketball player without having a coach’s endorsement, a scout’s or agent’s recommendation, a d1 scholarship or NBA contract and without having to leave your home city. You won’t have to chase fame or success. It will chase you! How does that sound?
Who am I. I am that 10-year-old kid living in a trailer in Spencer Oklahoma, who walked outside early one sunny morning and found my mom and my brother playing a game I had never seen before.
My mom had cut the bottom out of a 5-gallon paint bucket and nailed it to the trunk of the tree in our front yard and she and my brother were throwing a ball trying to make it go inside that bucket.
It looked fun. So I walked over and asked what is this game and right there my mom introduced me to the game of basketball. I instantly fell in love and by the time I was 13 I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to play basketball for the University of Notre Dame and after that I wanted to play for the NBA.
Today I can honestly tell you I am so happy my NBA dream did not come true, because the events that derailed my dream at 17-years old in Mojave California, actually put me on a path where I can make the basketball dream come true for millions of basketball players worldwide.
Now my dream is to make your dreams come true.
what this training offers
You’re going to walk away from this session with two things: One—an open, unrestricted path to becoming a professional athlete who gets paid to play the game you love. And two—the knowledge and tools that will help you make the most of that opportunity once it’s in your hands.
Now, think back for a second. Remember the dream you had as a kid? The lights. The cheers. The feeling that everybody knew you were the one. The money, the fans, the lifestyle… but more than that—the respect.
You can still have that. The destination hasn’t changed—you’ve always known exactly where you wanted to go. You’ve already put your X on the map. The only thing missing has been the path to get there. That’s what you’re going to find here.
I’m excited—genuinely excited—to be here with you because I know what this information can do. You’ve given years to this game. You’ve trained, sacrificed, and waited. And you’re tired of feeling like your success is always in someone else’s hands. So let me ask you straight:
Are you ready to grab the steering wheel? Are you ready to take full control of your journey and drive your life toward the destination you chose? Because if you are—then you’re in exactly the right place.
Why your dream is always just out of reach
What if the game wasn't designed for you to win?
Now I’m guessing for a lot of you this is probably
not the first time you’ve tried to get help. Still it seems so hard to get your dream on track. I want to tell you right now. It’s not your fault.
The zoo is broken
If you’ve ever felt the system was rigged against you, you’re right. The zoo is broken. That’s what we call conventional organized basketball. We call it the zoo. I’ll tell you the story that explains why later during this talk. The zoo system is broken. It was not designed for you to succeed. I’m going to show you what I mean.
Organized basketball is not set up for players to win. They have a capacity crisis that guarantees they will never fulfill every player's dream. They can't fulfill the promise even if they sincerely wanted to. There are only so many roster spots. There are more worthy players than there are roster spots to give them.
You thought the zoo was your path to greatness. You saw it as a means to an end, the road to your dream. You didn’t choose organized basketball because you were in love with the concept. Am I being clear enough? You picked it because you were expecting it to do something for you. You had a dream, a destination you were trying to get to, and you thought this was the path to take you there. Do not forget it was meant to serve your purpose.
You saw the few who made it –the ones they handpicked, and you saw the path they took. It seemed simple enough. What you couldn’t see were the millions who did not get picked.
Let’s do some math. The reality is only 3 out of 10,000 players make it to the pros. That’s 0.03%. CAN YOU SEE THAT ZERO? Do you know what zero means? It means you have a zero percent chance of making it. Look at the numbers. Statistically, your city has a better chance of being struck by an asteroid than you have of making it to the pros. Let that sink in.
But wait—maybe you’re thinking,
"That number includes all the weak players. The ones who weren’t good enough. That’s why they didn’t make it. I’m different. I’m talented. I can beat the odds."
That’s a mistake. Even if you’re great—even if you’re a once-in-a-generation player—you still might not make it. Being good enough is not good enough, because talent isn’t the problem. The real problem is the crisis of capacity.
There are not enough seats at the table. Think about it: How many teams are in the pros? How many roster spots does each team have? Multiply those two numbers, and that’s the total number of openings available. Now compare that to how many elite players are fighting for those spots. You don’t have a talent problem. You have a numbers problem. Let that sink in.
Do you realize what that means? Every year, the pros are turning away real basketball superstars. Not because they want to, but because they have to. Not because they’re not good enough—but because there’s no place for them.
Imagine a movie theater with only three seats left for the most popular movie in the year. But instead of closing ticket sales, they keep selling more tickets. They sell 100 tickets. Then 1,000 tickets. Then 10,000 tickets.
The line fills the lobby, wraps around the building and stretches around the block. Tickets are expensive and every person in that line paid full price. Every person in that line believes there's a seat for them. Then, finally, a guy in a suit walks out. He picks three people from the line, lets them in, and closes the door, shutting the other 9,997 people out.
You paid for the dream, believing there's actually a seat for you if you work hard enough. You stood in line for years. You gave everything you had. But they knew when they sold you that ticket there was no room for you. They sold you a lie, dressed up as a dream. The truth is you never had a real shot.
And what’s crazy is—they sell that same fake dream ticket to your little brother. To your cousin. To every kid who dares to dream.
It gets worse. Remember that statistic that reports only 3 out of every 10,000 players make it? They were only talking about high school players in the USA. That does not include hundreds of thousands of players all over the world who also want a spot on a pro team.
It gets worse. Even if there are 600 roster spots in the pros, most of them are already taken. Every year, teams only pick up a few new players. They don’t replace their entire roster. So that means there are even more players fighting for even fewer spots. And then, even if you somehow beat all the odds and make it, half of the rookies who make it get cut within a year.
So you can be elite. You can be unstoppable. You can be better than half the players already in the league, and still never get in. The system is built to leave you behind.
something for nothing
It’s set up so they get something for nothing. Didn’t you notice, on the first day of tryouts, nobody asked about your reasons for wanting to make the team or, “What are you hoping to get out of this?” They immediately started giving orders. From the very start it was about what they wanted. During the season, nobody ever checked in with you to ask, “How satisfied are you with the progress you’re making towards your goals?” They never ask, “What can we do better to help you get where you’re trying to go?”
How long was it before you figured out they don’t ask because they don’t care? The zoo is like a machine, like a big greedy military tank that needs a lot of fuel. Your commitment, your effort, your drive are like fuel. It’s your fuel that you use to propel your life toward your dream. They crush your dream, steal your fuel and use you to power their machine. How do they accomplish that? How do they convince hundreds of thousands of basketball players to commit to their coaches, to compete with such passion, to work so hard for nothing, and to be ok with it?
They hack your brain to hijack your talent. They hammer their goals and their values into your head until they break that picture you had in your mind - the picture of you becoming a basketball star. They constantly turn your head away from your goals. They keep you so occupied with doing what they want, for their reasons, that you lose focus on doing what you want, for your reasons.
In the zoo, the coach is god. He alone holds the key that unlocks the door to his players’ dreams. Before you entered the zoo you believed, “If I commit to my goal and work hard with drive and passion I will reach my dream.”
The zoo steals that commitment, drive and effort by eprogramming players to believe, “If I please my coach, he will open doors for me. So I will do my best to please him. I will show him I am committed. I will show him my hard work. I will play with passion and fire and intensity. If I do my part, then he will do his part and open doors for me. He’ll make me a starter, give me plenty of playing time. He will praise me and create plays for me and run the offense through me and make me the star of the team. He’ll connect me with people in his network who can help me get to the next level.”
That’s how they hijack your talent and steal your fuel. Instead of chasing your dream, now you’re chasing the coach’s approval. For basketball players, when the key to getting to the next level moves from, "How can I become the best basketball player?" to "How can I get my coach to like me?" we have a serious problem. You stopped taking steps towards greatness and started asking for permission. You were taught to accept things you would never have agreed to up front.
You are more willing to disappoint yourself than disappoint the coach. If a choice has to be made between the coach getting what he wants and you getting what you want, you put your coach’s desires above yours. You're still obsessed. You still work hard at practice. You still play with passion, but you're not doing it for yourself anymore. You do it for the coach. You've lost sight of your goals. You focus on his goals.
A new road promises a new destination
If you’ve ever felt that it’s hopeless. I promise you, you can do this. You just need to make some adjustments, you just need the right strategy and I’m going to give you that. The wrong road will never lead to the right place. It’s not hopeless. You’re just on the wrong road. Get on the right road and you will see that you get very different results.
The future is bright!
If you’re thinking, “I gotta get out of the zoo, but where can I go?” We’ve got you covered. I’m coming to that. I’m going to show you how to step into the freedom of something we call, the wild. Just stay with me to the end. For now just let me shout it loud and proud, “The future is bright!” Do you believe it! I believe in you. If I didn’t I would not be here. Remember my dream comes true when yours does. I’m betting on you. And I’m excited to see what you will do with the information you’re going to get from this talk. How does that feel?
Introduce Rimpage, The Wild
Zoo Lion, Wild Lion
I want you to imagine a lion born in the zoo. The zoo feeds him every day on schedule. He has never hunted. The zoo makes all the decisions for his life, controlling how much he eats, when he eats and what he eats. All he has to do is give a good performance when on display. He’s not free, but he’s safe and satisfied.
One day, the zoo lion meets a lion from the wild and they start talking. The zoo lion explains how he eats and wild lion panics. “But…What if you want more than what they bring you? What if you want something different than what they choose for you? What if feeding time is hours away but you want it now! I could never live like that.”
“Well what is your feeding schedule like in the wild?” the zoo lion asks. “In the wild it’s simple. If I want something, I go get it. And if I want more, I go get it. When I want something different, I go get it.”
“Wait! Excuse me, but, what do you mean by “go get it?” “I mean I decide what I want. I chase it, fight it, drag it home and I eat.”
The zoo lion panics: “You mean you have to chase your food and if you don’t catch anything, you don’t eat? I could never live like that. I’d starve.”
But the wild lion looks at him and says, “What are these?”—pointing to his claws. “And these?”—his powerful hind legs. “And these?”—his sharp teeth. Then he looks him in the eyes and says, “You were made to hunt. Your design reveals your purpose.”
Each one of us has a choice. Which version of you are you going to be? The zoo lion who is safe, comfortable, and trapped or the wild lion who is free, powerful and in control.
