December 01, 2004
shooting
A note of conceit: this and another piece were once published on the Jordan brand website. Crisp white text on black, with a small Jumpman symbol next to my name. Until David Sedaris says something positive about my writing (or hell, anything about my writing), it's my favorite endorsement...
Thhip. One of one.
Thunk. One of two.
Knees. Ball resting perfectly in the right hand. Rise up onto the toes, balanced. Elbow points ahead. Ball rolls off hand, thumb falls away, fifth finger pushing in slightly, three middle fingers rolling the ball up and away, spinning it.
Thump… Tthhip. Two of three. Bounce, bounce, turn, again.
Over and over, bit by bit, the logjam of memory and thought was cleared with every shot. The ones that had hurt and the ones he’d hurt rolling off his hands like the ball arcing to the hoop. Words spoken to him and words he spoke finally quieter than the swish of a make or the thudding clang of a miss. Just the ball, trying to trace the same arc over and over again, hundreds of times. Every shot made, a tiny but satisfying victory, one more towards “better.” Every miss something to shake off.
It’s hard not to fight the missing, not to struggle with oneself, over-think the motion, over control the muscles, over-analyze the distance and spin. Better to shoot each shot as its own, separate from all the hits and misses before.
Thunk. Thirty-eight of sixty. The difference between keeping count and letting it rule you, run you down, is a very fine one.
The mist continued to drift down, the sun continued to slide unseen above, the temperature continued to drop. On the painted line at his feet, though, tiny lakes of sweat, rippling faintly with each dribble.
Knees, raise, elbow, hand, fingers, toes, roll. Thhipt. The now-damp net would slap against the spinning ball as it spun through. Like the crack of a hard ball off a well-swung wood bat, or the soft but solid smack of pigskin hitting a receiver’s hands, the swish of a ball through a net was a goal in itself. Do things right, and you were rewarded with a satisfying sound.
It was only in these moments, alone here, in the sounds of net and ball and rim, that his mind would go, finally, quiet.
Growing up in Texas, on a 52-acre plot of land his parents leased for a pittance, as caretakers until it would be sold for the inevitable expressway and Target Greatland, basketball was an oddity, an orange ball seen at sporting goods stores. His father never watched it, and he himself could never recall being aware of it for most of his life. Growing up alone, basketball would have made much more sense than his sad efforts to learn baseball and football on his own. Punting footballs over power lines entertained him for awhile, but just as quickly lost its appeal. The same with tennis on the uneven yard against the unpredictable brick wall of the house, and throwing the baseball against the side of the barn.
He had known of but never really known the sport or its sounds until adolescence had faded. The equivalent of knowing of the legend of Marvin Gaye, hearing the words of others in tribute, seeing his picture, but never actually sitting quietly and hearing that clear voice of pain and redemption. He was finally blessed to know the beauty of basketball when he was 22, when he was made to sit quietly and hear what the game had to say to him.
Not until that time, on days like this, alone with a basketball goal, did he understand the leaning and rusting hoops in dirt driveways, the sole vertical aspect of vast empty expanses of farmland he would drive through on the way to Dallas, to Houston, to Lubbock. They were like crosses rising from the flat and dull earth, marking a point that humans had decided to distinguish as a haven, as a place where the holy and secular converged. But shooting to him was more like prayer than anything else he’d known. Here, there were no words, just the individual alone with a simple, mantra-like purpose. Put the ball in the hoop. It was his time with God. God was there in the sun, the wind, the leather of the ball, the dust that grimed his fingers.
And just as he knew God in this way, he knew himself. For here, no pretense, no book learning, no prestige, no money, no professed beliefs – none of that could buy you the sound of the ball slipping through the net. Here, there was only what he earned and what God gave – his body, the feel of his legs underneath him, the spectacular ability of hundreds of muscles to remember what they had done before, and his concentration, and the time he gave to practice.
Rise from the knees to the ball of the foot. Sweep the ball smoothly through the air. Hand follows through, ending fingers-down, as if placing the ball in the basket.
Thhip.
At eight fifty-four every night, the timer would shut the lights out on the court, thinking it was nine. He would often continue shooting there in the moonlight or in the faint glow of the nearby apartments, guided only by shadows and the memory in his body and mind of the three hundred shots before.
Eventually, though, he would have to leave the court. On his phone would be messages from her. There on the counter, the bills and letters from impatient creditors. In the bathroom, the bottle of pills. In the closet, wrinkled white shirts that needed to be pressed for the next day. As he fell asleep, he could feel the tiredness in his arms and legs, and when he closed his eyes, he could see the ball and its arc through cold air, the sound of a make or even a miss more treasured than anything else he would hear through the next day.
Posted by Rob at December 1, 2004 05:50 AM