I was built for
this. I'm tall and wiry, with a wingspan that can stretch out of both
car windows when I'm in the driver's seat. Basketball-sized.
My dad has one
regular hobby, a singular passion that governs his very-limited
leisure time: It's my dad's basketball league; or maybe, his beer and
pizza league with an ancillary side of basketball. He's lost a step;
they've lost multiple. He stays in shape toting packages for UPS; the
job gives him chiseled legs, financial stability, a ravenous
appetite, creaky knees, and heaps of stress. Every Thursday, he shows
up about 20 minutes late and replaces his brown uniform and boots
with ankle braces and thick-soled athletic footwear.
He's the garbage
man, cleaning up rebounds and getting hustle points on plays others
won't contest. As a child in a family of five brothers, food wasn't
in abundance. Eating was an intense sprint of ravenous gulps; the
tortoise would starve, outmatched by five eager hares who knew there
was no time to pause. He still won't waste food; I've watched him eat
many things no one else wanted, not because he was enjoying it, but
because it would be bad form to trash it. He makes the best out of
scraps, somehow generating points and posterity, carving out a niche.
In real life, he's
sometimes just a bland dad. I guess that's what 12 hours of physical
labor daily will do, make a man into a barely-animated corpse. But on
Thursdays he's not dad but Rob, consistently but not fashionably late
(it's a matter of obligation and function), prideful, foul-mouthed, a
scrapper. Plays a big man's game in an average body. Rob's teams
barely lose, he's the unappreciated hot glue that bonds a squad.
I play blind. I
should order myself some goofy wraparound prescription goggles, but
instead I hoop on instinct. It's pretty phenomenal, really, how good
I am without being able to make eye contact, without reading the
passing lanes betrayed by a precursory glance or setting up an
unspoken lob through a look with my distributor at point. It's all on
feel; I've put in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours for mastery(or at
least it feels like it), in gyms and on blacktop and in driveways,
and watching the game and observing its intricacies and committing
to memory and then performing until it's muscle memory, ingrained in
every jerk and lean.
When I play with
them now, I supernova. I'm unstoppable, competing against myself at
the start. Back to the basket, working my way left, preparing the
hook or the bank. Always smooth, unless it's not, and then I'll just
snatch the rebound and rectify my heinous error.
Last time we played,
I stuffed Rob on his first shot. “Damnit,” he cursed as his
buddies gave him some shit. I can't let him score though, I need to
show Rob who's boss. My teammate shoots and misses; I'm there to
clean up scraps. Put back, points. Rob, a head below me, wanted the
rebound and contested my shot. Didn't matter, I was taught
positioning and hustle and how to stay with a missed shot. I was
taught never to bring the ball down in a double clutch, to keep it
above my head so shorter players couldn't hack at it. Sorry, Rob, dad
taught me how to render you helpless.
But, by the 5th
or 6th consecutive game, I'm gasping like a pack-a-day
smoker, as they keep on chugging while I'm tugging on the shirttail
of my man, hanging on for dear life. Thinking about how embarrassed
my dad is going to be when his virile young man of a son has a
heart-attack playing in the old-timers game. Now I'm the hare,
showboating and sprinting until I get passed by the smart and steady.
My dad and I play in
the driveway all the time. I've gotten too good for him, I can't even
turn around and play back to the basket. He's defenseless in the post
against me. Rob's wife, Kathie, sits outside with her black lab on
the bench by the pine and watches us play. Most of the time, I show
Rob up in front of Kathie. As she watches, I see her chuckle and
imagine she thinks about how much has changed, pictures cradling her
6'6” infant who's now battering her husband, a full-grown, former
military man himself. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sinks yet another lefty
skyhook; he's unblockable.
We used to wrestle
on the tacky shag carpet; my parents didn't design the house, and it
was the first of many, many renovations they've undertaken. My dad
was tougher than me, as is the usual dynamic between parent and
toddler, but I'd give it my best shot. I was scrappy, but no match in
the scrum. I like to think my dad felt threatened, like I was the
young cat of the savannah challenging the patriarch, who may have
excessively rested on laurels, lost a step, but in fact I'm sure he
was toying with me, like I was the outmatched mouse putting up a
valiant but ultimately useless struggle. One day he pulled too hard
on a loose toddler limb, horsing around in a rough enough manner to
incite the fiery rage of my mom. She thought it was broken, but I
escaped with just a sprain. I was 3. My dad sprained his 3 year old's
arm. Kareem's arm, high in the air now as the leather tickles twine.