Basketball has evolved to be like a zoo. The zoo controls everything. When you play, where you play, who you play, if you play and how you play. They even control how you look and what you say. Players are not free in the zoo. But they’re safe. Their dreams are going nowhere, but they are comfortable.
Lions were not made to be domesticated pets in a zoo. A lion’s natural habitat is the wild. That’s where he is free. That’s where he has power over his life.
In the same way you were not made to be dominated, to have someone else be in control over your career, your future, your life.
The bench is a psychological leash, a containment strategy, a system of control that says:
“Sit still. Shrink. Wait. Be contained.”
God designed the human being — especially the competitor —
to move forward,
to take territory,
to test themselves against the world,
to expand their borders through action and struggle, and conquering.
God literally said in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. Subdue it.” You know what subdue means? Make it submit to you, bring it under your control.
The bench system goes against our design:
• It steals motion.
• It freezes growth.
• It blocks expansion.
• It denies dominion.
• It suppresses the very process that builds mastery.
The bench is the cage that subdues you. Brings you under the control of another. Makes you submit to it. The bench system forces the player to sit still. They are not allowed to "tour" the court, challenge all opponents, or aggressively search out the limits of their skill. They are trapped by the coach's decision and the team's structure.
I want to introduce you to Rimpage. Rimpage is the wild for basketball players. Get ready because we’re about to leave the zoo and enter a whole new world.
I haven’t forgotten about my promise. I’m going to tell you why you’re not getting the respect you want in basketball and I’m going to tell you the three laws. This part is important because those 3 laws are laws of the wild. So you have to understand the wild in order to apply the laws. Here we go.
Why Rimpage Doesn’t Schedule Player’s Matches
Throughout history what separates the powerless from the powerful is land, title and identity. People who had it had power. People who didn’t had poverty.
Land: having a piece of land or territory under your control.
Title: Titles are publicly and legally recognized and indicate what you own so everyone recognizes your power and authority.
Identity: was tied to your land and title, giving you legitimacy, status, influence.
Having land, title, and identity impacts how people see you and how they treat you.
Land + title + identity = status, power, respect and influence. Why am I telling you this? BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT WORKS IN BASKETBALL TOO!
Land (territory): what you own or have control over. In basketball you own a court or gym or park when you’re the best player there. Success means expanding your borders. It’s self sovereignty
Title: A publicly recognized term or name that people give to the player who is the best. This title is upheld in the court of public opinion and gives you respect among other players and fans.
Identity: Who you are in the minds of other players and fans forged by the story behind your title. Identity is what people think of you, what they call you when you’re not around. It’s reputation, myth, the why behind the title.
When a player is the best we describe them with words like "King" that's title. We say they are the king of a league, a city, a gym. That's land or territory. And because everybody knows they are the king of basketball in this territory, they have identity. And there you have it again, land + title + identity = power, influence, and respect.
In basketball, this logic has always existed, even if nobody slowed down enough to name it. When players say, “He runs this court,” or “He’s the king of New York basketball,” they are already speaking the language of land and title. The territory can be a city, a region, a park, a gym. The title is King, Queen, Best Hooper, The One all point back to this ancient pattern.
Now remember having land, title and identity separated the powerful from the powerless. So if you want to keep a basketball player powerless and under your control, you must create a system where he never gets land (becomes the king/queen or the best player), title (the crown that confirms he’s the best), and identity (everyone knows it). If he does become the king (gets territory by becoming the best player there), then you need to make sure he never gets crowned (no title). Don’t acknowledge that he’s the best player in a territory to ensure nobody knows it (no identity).
Who controls game day?
Who controls Game Day has the power
Game days are special. Remember how it felt on Game day? You knew you had a game and throughout the day you were thinking about it, visualizing what you were going to do. What was that? What made game day so special? After all, it's just basketball. It's the same game we play in practice or at the park.
There are two things that make game days a special time: 1. A challenge that matters: it’s a competition with stakes–a reward for winning and a consequence for losing and 2. An audience present to witness your performance.
You hit a jump shot 1,000 times in practice and it means nothing. But if you hit that same shot in the final moments of a championship game where you’re down 1, that shot means everything…because you did it on Game Day. Game Day, the stakes and the audience, turn that shot into glory. Glory is all the good things people will say, think, feel and write about you. When you get a lot of people saying, thinking, feeling, and writing good things about you that moves you closer to your dream. You have this feeling that I'm moving forward. Things are happening for me.
A challenge with stakes + an audience to witness your performance means Game Day is the players prime opportunity to get land, title, and identity. On Game Day ordinary players become stars, championship titles are won, kings and queens are crowned, truth of your superiority becomes an established recorded fact, glory is captured, trophies are presented, legends are born, honor is conferred, memories are made, records are written, stories unfold. Game day is where the player hunts for all of this. Game day is where players get territory, title and identity.
So if you want control over a player's progress towards their goals, you must control game day. He who holds the schedule holds the power. So the zoo says, “Game day is when we say. We tell you when to play. We create the schedule. These are the only challenges that matter. We will assemble the audience only for these challenges.”
A basketball player has been successfully bench-trained when they believe this: "I am free to go to the park or the gym and play as much basketball as I want but only the games that are on schedule count, and that is not up to me." This is the thinking of the zoo lion in the cage.
In the wild, Rimpage gives players the power over game day. Game Day is when YOU say. And even though you decide who, when, and where you play, your matches matter because they are sanctioned by Rimpage, and this gives your matches stakes (a reward for winning and a consequence for losing).
Also, Rimpage shows them to a worldwide audience online. The audience gathers online by the billions instead of gathering in stadiums by the thousands. So even though you scheduled the match it still feels like Game Day because it is a challenge with stakes and there’s an audience to witness it. So you can absolutely get land, title and identity from playing Rimpage matches.
Now, you need to take back control over Game Day psychologically. You absolutely need game days (match with stakes + a viewing audience) to capture territory. You need to reject the bench-training that tells you a match only matters when a league puts it on their schedule. In the zoo, Game Day is when they say. In the Wild, Game Day is when you say. Don't ever let someone tell you, “This is the schedule.” Don't give up that power. Every Game Day is an opportunity for you to move the needle, to make progress. So you want as many of them as you can get and you’re free to hunt as much as you want. The question is not is there a game on the schedule today, but, am I hungry?
And that is why Rimpage doesn't schedule your matches. A king doesn't ask for permission to rule his land. He claims it. In the wild, you decide when and where you hunt.
on behalf of basketball...i apologize to you
Before we continue, as we leave the zoo and before we enter the wild. I think this is a good place to just stop. We need to pause for a moment.
I feel like basketball owes a moral apology to generations of basketball players. That needs to happen. I don’t think they will say it. So, I will. On behalf of basketball I am apologizing for the wasted years. I’m apologizing for the abuse of power. I’m apologizing for the false promises. I’m apologizing for the theft of your talent, and for the damage you suffered loving a game that didn’t love you back. I want to acknowledge that pain—the wound many of you have been carrying in silence for years. They had you believing you were the problem.
But now, right here, this is where the reset begins. We’re walking out of that cage and into a new future created by a new kind of athlete–free, powerful, unchained. This is where we burn the bench and show you, the fire you tried to stamp out rages still.
What is Rimpage?
What is Rimpage? What is the wild? To answer that let me point out something that is very troubling to me, something that shows the Wild is not a novelty, it’s a necessity. I’d like to ask you a simple, straightforward question…
Who is the best basketball player in your city?
Not who you think is the best. Not who’s the most popular or most followed.
I’m asking, based purely on raw skill, who is the one basketball player in your city who’s better than everyone else?
The answer is—nobody knows.
That’s NOT ok!
That player is alive right now, walking the streets, outclassing everyone who steps on the court with him… but he’s invisible. And that’s not just in your city—it’s the same story in my city, for everybody, everywhere basketball is being played. Nobody knows.
It’s the crisis of the uncrowned. All over the world there are kings and queens without crowns, stars without a stage—players whose talent should bring them trophies, respect, fame, and fortune—but who remain trapped in anonymity.
Rimpage was created to change that.
We believe if you have world-class skill the world should know your name.
And we also know why no one’s ever been able to answer that question before, why, for over 100 years, the game has systematically failed its most talented athletes. To prove who’s truly the best, you need The Four Keys—and no league in history, not the NBA, FIBA, Eurobasket, or even the Olympics, has ever had them. None of those leagues have ever had even one key
Rimpage was built from the ground up with the Four Keys.
Our mission is simple: crown a 1v1 king or queen in every city, then every state, every country… and finally, the world.
We will be the first league in history to use the Four Keys to establish the fact—to show the world who is the one player who stands above all others: SO THAT these players can get the respect, rewards, and recognition they deserve.
The Four Keys
Rimpage uses the Four Keys to identifying the best player in any size group
1. The Mission.
Finding the best basketball player in the world is a huge task with an unbelievable level of complexity. Intent drives design. There’s no way anyone is going to accidentally discover the best basketball player in the world. That would be like accidentally building a Ferrari F80. Doesn’t that sound absurd?
"I was walking down the street drinking my soda then I tripped, lost my balance and built a Ferrari F80, a high performance hypercar that has over 10,000 parts and I just accidentally assembled them putting every part exactly where it’s supposed to go." You know what I mean? That’s absurd.
There’s no way you’re going to build a machine like that without an expertly designed plan. In the same way there’s no way any basketball league is going to find the best player in the world accidentally. They must first make the firm decision to do so. I decided in 2017 that’s what Rimpage’s mission would be. I put that x on the map and said, that’s where we’re going.
2. The Method (the objective standard)
The next thing you’re going to need is to establish the objective standard. That is a fair, reliable, and effective way to evaluate and rank players. Without such a standard you’re left with what we see in all the online GOAT debates. They argue endlessly and never arrive at a definitive answer. And until they establish an objective standard to measure players by, they never will. You cannot determine what is good, better or best without first establishing what that is in the first place. One person thinks it’s stats. Another thinks it’s championships. And on and on.
Rimpage is the world’s first and world basketball axis. That means 2 things. 1. It has the capacity to fit all the basketball players in the world, which is what qualifies it to crown a true world champion. And 2. Rimpage is a basketball sanctioning body. It sets the definitive standard for its 1v1 basketball operations worldwide, establishing rules, competitions.
