The Basketball Diaries

I believe writers refer to it as being ‘blocked’.

I’m blocked. 

I haven’t been able to write in weeks.  Now, this is not nearly as big a problem for me as it would be if my livelihood depended on my ability to write, but nonetheless I’ve always been able to write.  I can’t remember a time in my life when words didn’t come easily or (much to the chagrin of everyone around me) in abundance.  So being blocked is a whole new kettle of fish for me and I don’t mind telling you that I am not enamored. 

Lisa (my patient, unflappable, much-tortured editor )… if you are reading this I promise to have a column for you in the next day or two, but for now I think I’m about to, uhm, unblock.  Is that even a word?  (Please confirm). 

For reasons I won’t go into (but suffice it to say my pride is involved), on evenings not jammed up with a thousand other things that ‘need’ doing, I’ve found myself in a schoolyard near my home shooting hoops regularly for the first time in over twenty-five years.  Nothing fancy, just the same kind of shoot-around that I’d run through at the beginning of practice a hundred years ago when I played for real:  Set shots from each of the notches around the key, short jumpers, fade-away jumpers, and layups (but not many because my knees have filed a grievance), and if feeling particularly frisky, my hook shot.  Yep.  I’ve got one in my arsenal.

What seems like a few minutes of playing around always turns into an hour and a really good sweat.  I noticed almost right away that if I got frustrated with the bad bounces the ball was taking that I deferred to softening my touch on the ball… keeping my shoulders and shooting hand square to the work, changing the trajectory to get more arc on the ball, flicking my wrist as the ball rolled up and off my fingers as I released it, and holding my release position until the ball dropped.  If I got frustrated I involuntarily slowed down and applied the soft touch.  And just when I thought this was an anomalous observation, I realized it was in fact a regimental pattern.  If I felt wrong going up in the air I let the shot go anyhow, and sure enough when the ball careened off the rim and caused me to run for my life to catch up with it (which, yes, prompted a barrage of f-bombs), by the time my Sherpa and I arrived back at the key for another go I was mysteriously calm. For those who know me well, let me join you in a boisterous chorus of “what the HELL?”  Because we all know that when I get frustrated, I over think, overreact, overdo, and over(everything) in spades.  So nobody was more shocked than me to realize that for some reason, the pursuit of nothin’ but net was the o n e thing that actually forced my over-thinking head to slow down whether it wanted to or not.  I never want to slow down but lord knows I sure need to some days.  But that’s a whole other ball of wax. 

Usually I’m alone in the school yard but not this night; it was very busy.  There are two hoops mounted on the brick wall at the south side of the school, about 40 meters apart.  Ordinarily I have my pick of the two but I arrived and found both in use, which of course immediately caused my blood pressure to spike.  But I came to play and I was going to play.  At one net, there was a rather heated game of two-on-two in full flight, so I turned my attention to the other hoop, where I found two guys in their mid-twenties playing a very slow paced game of twenty-one.  I had my own ball, so asked if they would mind if I popped off a few shots in between theirs.  With barely an acknowledgement of my presence or my request, there was some general grunting of approval, so I took that to be an overwhelmingly enthusiastic and unanimous approval from the floor.  We toiled at the net together for a while, and when their game ended they left. 

I carried on with my shooting, and about twenty minutes later I noticed a man standing nearby with his young son.  In broken English he asked (as he gestured with his basketball toward the hoop) if they could play.  But of course, I indicated.  For a while we took turns shooting and to be honest, I wasn’t paying much mind to what was going on around me.  But sometimes situations just demand your attention and this was turning into one of them.   I retired to the side of the schoolyard and took a seat on my ball, opened a bottle of Gatorade and (finally) stopped to assess the lay of the land.

This flip flop-attired man?  N o t an experienced basketball player.  His son?  Not yet old enough to  properly hold or shoot the ball with one hand.  I watched them play for about 15 minutes, marveling at their sheer enjoyment of every shot, every miss, every run after the ball, and of course the hysterical high fives when the ball made a rare swoosh through the net… usually from beneath the rim!  I was starting to feel a bit guilty for enjoying their happiness to that degree… almost as though I was interrupting. 

Eventually Dad needed a breather (it was swelteringly hot that evening) and he too retreated to the sidelines.  We both watched silently as his son embraced the absence of elders, suddenly hoofing the ball in the general vicinity of basket.  And by hoofing, I mean, full-on, two-handed, rocket-powered, projectile-launched hoofing.  Each time he released the ball he squealed with delight no matter the outcome, and let me assure you, the point of this was no longer to actually get the ball through the hoop.  That brick wall took a thorough beating.

“Next time… maybe we do… small detail,” says Dad, shrugging his shoulders and grinning.  I giggled; this was pretty funny stuff after all.

But his son stopped.  He looked at the ball in his hands, looked up at the basket, looked at the ball again, slowly raised it as high as he could over his head, and lunging from the waist with feet firmly planted, positively whaled the ball toward the ground about three feet in front of him.  You’ve heard of the bounce pass?  This was the bounce shot.  I’m a bit of a kill joy so I’ll just tell you now that the ball did not go into the net.  It did however hit the backboard and ricochet off it to the inside edge of the left rim, where it caromed wildly to the inside edge of the right rim, bouncing three or four times on the metal before trailing off of the outside edge of the rim and dropping to the concrete below.  And there ensued the most unabashed happiness I can recall seeing in quite some time.  I couldn’t help but laugh (it was so awesome and so funny), and Dad was yelling something I couldn’t make out as his flip flops became a blue flash of light running off to get in on the high five.  Neither of them will likely remember that shot, that it was a miss, or even being at the schoolyard that night… but I was certain that the bonding they experienced in that shared moment would stick with them in some way, shape or form forever.

The clarity I found in identifying and cataloguing that analogy was really quite powerful.  I am reminded once again that life is simple… if we let it be.

Aaand poof:  unblocked.