I set foot in Ping a
few weeks ago for the first time in my nearly two years at OU. I
played basketball with my roommate and a few of his friends. They
were awful. Kareem was at Ping. That is, until we were challenged
from across the court.
“Are you any
good,” I asked the tall and cut man across from me. I was afraid I
knew the answer before he opened his mouth. “I used to be, I'm kind
of out of shape now.” It was a nice reply, sportsmanlike and
humble, but it was patently false.
I blocked him a few
times and tallied my fair share of points, but I faltered with my
team on my back. I couldn't defend him. He dropped probably 7 on me
in a game to 12 during our second game. He was quicker and took
better angles. It was a second round knockout after a first round
takedown. Judges' scorecards all read 20-15 when the fight was
stopped. Before that, I can't remember the last time I've lost. That
isn't meant to be bragging, I literally cannot remember.
I set foot in Ping
for the second time two days after I set foot in Ping for the first
time. This time, I was by myself, in a barren and desolate wasteland
of inactivity that vaguely resembled a functioning gym. I logged
about 70 minutes of solo time, shooting and driving and dribbling and
sweating. I woke up early before class three days after that, and did
the same. I didn't enjoy losing, and decided it wasn't going to
happen again.
Once, my dad
threatened to walk home when my parents were greater than 20 miles
away from it. They were playing Whirlyball, which I had to research
before writing this section. My source tells me “It's like each
player is in a dodgem car on a basketball court. You get a Jai Alai
racquet...players try to shoot the ball at a high goal with a net. It
actually was fun I know Laura Freiberg and Maureen have both done it
years ago too, love mom xoxoxoxo.”
They went with a
bunch of friends, and played on separate teams. My dad disagreed with
a ref's call that went against him, and stormed off, announcing he
would just walk home. Their friends encouraged my mom to go talk to
him, make sure he's okay. “No, I'm not going to chase him when he's
being a baby,” my mom replied. Eventually, he made it back to the
car.
I see his
competitive edge flare up when we play ping pong, when he plays
morbidly boring Wii games with my brother, when we play cornhole at
graduation parties. I also see it in me. It can't be healthy for
either of us.
In a shameful stint
of my life, I broke 5 Xbox microphones. They kept snapping after they
somehow hurtled towards the wall or the floor. Coincidentally, it
always seemed to happen when the newest Call of Duty game was in the
disc tray. That can't be healthy.
My dad was never
very good at sports. He was a wiry offensive guard on his junior high
football team; too uncoordinated to play a skill position, but
scrappy enough to take on larger kids in the trenches. They won the
city championship; I'm still regaled with stories of those glory
days. He had never played soccer until high school; he found a niche
as a full-back who could barely kick, stepping up for tackles and
out-hustling the other team's forwards. But his worst sport was
basketball, he sat on the end of the bench every year in an era where
giving kids mandatory minutes wasn't the protocol. He rarely played.
The summer over his 7th grade year, he left town to stay with an
aunt. He made a friend who wanted to get better as much as he did.
They played for hours that stretched into days that ran together into
weeks. They got significantly better. When winter basketball started
up, my dad was a new player. He started getting minutes, minutes he
carved out months before with exercises of effort and devotion.
My dad and I
communicate on the court, bond using the language of the game. Dish
on my brother's laziness and how to get him motivated, or the
pratfalls of UPS' bureaucratic waste. It's our “thing,” grease
that keeps the wheels of our relationship spinning smoothly, the tie
that binds. Playing basketball is
a really wide-ranging phrase; it encompasses a casual, almost
meditative shoot around, as well as full-contact competition. The
level we play at varies, but it's always synchronized, every step
mirrored like only the most familiar of foes. He shaped my game,
genetically and in practice. It must be weird to see an improved
version of yourself across from you, the upgraded model that you had
a stake in building.
Neither of us are
any good at being wrong. I keep my computer open, browser up and
situated within arm's reach, whenever I'm home with him. The Internet
will settle shit. It's grating. If we're watching sports, we have to
argue about every call. I find myself automatically disagreeing with
anything my dad says, taking the other side even if I don't believe
it. It feels like a disease, or like I'm too dim to avoid the obvious
trap. Contesting points for the sake of arguing. It can't be healthy.
He's hard-working
and I'm averse to labor. He's religious; I'm indifferent. He fixes
stuff around the house and makes things with his hands, I'm a
wordsmith who's been helping him spell and write his Christmas cards
since the 4th grade. But on the court, we're threaded
together, cut from the same cloth and weaved into the same blanket.
Working the low post, back to the basket, battling on the glass,
using the backboard for put-backs. Hustle points, never taking the
first shot but clamoring for the leftovers. Scrappy.
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