That means we don’t go by NCAA rules or NBA rules. So clean up your footwork. That zero-step mess won’t fly here. You get two steps PERIOD. Rimpage also established the objective standard, the 1Champion Formula, that will be used to provide 4 rankings (city, regional, national and world ranking) for every basketball player on Earth (male and female age 13 and up).
We call this the debate-ender. Whenever there’s any argument over who’s better, players will be able to argue with hard data and Rimpage rankings by comparing their Rimpage player profiles. Your Rimpage profile is your proof. If a non-Rimpage player starts talking trash saying he’s better than you, you can tell him, “Go get ranked, then talk.” Talk is hot air. A ranking is an established fact.
3. The Format (the event)
So the mission tells us where we’re going. The method tells us how we’re going to get there. The Format describes the type of vehicle we need to move us along the path. Choosing the correct format is crucial. Team formats are structured to establish the best team, not the best player. If your mission is to find the best player, you need a format that strips away everything that interferes with that, and measures pure unassisted individual performance. Then you need an event that turns that discovered truth into an established fact. This is why I decided in 2017 Rimpage would be a 1v1 league.
Every league has an event at the end of the season that gives you that one defining moment when a contender becomes a champion. Notice, even before the event, the truth is one of the two contenders is better than the other. But we don’t know which one it is, and until we find out we can’t give that person the title. See why the event is so important? The event turns that truth into an established fact. The result is recorded and then we give the champion the rewards, recognition, and respect.
In order to find the best player in the world, Rimpage will start by crowning a champion in every city. At the end of each season, Rimpage will enter the top ranked players in each city, in the city championship tournament. Each city champion will receive the Kefira trophy, the cash prize and automatic entry in the regional tournament.
The regional tournament winners receive a second trophy, the Omega, a second (larger) cash prize and automatic entry in the national tournament.
Now if you win the national tournament, you’re the best basketball player in the whole country. You get the Leonidas trophy, your third (even larger) cash prize and the distinct honor of representing your country in the Lion’s Tournament.
In that final international tournament, the 200 national champions compete until only one remains standing, the One. That player receives the Triumph trophy, a fourth (still larger) cash prize and the title, the best basketball player on earth. This is the highest achievement possible in the world of basketball. Seriously! What’s bigger than being the best basketball player on earth?
Now these four trophies, the Kefira, the Omega, the Leonidas and the Triumph are called the Golden Tetrad. Many players will receive one of these. Fewer will receive 2. Only 200 players on earth will get 3 Golden Tetrad trophies. Only one person will collect all 4 trophies to complete the full set. One… out of 8 billion people on earth. And each tournament’s cash prize is bigger than the one before. Would anyone like to guess how much Rimpage is giving to the winner of the Lion’s Tournament?
I tell you what. It’s almost time to reveal the 3 laws. So I’m going to cover this 4th key and the 3 laws, then I’ll reveal the amount of the cash prize AFTER I go over the three laws, because it’s a large number and you NEED to hear the 3 laws to understand why.
I will give you this clue. The Lion’s Tournament will be the most prestigious event in the history of sports.
4. The Capacity
The Capacity. Any league that would attempt to answer the question would have to have a roster spot for every player in the world. Every player must have the opportunity to compete. Rimpage is the only basketball opportunity that solves the capacity crisis. There is no limit to the number of players who can join and compete and qualify for their city tournament. There is no location restriction. There is no draft lottery. There is no coach, or scout, or general manager to pick you or stop you. The 1v1 format, the use of the internet to administer the league, and the efficient means of scheduling and recording, reviewing and certifying matches, removes the need for massive infrastructure, giving Rimpage instant and unlimited capacity.
NOW BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS!!!
Who controls Game Day has the power
I’m about to give you the three laws. Maybe you thought you knew basketball, but I’m going to give you a COMPLETELY NEW perspective on this game. I promised to tell you why nobody respects you in basketball and how to become The One they can’t ignore. I’m about to deliver on that promise right now.
The zoo lion has awakened to find himself in the middle of the wild. He’s hungry but guess what. No meals are coming. There is no schedule. In the wild you eat what you kill. Hunt or starve.
In Rimpage, in the wild you enter a different world. You might see yourself as a hooper. Here you need to become a hunter. These three laws will make you an excellent hunter. WARNING! This will not be easy to hear but if you follow these three laws, when you come out on the other side, success–respect, fame, trophies– will be chasing you. Here we go.
The Law of the TWR: Take Territory
Your respect in 3 questions
First, where is your territory? What are the domains you compete in? What gyms, what parks, what recreation centers, what schools, what leagues? Where do you play basketball? The next 2 questions are simple, but crucial in revealing why nobody respects you! Be honest.
1. Are you the best basketball player in all of those domains?
2. Does everyone there know it? If I went to any of the places where you play basketball and asked everyone there who is the best basketball player you’ve seen here, would they say your name?
IF the answer is yes, then that’s your territory. You’ve put your mark on that domain. Your territory is any domain where you are the best and everyone knows it.
If the answer is no, then frankly you're an NPC. You’re not the main character. You’re a background character, you're inconsequential. You have no territory AND THAT’S WHY NOBODY RESPECTS YOU.
I want you to forget about “organized” basketball, forget about leagues and structures. We’re just talking about pure basketball skills. Realize this: Basketball is a competitive skill activity. Skills have levels: either you’re the best or you’re better than most or you’re good or you’re terrible. So in every domain, wherever people play basketball, there is a ranking hierarchy whether anyone acknowledges it or not. Everyone who plays there, including you, is on one of those levels. And only 1 player, the one with the best skills, is at the top. There can only be one best. When you’re the best you put your mark there. It's about defining a space that is owned or controlled by an individual–not by being a bully or the loudest talker or physical violence, but by simply being the one who has developed skill to a higher level than every other player there. That’s how you claim a space.
So then, to get the respect you want, you need to develop the skills that enable you to put your mark on every domain where you play. To do that two things need to be true of you. 1. You are the best player there, and 2. Everyone knows it. This is not pre-school where you play nice and everybody shares and takes turns. Basketball is competitive. If you don’t like that, you need to get out of basketball.
The best use superior skills to conquer territory, domains where they are the best and everyone knows it. These players are dangerous in their domains. You walk in there and you have a fight on your hands because a lion is going to defend his territory. You stand to get embarrassed there. That's a red zone, it's hot in there. When the best player walks in the gym, alarms start going off. The best get respect because the best pose a threat!
If you're not conquering territory, If you’re just better than most, or good or terrible–if you’re on any level below the best–you're ignored because you're not a threat. It’s like everyone is sitting down in this room. The door opens and a moth flies in and lands on the wall. Nobody cares about the moth who enters the room. What do they do? Nothing, because the moth is small, quiet, and harmless. It’s not a threat. If he comes too close they might swat at him.
Now if everybody is sitting in a room and the door opens and a 500-pound lion leaps into the room and roars he’s grabbing everybody’s attention! You ignored the moth, but you’re not ignoring this lion. YOU DON’T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF OF HIM. And I promise you you’re not swatting him away. That lion clears the room. When he enters, everyone jumps up from the tables. All eyes on him. People are running into closets, jumping out of windows and trampling on each other trying to get out of there. Why? Because that lion is a threat! He instantly gets respect wherever he goes. Here’s a truth you already know. Respect doesn't come from being nice or talented. It comes from being a threat. Now think again about the places where you play. Are you a moth or a lion?
Listen, I don’t care how deep your bag is, or that you can dunk from the 3-point line. Highlights don't matter. I don't care that you made that AAU team, high school varsity team, got a D1 scholarship, or were an NBA first round draft pick! If you don’t have territory, if you’re not the best player in every gym you walk in and everybody knows it, then you’re a moth. You're easy to ignore, because you’re not dangerous. Other players feel safe around you.
If you want respect the lion gets, if you want to be the one who is impossible to ignore, you need to subdue domains and conquer territory like a lion. Put down all opposition and bring those domains under your control. That’s your goal. The act of conquering makes you consequential.
How do you do that in Rimpage? The same way the lion does it in the wild. It’s not a democratic process. They don’t vote you in. There’s no government in the wild to assign everyone their territory. So how does the lion get it? He takes it!
He follows the Law of the TWR: Take Territory by doing the 3D’s. Define it. Defend it. Dominate it, and that's what makes it yours.
The Hunt: The player must actively tour or search their territory, challenging all opponents until they are the undisputed local king or queen. So you define it. Go there. Put your foot down in that gym and you say it, “This is my gym, or park, or city.” Put everyone on notice. Then you defend your territory. Proactively seek out any player who threatens your territory, the one everybody else thinks is good. I don't care who he is or what league he's in. He's in your territory! Find his Instagram, meet him at the practice facility. Tell him, I want to challenge you. Be bold! Challenge him to a 1v1 match and you beat him. Repeat this until you dominate that domain, and everybody there knows your name. Build a reputation. Beat every good player there until you are the best and everybody knows it. This is called going on a TWR to expand your territory. Leave your mark.
That's the first law, The Law of the TWR: Take Territory. Define it, defend it, dominate and that's what makes it yours.
From now on you need to train for the purpose of developing the skill you need to be the best player in every gym you walk into. You need to go out and test those skills. Go on TWR, actively find, challenge, and beat every player there who others might think is better than you until you are the best player there and everybody knows it. Once you’ve done that, expand and take new and larger territory. The more domains you put your mark on the more successful you are as a basketball player.
This is not theory. This is practical. This is real. You can start doing this right now. You don’t need anyone’s permission. In the zoo, you play because the game is on the schedule. In the wild you hunt because you want something! You don’t need anyone to pick you. You decide I want to be the best basketball player here. You pick your domain. Then you find, challenge and beat all the top players in 1v1 matches until you are the best player there and everybody knows it.
Walk up to him and say, I challenge you to a 1v1 by Rimpage rules. If he accepts, pull up the website and schedule it. Set up your phone on a tripod to film it, and that’s it. It’s go time! After the match, report the score, and send us the video. We’ll update your ranking on your profile page. We’ll post your highlights and talk about your achievements on social media. If you’re out there conquering, we’re going to let the world know about it.
In the zoo:
Players are safe but powerless.
They get fed, but never feast.
They perform, but never hunt.
In the wild:
You earn everything, but everything is possible.
You risk losing, but you gain self-ownership.
You’re not protected — you’re alive.
Clearly you care about getting respect or you would not be here. Ever heard that saying, if you want something you've never had before, you have to do something you've never done before?
You want respect? Take territory. Be the best player in your family, on your street, in your neighborhood, at your school, at the gym, at the park, in your city, in your state, in your country, in the world. Respect will chase you down.
Or you can stay safe. Do what you've been doing, but you already know where that road leads.
The Border of Your Skill
Now there is something you absolutely MUST understand about the Law of the TWR. Take Territory, and that is that there are two kinds of territory. The second is external: the domains where you play basketball.
The first, the most significant, is internal. Let’s do an exercise. I want you to map your basketball skill. Write down all of your basketball skills. Write down everything you can do and how well you can do it.
Can you dribble through your legs with your left hand? Write it down. Can you shoot all five of the five fundamental shots? Write each one down. Can you make a lay-up with your left hand? Right hand? Can you make a reverse layup, a corner three? Write it all down.
Now if you can do it well, like above average, write it in big letters. If you struggle a bit, write it in small letters. Now once you've finished, draw a circle around everything you’ve written. Now look at it. How big is your circle? Stare at it, especially the borders. That’s you.
That circle is your inner territory. You stand in the center of that circle and the edges mark the borders of your skill. Everything inside that border is the territory you have control over. Your outer territory always mirrors your inner territory. If your inner territory is small, that means your skills are weak and undeveloped, and you're not conquering anything with weak undeveloped skill. You want to be the best player in every gym you walk into, but you must understand, no one conquers outward territory who has not conquered inward territory first.
If you can't shoot over your right shoulder, that means that skill is outside your circle, it's beyond your border, out of your reach.
That shot is unconquered territory. Any skill you avoid developing becomes territory the enemy controls. He’s strong where you are weak and that’s the reason you keep losing.
“Every weakness is an unconquered land. If you don’t take it, someone else will rule you with it.”
Stop blaming the coach, the system, the opponent. Your unconquered inner territory, your refusal to eliminate the flaws in your game is what's holding you back.
When a player can only go right, he’s not being stopped by opponents — he’s being stopped by himself. His own neglected development is fencing him in.
But when he trains his left hand — when he goes deep into that territory — something powerful happens:
A border moves.
A limitation falls.
A new space opens.
His inner kingdom expands.
And because Rimpage is built on the law of pure skill expression, his outer territory expands automatically.
Don't be satisfied with that tiny territory. Don't just accept that you're not a good shooter as a fixed fact.
FIX THAT! Conquer that shot. Train shooting over your right shoulder until you master it.
Nobody can stop you from improving your own skill. So go take that territory. Your inner territory expands with each new skill you master.
Training is an act of conquest. It's not just "getting better"; it's a conscious act of conquering your own limitations to move closer to the maximum version of you, which facilitates the conquest of others.
What if you did?
Ask yourself, what could I do if I were twice as good as I am now? What skills would I have if I were 10 times the player I am now?
Get that picture in your mind and go make it real 1 skill at a time! Give purpose and focus to your training.
You’re not messing around. Go to war with yourself! Refuse to lose. Destroy every weakness!
Imagine if your circle was so big you couldn't see the edges of it from your spot in the center.
Imagine having skills so great you can beat any player at any of the gyms where you play. And you know it! And everybody else knows it.
Do you see how conquering inner territory expands your outer territory? This is the way to becoming "the hammer" the one who turns skill into dominance.
If you have a weakness, don't live with it. Conquer it. Focus your training on that thing until you master it.
You are trapped within the borders of your skill. Push those borders out. Expand. Become a better player!
Conquer yourself! Then you can conquer others.
Master your inner territory, and the outer territory MUST bow to you.
The conquest of cities, courts and countries is simply the public demonstration, the echo of the internal wars you’ve already won.This is within your power.
The Lion in Rimpage is the player who has conquered the most internal territory, demonstrated by their ability to conquer the most external territory.
Now, if you started living by this law, starting today, do you think it would have any positive effects on your training–how you train, why you train, what you train, how long, how intense, how focussed?
Would these changes make you a better player?
Next, if you stopped playing games like a hooper and started conquering territory like a hunter, living by the Law of the Wild, do you think it would impact how much respect you get?
Do you think you would start turning some heads?
Do you think your name would start coming up in conversations?
Do you think the phone would start ringing? People are going to start calling you with opportunities.
Can you see how conquering territory can make you dangerous in the best way?
Hey! This is just the first law! We still have two more to go!
And I have not forgotten, I’m going to reveal the amount of the cash prize given to the winner of the Lion’s Tournament. But first let’s talk about the 2nd law.
The Law of Glory: Steal the Story:
Here it is. Listen to this: The Law of Glory says, “When your desire becomes fire, obstacles become wood, and you become the main character. This is about stealing the story, (steal just means, take it without asking). Listen, the lion does not expect the buffalo to cooperate with his hunt. “Excuse me, mind if I have a bite? Just a small one, I promise.” No the lion doesn’t ask. He sees what he wants and he just goes and takes it. Bench-trained hoopers ask and wait for permission. Self-reliant hunters see what they want and they go take it. I want you to get used to the idea of taking what you want without waiting for anyone’s permission.
I know in the zoo you sit on the bench until the coach says you can play. Gotta break that mentality in the wild. You decide when you play. No one’s going to stop you and no one’s going to make you.
Now the Law of Glory is not just winning, but owning the narrative. Why? Because if you don’t get noticed, you don’t get rewarded. A restaurant can make the best pizza in the world. If nobody knows they exist, how many pizzas are they going to sell?
You can be the best basketball player in your city, or country, but if no one knows it, your skills go unrewarded, as we’ve seen. You have to get noticed. Winning is the event. Glory is the echo. Glory equals story + audience. A story is a character who pursues a goal in the face of obstacles. Think about movies (which is just another word for stories). Every movie is about a character who wants something and takes action to get it. Can you see how desire is fundamental to story? Until a character has a desire, you don’t have a story. He’s background. But the moment a background character has a desire, a goal, he then has a story. Desire is what moves the character (any person) into action.
Now, everybody has a story. How do you stop being the background character everybody ignores and steal the show and make your story the one everyone wants to watch? By raising the temperature of his desire to the point where his desire burns hotter than everyone else’s, causing him to act in a way that steals the attention away from everyone else and makes everyone pay attention to him. This is the Law of Glory. This is how you steal the show. It’s about drawing attention to you, not by asking for it, but by acting in a way that demands it. When your action, your pursuit is fueled by a fiery desire that burns hotter than everyone else’s, you act in a way that cannot be ignored.
I want to be clear here. Having a goal you desire to reach gives you a story, but when we speak of stealing the story, we’re talking about capturing attention, taking it away from everyone else and directing it to you. Everyone who wants something has a story but you become the main character by wanting it more, wanting it the most. The player who wants it the most becomes the main character. Your desire must burn hotter than everyone else’s. That intense burning desire will make you take actions that draw attention to you and that’s what makes you the main character. It’s not just having a burning desire, that matters. It’s what that burning desire makes you do that matters. That’s how you steal the story.
Imposing your reality:
force them into your story, your frame. Control the frame. Your story is you in pursuit of a goal in the face of an obstacle. They are the obstacle, the antagonist. Be the architect of your own greatness. Tell the story positioning yourself as the protagonist. Desire turns you into the main character. Steal the show with superior desire.
Rimpage has a scale that measures how bad you want it. That shows you how hot your desire is. I’m going to explain it and you see if you can find where you are on the Desire Temperature Scale.
You can do this with any desire, but let’s just say we’re measuring your desire to be a world-famous professional basketball player. Is that something you want? This scale will show you how hot your desire it.
If your attitude towards being a world-famous basketball player is, “It would be nice to have if it ever happened,” then your desire is at 100 degrees.
500 degrees: Nothing else matters. I will die if I don’t get this.
400 degrees: This is my main thing, my #1 highest priority every day
300 degrees: I’m taking action to get this
200 degrees: I want this, but I’m also considering other options
100 degrees: It would be nice to have
"Before we go any further, point to where you are on this scale. Not where you wish you were, but where you actually are. Because that number will determine the rest of your life."
Fire changes wood into smoke and ash.
Fire changes iron into a sword.
So the implicit truth inside your model is:
The world does not respond to your desire.
It responds to the temperature of your desire.
"You keep saying you want respect in basketball. But respect is not earned at 100°. It is not earned at 200°. It begins at 300°, and it becomes inevitable at 500°. So I’ll ask you only once: Are you warming your hands by the fire… or are you ready to step inside it?"
This scale is an accurate predictor of your success. Your life right now, is a reflection of the temperature of your desire, such that, as the temperature of desire rises, so does the number and quality of actions taken to realize it. The hotter your desire, the more and better actions you’ll take. And the less likely you are to take no for an answer or give up. Desire predicts activity level, and since success is a result, and action is the source of all results, desire is a useful predictor of success. We all hit obstacles. 500-degree desire finds a way. The others find an excuse.
A temperature somewhere between 400 and 500 degrees produces the kind, and quality of, action that cannot be ignored. A person whose desire reaches this temperature will steal the story. Movies are made about people who reach this temperature. If you fall below 400 degrees, you’re background, invisible, an NPC (non-playable-character). You’re too safe to matter. People whose desire is at 400 and 500 degrees matter because they are dangerous.
Too many people in the world are quiet, scared and obedient, watching and waiting for someone to steal the story. So they can all have something /someone to talk about. Is that the way you want to go out? You want to reach the end of your life and be full of regret? “I could have done more. I wish I had gone for it and given it my best.”
Let me tell you a story about 500-degree desire.
Stealing the story is not arrogance; it’s intention. There was a lady named Ms. Claudia, who was crossing the street with her 5-year old son when a car came flying around the corner and struck the boy. Ms. Claudia needed an ambulance fast but she didn't have a phone.
There was a small upscale restaurant nearby where the wealthy patrons were enjoying expensive meals, light conversation and the soft jazz music playing in the background. Ms. Claudia needed a phone to call for help or her son would die. She ran to the restaurant, bursted through the door screaming and crying, “Call an ambulance! My son was hit by a car!”
Do you think Ms. Claudia was put off by the restaurant’s rules or by the sneering looks, or by the people who ignore her? She has 500-degree desire and one way or another she’s going to get that phone call placed to the ambulance. She won’t be ignored. Somebody is going to help her. The immediacy of her emergency, the stakes, can all be felt by the kind of action she is taking, action that is inspired by her 500-degree desire.
And guess what story those wealthy patrons will tell their friends and family when they get home? The story of how Ms. Claudia saved her son’s life. She stole the story. Not because she was seeking attention, but because her 500-degree desire made her take action that cannot be ignored.
The zoo has already written a story about you. Remember what they said when they wrote you off? Remember how they laughed when you told them you wanted to be a pro basketball player? The role they wrote for you is that of a background character. Are you going to let that be the story the world hears about you or are you going to take your story back and be the main character? Don’t wait for anyone’s permission. Steal it. TAKE IT WITHOUT ASKING! The world can’t ignore a person who has 500-degree desire. Write a new story about your life. Set a new goal and attack it with 500-degree desire.
You might think that is extreme, but remember, basketball is a competitive sport and here’s what you need to know: there are players out there who have Ms. Claudia’s 500-degree desire.
Your problem is there's no emergency! You had a dream, but, like Ms. Claudia's son, your dream got hit by obstacles, failures and setbacks. Watching her son dying in the street raised Ms. Claudia's desire temperature to a red hot 500 degrees and she became unstoppable. Every day little by little your chance to live your dream is slipping away and you’re not doing anything about it. You’re just going to let it happen. it's not an emergency for you.
Mr. Patrick, this piece right here is sharp. It cuts where it needs to cut. The scented candle metaphor is brutal in the best way. It exposes the athlete who thinks he wants it, but doesn’t actually want it enough to do anything dangerous, costly, or consistent. It forces self-awareness.
Here’s an expanded version that keeps your exact tone and hits even harder without losing your original phrasing:
–––––
Have you ever wanted anything with a raging 500-degree desire?
Or is your desire more like a scented candle?
Your dream is dying while you relax in sweet serenity, inhaling the honey-lavender fragrance of your own excuses. The flame is gentle, harmless, safe. It gives you just enough warmth to pretend you care, but not enough heat to make you move.
That tiny little flame you’re calling “passion” is not enough to inspire a fight for your dying dream. You talk about wanting to go pro, but look at your habits:
You’re looking for sessions on the weekend.
Maybe once or twice a week you wander onto a court.
Half-hearted.
Attention scattered.
You train like it’s just something to do.
You’re not serious.
You’re not focused.
There’s no fire.
You’re cool. Safe. Comfortable.
And comfortable people do not become legends. Comfortable people become background characters in stories told about someone else.
Your training—just like those casual runs you waste your time with—is meaningless. You know it. Deep down you know it. They aren’t taking you anywhere. They aren’t building a name. They aren’t earning territory, title, or identity.
But the honey lavender smells good, right. Your dream is dying in the streets.
This is the truth most hoopers never face:
If you do not treat your dream like an emergency, you will never have the power to turn it into reality.
The temperature of your desire determines the size of your actions.
And the size of your actions determines the size of your story.
So let me ask you again, and answer honestly:
Is your desire a fire…
or a scented candle?
This is the harsh reality but I have to tell you. Do you know why? Because there are guys out there who do play this game with 500-degree desire. If I tell you your 200-degree desire is ok, what happens when you step on the court and feel the heat of 500-degrees? When that guy torches you then you’ll blame me for not being real with you.
History is full of the stories of champions, conquers, masters who burned at 500-degrees. I can’t lie to you and tell you your 200-degrees is enough.
Basketball is a competitive skill arena. You compete in skiu4ll development. Whose skills are the best? If you’re not playing to be the best, what are you doing? If you’re not in it to win it, why are you in it?
This bears repeating: In every domain, league, park, rec center, fitness gym, there is a ranking hierarchy: Best, Better than most, Good, Terrible (you're the highlight. You're the background character who gets told to lie down and let the main character put his boot on your neck. He's the hammer. You're the nail. You’re just content. He's the one doing it. You're the one he's doing it to. He's the lion. You're the rabbit. You get the point. Now being the best feels a certain way. So does being the background character. How do you want to feel when you walk off the court? Glory is not given to you by teams, coaches, or scouts. It’s taken from other players by force.
Notice this has nothing to do with making a team or impressing a coach or getting recruited. See you thought you were playing basketball. Athletes have been coached into cages. The lion has been domesticated and turned into a trained pet. They control everything there. In the wild it’s on you. No teams, no coaches, no politics. Just your skill and your drive to go make matches happen so you prove you’re a winner.
This introduces the third law, the law of winning.
The Law of Winning: Steal Greatness
(steal = take without asking) Win more. Win better. Become undeniable.
Skill is the only truth. Winning is the only proof. This framework is brilliant in its simplicity and actionability. "You want respect? Then take from the world what it will never volunteer to give you. Winning is not polite. It is not democratic. It is not negotiated. It is taken."
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Samson Principle: Win more: Emphasizes quantity, building an undeniable record through sheer volume of victories. The Bible tells the story of Samson, who single-handedly defeated 1,000 Philistines in one battle. Note, he didn’t accumulate this total over several battles. Samson literally defeated 1,000 enemy soldiers in one battle. Judges 15:14-16, “And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, ‘With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.’” Samson had many feats, but this one is particularly striking! It has become legendary. We are still telling his story today. Samson principle is relentless winning that crushes doubt over time. Build a record the world simply cannot dismiss.
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David Principle: Win better: Focuses on quality, validating victories by defeating high-status opponents, ensuring the wins carry significant weight and demonstrate true superiority. David’s victory over Goliath went viral in a time before mobile phones or internet. He won the one fight that mattered. Goliath for weeks had been calling out the armies of Israel demanding that they send out a challenger to fight him. No one came. Understandably so. Goliath was more than just a highly trained, experienced warrior. He was also a real life giant. He stood over 9-feet tall. When David defeated him, it became the thing everyone was talking about both in Goliath’s country and in David’s. This is the effect of winning. Everything you could ever want from basketball comes as a result of winning.
The rewards follow winners. So you need to win! Win more and win better.
Why this works:
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Everyone wants a winner: This taps into the fundamental human desire to align with success and excellence. Leagues, fans, brands, and media are naturally drawn to winners.
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Basketball is a skill endeavor: This is the core justification. Since skill can be objectively measured through performance (winning), the best will naturally rise to the top.
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The platform doesn't matter: Winning unlocks rewards. Winning is transcendent. The idea of rewarding winners is not just a Rimpage thing. It’s universal. Show me the platform that prefers losing and rewards losers. The demonstration of skill through winning transcends specific leagues, structures, or stages. A winner in Rimpage can achieve the same rewards as a winner in the NBA because the underlying principle of rewarding the "best" is universal in skill-based endeavors.
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Winning equals Currency, Marketing, Access, Freedom: These powerful equivalences encapsulate the multifaceted benefits of winning. Each door a player wants to open is unlocked by this single key.
Skill Development as Personal Power:
You correctly identify that while "the zoo" (representing the established system or authorities) might try to control access to stages or manipulate narratives through marketing, they cannot control a player's ability to develop their own skill. This personal agency in skill development is a crucial counterpoint to systemic control. Superior skill, you argue, is "undeniable" and will ultimately demand respect, regardless of whether it's endorsed by the system.
This insight is so elegant because it’s simple, universal, and actionable. It strips away all the noise and landed on the truth:
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Winning equals Currency.
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Winning equals Marketing.
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Winning equals Access.
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Winning equals Freedom.
Every door a player wants to open—sponsorships, fans, respect, money, fame—has the same key: stacking wins.
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And the quality + quantity framework is brilliant because it gives players a map they can follow:
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Samson Principle: Quantity: beat lots of players so your record is undeniable. “Numbers don’t lie.”
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David Principle: Quality: be a giant-slayer! Beat players with names, status, or higher skill levels so your wins carry weight.
Stop wasting your time playing games that don’t matter. Go out and win something significant! Win more and win better! Steal greatness!
You in Yarak!
When the zoo lion enters the wild, what he needs, more than anything else, is not a new move in his bag, but a new mindset. He’s coming from the zoo where he has no power, no control over anything, into the wild where he has all the power, and control over everything.
Hoopers are bench-trained, passive, polite. First of all they won’t play unless the schedule says so. During the game they don’t go on the court unless the coach says so. They have been trained to sit on the bench until the coach tells them to go in–and if they look upset about being on the bench the coach will punish them.
They are able to play, they love to play, they need to play, and their dream can’t move forward unless they play, but they sit on that bench and allow the man in the suit to make them wait for his permission.
“Coach, may I play, please?” “You may not play. On the bench you will stay.” “Yes Sir. Thank you, Coach.” “Good boy.”
Now imagine a hooper, after years of being bench-trained, suddenly finds himself in the wild where there is no game schedule, there is no bench, there is no coach telling him what to do. He’s on his own. Game day is when you say. Your opponent is who you choose. The goal is what you say. And nothing happens until you make it happen. I’ve had players join Rimpage and go weeks without playing a single match. When you’ve bench-trained, you need someone to tell you what to do.
These three laws transform passive bench-trained hoopers into self-reliant hunters, by putting you in yarak state. Yarak is the psychological state of the hunter. When people train hawks, and falcons, and raptors to hunt, they put them in yarak, this is a state where the raptor is in peak condition for hunting. A hawk in yarak is hungry, alert, and eager to hunt. Yarak is the hawk’s “It’s Go Time” state. A fat, comfortable, lazy raptor won’t hunt. He’ll see the prey and let him get away. He doesn’t feel like hunting. But when that bird is trained, when he’s hungry, he’s looking for it, he’s scanning, he’s hungry, alert, eager to hunt. The feathers on his neck rise up. He’s in yarak. Let’s get it!
When a Rimpage athlete is in yarak, he’s hungry for success. Nobody has to tell you to work on your left hand, to fix your footwork, to develop your shot until you don’t miss open shots. You don’t need gangster rap to get you in the mood. Hunger gets you in that aggressive competitive mood, and makes you eager to hunt.
Things get really simple in the wild. The lion knows if I don’t hunt, I don’t eat. And if I don’t eat. I die. So hunger makes him get up and go after it. If you don’t play matches and compete, then you can’t win, and if you’re not a winner, your dream dies. Winning is the path to all the rewards.
Bruce Lee trained 6-hours a day. Kobe Bryant trained 6 hours a day. Why? What drove Michael Jordan to the batting cages to practice his swing until his hands were cracked and bleeding? What made Jerry Rice train 6-days a week, sprinting up and down hills in the heat or Ashton Cook drive from gym to gym challenging players to 1v1 matches until, after 20 matches in one day, he beat the 3,000 point challenge? Hunger. Michael Jordan once attributed his success to his work ethic saying he demands more from himself than anyone else does.
You want success. So does everyone else. How bad do you want it? How hot is your desire? Hunger makes the lion hunt. Gangster rap is artificial inspiration. Hunger puts the Rimpage athlete in yarak. What would you do if you had a 500-degree desire for success? What does your yarak state look like? Live by these three laws and find out.
And please don’t say Rimpage is demanding or Rimpage is making you do anything. Don’t bring that zoo mentality into the wild. You’re in the wild. You’re free. Rimpage doesn’t demand it. Success demands it. Your dream demands it. You tell me what you want. I’m telling you how to get it. But the choice is yours to make. No one is going to stop you and no one is going to make you.
Your Moral Imperative
Ashton Cook won Rimpage’s Next Big Star event in 2021. After the event we interviewed him. And then we interviewed his opponent and he made a comment suggesting “if this was a real game” he would have played harder, better, whatever. What do you think this is? Every time you step on the court that’s a chance to show your skills, to do your best and prove you’re the best player out there.
When you give less than your best, when you offer the zoo lion version of you, you dishonor yourself and the game. Skills have levels: beginner, good, better (than most), and best. We only reward the best. Do you understand why? Why is being the best at any given skill so special? It’s because there is a question hanging over all of humanity for all ages. “How good can we possibly become?” What is possible? Think about those skill levels again, which one gives the best answer to that question? Not Beginner. Not Good. Not Better than most. Only the Best give us an acceptable answer, and that’s why it has value.
The question is a universal one. We venerate skill activities worldwide because they give us a way to reach for the ultimate in all of us, to touch our limits, to discover if such a thing actually exists. By becoming the absolute best, most refined, 100% maximum version of you, you move all of humanity closer to an answer to the great question. That’s your contribution.
To offer any lesser skilled version of you is to distort the truth, by presenting a false-ceiling, lowering the standard. Instead of lifting us closer to excellence, you’re dragging us down. You owe it to yourself, to humanity to be your best, BECAUSE you made the choice to step inside a skill endeavor. Outside of that arena you have no obligation.
I am asking, the children of the world are asking, we are all asking the question, "What is possible for us? How far? how high?" You owe us your answer. Everyone athlete must contribute our answer to that question OR you can get out of this game. Take up a hobby that doesn’t involve skill or competition. Skill is sacred because skill is the path where we seek an answer to the great question, where we measure excellence. If you don't want to contribute then get off the path. Stop dragging humanity down by being less than you are capable of, submitting a false limit.
What I’m saying is You are the answer. Not Michael Jordan. Not Lebron James. They can't be you. They can't give YOUR answer to the great question. This isn't about being a copy of someone who is already successful. Rimpage is not telling you to BE somebody else. We're telling you to beat somebody else! Surpass them. Go beyond.
You will never be Michael Jordan. But guess what, he can never be you. The question I want you to deeply explore is “Who is you?” We’ve seen Michael Jordan’s answer. What’s missing is yours! Imagine you at your peak, I'm talking about the absolute highest, most developed, most skilled, A+, 100% maximum best version of you. How does that guy play? How does he move and talk and think? The world wants to meet that guy! Bring that guy to the conversation! We are all waiting to see that special something that only he has.
Think about this, if everyone copies Kyrie Irving, then Kyrie Irving becomes the ceiling on human potential. No one can ever beat him because everyone is too busy trying to be him. If God wanted 8 billion Kyrie Irvings he would have made it that way. But he made each of us different for a reason.
Your uniqueness is what makes you special. You are a rare luxury. There's only one of you for all time. But just like a diamond when first discovered is not ready for the show room, but must be refined and cut and polished, you need to refine and craft the raw talent you’ve got. Perfect it!
All humanity is asking the great question, “How good can we possibly be?” Everyone wants to know. You, when you become the best version of you, are the answer to that question. You are a piece of the puzzle that, when it is fully assembled, shows us how magnificent we truly are.
Use these laws to push yourself beyond the boundaries of laziness, doubt, fear, and the comfort of mediocrity. Craft the kind of skill that can conquer territory, that can capture the Golden Tetrad. Basketball has been around over 100 years and we’ve seen some spectacular players. But none of them–not a single one of them– has ever captured even one of the Golden Tetrad Trophies. Why don’ t you be the first. The first is forever. Why not etch your name in history.
Rimpage saying it doesn’t make it so. We’re not creating this. We’re pointing to something that already exists. Anyone who takes their skill development seriously feels this drive to do it better. And better...and better still. What drives that? Where does that come from? It's the question hanging over them.
Something inside us naturally wants to answer that question. That's not external pressure. It's an internal drive. It actually feels great to excel beyond what once was a limit. So we chase the answer by chasing perfection. Rimpage didn’t create that drive. Rimpage honors it, encouraging athletes to Launch into that exciting adventure of you becoming the One.
We don’t mass produce morons programmed to obey commands, “Set the screen! Box out! Run the play.” Rimpage will not babysit you. That’s not what this is. Basketball is art. It’s a skill craft. You’re an artist, a craftsman, an artisan.
We give you the power, autonomy and artistic freedom to create a magnificent masterpiece out of yourself. Get in the gym, and take a deep breath. Let your imagination run wild, imagine yourself playing the game the way you want to play, then go to work. Train it into every cell of your body. Perfect it.
Rimpage gives you the stage and the spotlight to display your master-level skills like a carefully handcrafted Rolls Royce on the showroom floor. By displaying mastery you are creating a luxury experience that lifts and inspires everyone who watches you on the court. Mastery is the new luxury.
From the basketball fan's perspective, the luxury experience Rimpage offers is the finest (and therefore the rarest) athletes on earth. Rimpage athletes exist in a meritocracy which demands and rewards constant improvement. Every new champion necessarily is better than the previous, raising the standard of excellence, setting the quality of the skills on display in Rimpage on an upward spiral, to the fan's amazement and delight.
The top Rimpage athletes will be luxury class: rare, exclusive, inspiring awe and reverence. They are examples of exceptional quality and craftsmanship, and each one will have a story that has weight, their legacy.
Skill mastery is the new luxury. Think about it, when you see a Rolls Royce or any other luxury car, who do you imagine driving it? A top-tier professional athlete is an easy choice. Why is the top-tier professional athlete a natural fit for a luxury car? Because they are both luxury. When he selects that car, he up-levels the car.
The top-tier athlete represents a standard of excellence and he pulls everything he endorses up to that standard. Artisan athletes serve humanity by living a life in pursuit of perfection. They offer their lives, their example, their skill as their answer to the great question, "How good can we (humanity) possibly become?" In so doing they inspire us to reach, beyond every perceived limit, for our best. In the basketball arena, the Rimpage champion is the finest humanity has to offer.
The $1 Billion Dollar Prize
Now if any of you are feeling overwhelmed at this point I completely understand, but I think you’re going to like what I’m about to tell you. First I want to say, if it seems that Rimpage is being unreasonably demanding, if it seems like we’re just being hard for the sake of marketing, I want you to imagine…
It’s the final moment of the final match in the Lion’s Tournament and one player has match point. He’s 1 basket away from winning the whole tournament, completing his quest, which started when he first joined Rimpage in a small city in his country.
He trained harder than anyone felt was reasonable or thought possible. He dedicated himself to his goal of crafting world-class skill so he could win his city championship. When he achieved it, he went on to the regionals, carrying with him a new belief in himself and in what was possible for him.
He won the regional tournament, and found himself in the national tournament. He never thought he’d make it that far. Amazingly, to his shock and delight, he won the national tournament, proving he was the best basketball player in his country.
And now his long and difficult quest is just moments away from triumph or crushing defeat. He’s one basket away from winning it all. The action starts, he sets up his attack, leading the defender to the elbow of the key, hits him with a quick move to create space for the shot.
He elevates, shoots, scores, and wins, capturing his fourth Golden Tetrad trophy, completing the set, and earning the title that no one else has ever had, the best basketball player in the world. Immediately he felt the weight of all the years, he felt every tear, every heartbeat that led to that moment and he couldn’t hold back the tears, or contain the joy. Triumph at last!
Can you imagine how good that guy has to be to be the best among 8 billion? Now understand, if Rimpage’s standards seem ridiculously high, it’s because this platform has to be worthy of that champion, someone who pushed past every limit, someone who paid with years, tears and heartbeats, to craft skills so refined they could be offered as an acceptable answer to the great question that has echoed throughout history, "How good can we possibly be?
The standards Rimpage champions uphold, the cost of mastery is so incredibly high, the reward has to match the sacrifice. They need to feel that immense effort was valued appropriately. When you build a league with the sole purpose of finding the best player on earth, this is where that path naturally leads.
Having said all of this, I want to officially announce that the winner of the Lion’s Tournament, the international championship that crowns the undisputed best basketball player on Earth, will receive $1 billion in prize money — the largest individual sports award in human history.
This unprecedented prize is not a stunt. It is a statement. It reflects Rimpage’s foundational belief that human excellence is the highest form of value in existence. Developing superior skill, the work of becoming the best at what we do has served humanity more than anything else humans do. This prize is just one way Rimpage is giving mastery the pedestal it deserves. We hope to elevate how the world perceives and values mastery.
For centuries, we’ve rewarded corporations with billions, but never the individual who mastered himself to the edge of human potential. That ends now. Rimpage exists to prove that the greatest return on Earth comes from a single human being who gives everything — years, tears, and heartbeats — to reach absolute mastery.
Nor is the $1 billion prize isn’t about wealth, but about worth. It represents the moral and cultural elevation of mastery — the rarest luxury of all. Far beyond a mere spectacle of entertainment, the Lion’s Tournament will be a worldwide coronation of skill, courage, and perfection forged under pressure.
The LAMAD
In ancient Hebrew culture they used oxen bound in a yoke to plough the fields. They taught the oxen his work using a goad. When the oxen did something wrong they poked him with the goad. Through many wounds the oxen became expert. A master is not one who reads many books. He is one who through many trials, learns what works and what doesn't. Thus failure and the pain that often accompanies it are the goad that steers the learner along the path to mastery.
An expert in ancient Hebrew culture was understood to be "one who is goaded in a
direction." Ascent to master for them as a learning by goading. A goad was a long stick with a pointed end, often used to prod animals to teach them. The idea is you learn by repeatedly being wounded or corrected. In this system the master is not the one who studies the most, but the one who has been corrected the most. Hence the poem:
100 men passed before me,
yet I discerned the master.
How? They asked me.
How didst thou know him?
And how so soon?
Observation, I told them.
The most skilled bares the most wounds.
There is no safe, painless path to mastery. You will not arrive at the mountain top unscathed. Nor can you avoid the pain of failure. For it is failure that provides the correction that shapes your expertise.
In Scripture, in ancient Hebrew thought, and in real human er — mastery is literally defined as “one who has been goaded.”
Not taught gently.
Not lectured.
Not pampered.
But wounded into wisdom.
The zoo protects players from goading.
It protects them from pain.
It protects them from responsibility.
It protects them from failure.
It protects them from exposure.
It protects them from correction.
And because of that…
It protects them from mastery.
The bench is the anti-goad.
It stops the process God uses to make a man skilled, wise, mature, and dangerous.
The wild, Rimpage’s world, restores it.
In the wild:
• Every match is a goad
• Every loss is a goad
• Every exposed weakness is a goad
• Every tough opponent is a goad
• Every failure is a goad
• Every moment of embarrassment is a goad
• Every moment you’re out-skilled is a goad
And the one who endures the most goading becomes:
למד LAMAD — the expert.
המלמד HAMEHLAMED— the skilled one.
למוד LAHMOOD— the one who has been shaped.
The master.
The Law of TWR already says:
Conquer inner territory before outer territory.
What you found explains how the borders move.
Borders move through goading.
Borders move through wounds.
Borders move through repeated corrections under pressure.
When you lose a match, that’s a goad.
When someone exposes your left hand, that’s a goad.
When someone out-shoots you under pressure, that’s a goad.
When someone hunts you and defeats you publicly, that’s a goad.
Every wound expands the borders of your inner territory if and only if you keep going.
A player who avoids goading stays small.
A player who welcomes goading becomes dangerous.
A player who seeks goading becomes unstoppable.
The Rimpage athlete is the LAMAD, “one who is trained, disciplined, shaped by goading.”
This word appears in Scripture to describe:
• A disciplined warrior
• A master of his craft
• Someone shaped through hardship
• Someone who learns through correction
• Someone God personally trains
This is exactly what Rimpage produces:
A LAMAD — a learner who is forged through repeated trials.
Rimpage is the arena of the LAMAD.
This is why the weak run to the zoo.
This is why the strong return to the wild.
The path to greatness is the path of wounds borne willingly.
The master is the one who did not run from correction.
Glory belongs to the one who endured the most goading.
This further explains how the LAMAD becomes a rare, exclusive human treasure that inspires awe. This shows why mastery is the highest form of luxury, and why, at the end of the Lion's Tournament, Rimpage rewards it with the $1 billion grand prize.
Hunting is the key to your success
So let’s recap. We know now why we’re not getting the respect we want. And we know how to fix that. So I’ve delivered on the promises I made at the beginning of this talk.
What I want to make crystal clear to you is this: Hunting is the key to success in the wild, and nothing will make you a better hunter than following the three laws. Do we get that?
You don’t have to cry about not getting a D1 scholarship, not being picked up by a team overseas, or not making it to the NBA. You need to win. Enter the wild, perfect your hunting and you will feast.
Rimpage is the biggest stage, with the biggest spotlight and we’ve got the biggest prize.
Where all of this began
I believe God put me on this earth to create Rimpage. My whole life has been a prophetic journey. I couldn’t see it then, but now when I reflect now, I can see there were clues all along — small signs pointing me toward this mission.
1. The Inheritance – Born Into Basketball
The way was being prepared even before I was born. My mom grew up playing basketball with her six brothers in the neighborhood. She was known for her style — quickness, finesse, cat-like body control, and wit.
When I was a kid, she passed that on to me and my four brothers in our backyard battles. We’d play until the sun disappeared and the score passed 200. That’s where I developed mental toughness, pride in craftsmanship and competitive fire. You compete to win. That’s my heritage. I was born into basketball.
How it connects:
Being introduced to the game by my mom and the memories of us all playing together in our backyard has created a bond between me and the game. Basketball is part of me.
2. The Awakening – The World of Possibility
In 1985, I was seven years old, sitting on the kitchen floor in Anderson, Indiana, when I heard a voice inside me say, “What if I lived in a world where anything was possible?” It wasn’t just a thought. It was supernatural. It was like the door to infinite potential opened for a few seconds, and I could see it and feel it. That question never left me.
How it connects:
You don’t dare attempt to build a basketball league big enough to hold all the players in the world if you don’t believe anything is possible. Psalm 145:19, My faith that God always keeps his promises has helped me overcome every failure and setback.
3. The Transformation– The Love of Mastery
At ten years old, I discovered martial arts. I fell in love with the idea that training could turn an ordinary person into someone extraordinary. That’s when the concept of mastery, and its promise of transformation grabbed me.
How it connects:
Rimpage reflects my heart for mastery. Humanity has always been galvanized to produce an answer to the great question, “How good can we possibly become?” Training is where we forge our answer. Rimpage creates a foundry where the artisan athlete can do the creative work of making a masterpiece of himself. It has been suggested that it takes 10,000 hours of proper training to master a skill. By placing a $1 billion dollar bounty on the Lion’s Tournament trophy, Rimpage assures the master of a reward for every hour invested in becoming the best.
4. The Whisper – Something Was Wrong with Basketball
In 1998, at age twenty, I was walking home when I felt a whisper: “Something is wrong with basketball, and there’s something I can do about it.” Nothing more. No details. Nothing more.
I didn’t know what that meant yet — only that the game I loved had lost something essential. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that one day, I’d be called to restore it.
How it connects:
Rimpage solves the crisis of the uncrowned kings which is connected to the crisis of capacity which connects to the Four Keys. No other league has one. Rimpage was built with all four.
5. The Discovery – The Power of Story
Around that same time, before the internet, before mobile phones, I bought a video camcorder and brought it to the courts and filming myself and others playing basketball.
How it connects:
When I created Rimpage I needed to figure out how it could expand into every city in the world without having to physically go there and build stadiums and infrastructure. The solution? Have the players bring their cameras (phones) to the courts and film the matches. Now any court, every court can be a Rimpage stadium.
A few years later in college, I became a writer and sports editor. I learned that words can shift perception and shape reality. I saw how a story could change the way people see someone.
6. The Craft – The Power of Story
2004. Fort Worth, TX. I came out of my shy shell when I became a writer for the student newspaper at Texas Wesleyan University. I discovered I loved interviewing people, listening to their stories and writing about them. I later became the sports editor and learned graphic design. I wrote an article about one of the school’s baseball players that created a lot of buzz around campus because. It led to the baseball coach asking me for a meeting in his office. There I learned 2 things: 1. The story upset the star players on the team because I’d skipped them and wrote a big story on a player who played a lesser role on the team. And 2. I learned the power of the pen. Words have impact. I was 26 years old.
How it connects:
I have used every skill I learned as a writer and editor in college, including the graphic design skills, which I used to create all of Rimpage’s branding.
By the time the idea for Rimpage came, as a seed in 2009, and then as a more developed vision in 2017, I had been prepared to take it and run with it.
The Leap of Faith
The only thing missing was the test of my faith. Rimpage wasn’t producing an income. So I was holding down a full-time job to cover living expenses. But my heart only wanted to build Rimpage. I felt it needed my full-time commitment. One day I heard a talk by Steve Harvey. He was telling his story about how he broke into the entertainment business. He said at some point you have to just jump off the cliff and have faith that God will help you sprout wings before you hit the ground. I knew I didn’t have that kind of faith, and that bothered me for years because I felt like, by not quitting my job and doing Rimpage full-time I was telling God I didn’t trust him.
So when my job laid me off in January of 2023, I felt that was my moment. I made the decision right there that I would not find another job. I was going to make the leap and trust God to help me grow wings–generate income from Rimpage– before I hit the ground. It’s a scary thing. The thought of hitting the ground is scary. No income, means no car, no house, no food, and eventually death by starvation or something else.
So what happened? I made the jump and trusted God to help me grow wings and I didn’t. I hit the ground and I hit it hard. Dec. 2023, I was on a 13-hour flight headed for DFW airport praying the whole time for God to do something because I knew when I landed I had no home, no car, no food, no income, a phone with no service and a laptop that wasn’t working. When I went and got my luggage and found a seat. I was crushed. I felt I had come as far as I could go. I didn’t see a way forward. So I thought I was going to die in that airport. I wrote a note to my children and to Katarina and I just sat and waited for it. I stayed at that airport for four days. During that time I was researching shelters and contacting churches all around DFW asking for help. No one responded. Then one night at 4 am two police officers woke me up and told me if I didn’t have a flight I needed to be out of that airport when they came back.
So my story didn’t work out like Steve Harvey’s. I hit the ground, but I didn’t die. So I said, as long as I’m still here I need to practice what I preach. I always say, “God always gives you what you need to take the next step,” and I found that was true. I had what I needed to take the next step. So I just kept taking the next step. God didn’t give me wings. By letting me survive the fall, he took away my fear of hitting the ground. I’ve been at rock bottom and I survived it. I’ve paid a heavy price to build this. I’m still committed to this vision of making Rimpage real for the world.
ashton cook
It’s time for you to meet Ashton Cook. I mentioned him earlier, but now I want you to know his story. Ashton was in the zoo. He played organized basketball at every level, youth, high school, college. In 2021 he received an offer to play professionally overseas but, out of nowhere he got a liver infection that hospitalized him for three weeks. When he came out the offer was gone. He couldn’t walk. He had to learn to walk again. He did his own rehab.
Then he heard about Rimpage’s Next Big Star event. So he signed up. A I mentioned before he won that event. He also entered the 3-point shooting contest and he won that. Get used to hearing the word “won” in connection with Ashto because that’s pretty much all he’s done as a Rimpage athlete.
When Rimpage launched City Battles in 2022, Ashton joined, representing the city of Dallas Texas. Since then Ashton has played 305 certified Rimpage 1v1 matches. He’s only lost 2. He has a 99% winning percentage. The last time he lost a match was June 11, 2023. So he’s undefeated through 133 matches in 2024 and undefeated in 2025.
He’s currently on a 268-game winning streak.
In Rimpage, athletes receive Battle Cards for significant achievements. Ashton is building a deck of Battle Cards. He’s the first athlete to reach 100 career wins. He was first to 200 wins and then earlier in 2025 he became the first to 300 wins. He’s the first Rimpage athlete to score 1,000 career points, 2,000 and the 3,000 points. During the 3,000 point challenge it was the last day of the challenge and he still needed something like 249 points. Rimpage matches only go to 12. So he drove around DFW looking for players to challenge and beat to get the points he needed. Ashton was in Yarak. He said, the more matches he played, the more he felt he had more to give. It energized him.
He’s always looking for ways to challenge himself. For the 300-win challenge, he publicly stated his deadline was 30 days, but secretly he challenged himself to do it faster. He surprised everyone when he announced he’d completed the challenge 9 days ahead of the public deadline.
Then in 2025 Ashton felt ready to implement the Law of the Wild: Take Territory. He said, “I own Dallas” in a social media post, letting everyone in the city know that he wants to be the best basketball player in Dallas. He issued a standing challenge to every player in Dallas–any league, any age, any level to outrank him in Rimpage. If you go to his webpage, you can see how many days have passed since he issued that challenge and how many players have stepped up. Ashton Cook is still #1. He’s the lion in Dallas. You can be #1 by conquering your city.
Marcus Billiard
Marcus Billiard is another interesting case study. When he joined Rimpage he lost his first 7 matches and was at the bottom of the league. But Marcus was hungry. He always asked for feedback after his matches, trying to find a way to improve.
He did something important. He set a goal for himself. First he said he wanted to break into the top 15 in league rankings. Rimpage didn’t set this goal for him. He decide that’s what he wanted. It took a while but he started stacking victories and climbing the rankings. Eventually he achieved it.
Next he set his sights on getting into the top 5. Again it took time, but he was committed to his goal and he achieved it when he won his match-up against Kechawn Reed in the Decus Pro. Once he saw that he could do that, he set his aim at Jazray Harrington who was in 2nd place behind Ashton. Jazray stopped playing matches, and Marcus pounced on the opportunity. He eventually overtook Jazray and is now the 2nd highest ranked player in Rimpage under Ashton.
The secret: every master's path
The path to mastery has 4 stages: Foreign, Familiar, Fine Tuning, and Mastery. There is no other path. I’m not just talking about basketball. This applies to all skills, to all people for all time. I defy you to find even one example in human history of a person who became really good at something without going through these four stages. There is only one way humans develop mastery. All masters walk the same path. There is only one way to progress along that path. Repetition and intent.
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Repetition: do the thing over and over again.
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Intent: EVERY TIME YOU DO IT, do it with the intention of improving on the last attempt. Don’t just repeat. Repeat with intent
You can start in any skill arena that exists and just do it over and over again with the intention of improving on the last attempt and eventually you will master that skill. Repetition + Intent formula is an immutable law of human progress. They work for everyone, every time.
The functional truth of mastery is “once difficult, now easy.” If you will keep trying with the intention of getting better. The things that were once difficult for you will become easy. The impossible becomes the inevitable. You can say, it’s just a matter of time. I’m coming because there will be this upward spiral of improvement until you have mastered the skill.
Now I want you to use the Skill Levels Table below to pick a number that represents your current skill level. Be BRUTALLY honest! You can’t be free and fake at the same time.Stand in the light of truth. Take an honest look at yourself in the mirror and say it. Exposure isn’t punishment. It’s necessary. Imagine looking at a map. A journey is a starting point, a destination and a path leading to it. If you lie about your starting point, the map is useless. It is impossible to plot the path. You have to know where you are right now, then the path appears. So find your starting point.
After you’ve done that I want you to think about the one basketball player out there who you think is the best player alive right now. Pick the number that represents his current skill level. Remember, your number is not who you are. It's simply where you are. And where you are can be changed.
Skill Levels Table
0-24: terrible
25-49: good
50-74: better than most
75-100: master
Let’s say you chose Lebron James and let’s say you guessed his skill level might be at a 98. And let’s say you put yourself at 50. So there’s a 48-point gap between you and Lebron James. Now if you trained in such a way that you improved by just 2% each month, in two years you would close that gap and be more skilled than Lebron James. And remember you said he’s the best basketball player alive. So that means in 2 years you would be the best basketball player alive.
So now the question goes from “Do I have enough talent” to “How do I need to train to ensure I improve by 2% every month?” and harness the power of small consistent steps? You don’t have to leap from 50 to 100. Have you ever heard of a mountain climber leaping to the top of a huge mountain? Now you do it in small steps. You just need to focus on “How do I become 2% better this month.” Just take it one step at a time. God always gives you what you need to take the next step. Mastery becomes a matter of discipline, not destiny.
Seems impossible? Think about this. What level do you think he was on when he was 5 years old? Let’s say he was at a 3. And now he’s at 98. How did he get there? Repetition and intent. Can you keep training with the intention of getting better? If you can do that you can become the best player on earth in 2 years. Put 500-degree desire behind that goal and I’ll bet you could do it sooner than 2-years. Imagine all the other people you would pass up on your way there. The main point I want you to take away from this is Mastery is a predictable process, not a mysterious talent. “God made mastery a law, not a lottery.”
Winning is the Proof: "The only way to truly know yourself is to win." Winning in Rimpage is not just a score; it is the certification that you have successfully executed the mastery formula (Repetition + Intent) against a high-status truth-teller.
See you at the top
Now watch this. Watch how easy it is to enter the wild. Go to Rimpage’s website, click to join and that’s it. $20/month covers processing all your stats and matches and keeping your profile active and updated. You’re in the wild. Now set a goal for yourself and get serious about your training. Training is sacred. But don’t just train forever and never step on the court. You need to test your skills against real opponents. Have fun with it. Rimpage will always be there to cover all your achievements and make sure you get recognition.
So let’s recap
We understand now respect doesn’t come from being nice or talented. It comes from being a threat.
We learned that you get respect when you’re the best and everybody knows it.
We talked about control of the zoo and the freedom of the wild.
We introduced the wild, Rimpage where players have power, control, and artistic freedom. TWe talked about how Rimpage solves the crisis of he uncrowned king and queens in every city using the Four Keys, The Mission, The Method, The Format/Event, and The Capacity. We discussed the Golden Tetrad and the $1 Billion Dollar cash prize that goes to the winner.
Then we discussed the three laws:
#1 The Law of the Wild: Take Territory. Define. Defend. Dominate and that’s what makes it yours. Find, challenge and beat the best players everywhere you play basketball until you’re the best player there and everybody knows it.
#2 The Law of Glory: Steal the story
We learned when you want it more than anyone else, when your desire burns at 500-degrees that fire will produce the quantity and quality of actions that steal the story, and make you the main character who is impossible to ignore.
#3. The Law of Winning. Steal Greatness. Samson principle: Win more. This is about quantity. Accumulate a record that crushes all doubt about your greatness. David principle: win better. This is about quality. Become a giant slayer. Win the big matches vs. big opponents. Every reward you could ever want from basketball comes from winning.
Next we learned that these 3 laws are necessary to transform bench-trained hoopers into self-reliant hunters, by putting you in your yarak state, that zero-excuse, 500-degree, hot and hungry eager-to-hunt state. It’s Go Time!
Next we talked about why it’s so important that you become the 100% maximum version of you. The world is asking the question that echoes throughout history, “How good can we possibly be?” YOU, the maximum version of you is humanity’s best answer to that question. By becoming your best you push the limits back and show humanity what’s possible.
Then I shared my backstory, my life as a prophetic journey, how everything was leading up to me creating Rimpage, my leap of faith, not sprouting wings. I hit the ground but survived and then just started living by my belief that God always gives you what you need to take the next step.
Then we talked about Ashton Cook’s amazing deck of battle cards and Marcus Billiard’s climb to the top of the league. And then we showed you the Skill Levels Table and showed you how you can use repetition and intent to actually become the best basketball player alive 2% at a time.
WOW! We covered a lot of ground! Are you excited about everything we’ve learned? Are you feeling a little bit overwhelmed by everything we’ve learned? It’s a lot! Rimpage is a whole new world and thank God for that. We’re not stuck with the zoo. We have options and that’s always a good thing.
So let me ask you a question. If you followed the secret I showed you in the last section and set a goal and used repetition with intent to get 2% better each month, do you agree it’s only a matter of time before you become a serious threat wherever you play basketball?
And if you stopped playing games like a hooper and started hunting and living by the laws of the wild, and achieve a high ranking in Rimpage and conquer territory, do you think it would massively shift how much respect you get and make you the one who is impossible to ignore wherever you play basketball?
The time for talk is over. It’s time to start your journey to mastery. Training is sacred. It can transform you into the 100% maximum version of you, the one the world is waiting for. Burn the bench. It’s time to unleash the lion. You can do this. I’ll see you at the top.
Marcus Billiard
Marcus Billiard is another interesting case study. When he joined Rimpage he lost his first 7 matches and was at the bottom of the league. But Marcus was hungry. He always asked for feedback after his matches, trying to find a way to improve.
He did something important. He set a goal for himself. First he said he wanted to break into the top 15 in league rankings. Rimpage didn’t set this goal for him. He decide that’s what he wanted. It took a while but he started stacking victories and climbing the rankings. Eventually he achieved it.
Next he set his sights on getting into the top 5. Again it took time, but he was committed to his goal and he achieved it when he won his match-up against Kechawn Reed in the Decus Pro. Once he saw that he could do that, he set his aim at Jazray Harrington who was in 2nd place behind Ashton. Jazray stopped playing matches, and Marcus pounced on the opportunity. He eventually overtook Jazray and is now the 2nd highest ranked player in Rimpage under Ashton.