My last basketball?
I would always carry a ball in the trunk of my car. You never know when a game could start. I found a deflated ball in the garage hoping that if it still held air I could use it to school some punk down the street in one last show of bravado in how the game should be played. Well the ball was flat for are reason….. it had as many holes as my game did even on its best day. This is a game that has defined most of my life. Has is come down to me throwing a ball to the dog because I can no longer run the court or hit a jumper from the corner?
Like most kids my age I played every sport with my friends, from baseball to football…..even a game with no particular name that involved throwing a small pink ball off the side of the local elementary school while the other player either caught it or stopped the ball from going over the wall for a home run….(I know I’m getting off topic but that’s just the way my mind works…sorry) We made a game out of everything….pitching baseball cards on the front steps….whiffle ball in the middle of the street when we had to move off second base or get run over. …( rambling again…)
But this is suppose to be a story about basketball. I don’t remember the first time that I played but I do remember when when I graduated to the big time. The court that we played on was on the grounds of the local Catholic elementary school that I attended. We all knew the court well from shoveling the snow off it in the winter to adjusting our shots at one of the baskets because the backboard was crooked having been bent went a snow plow hit it after a recent snow storm.
The younger kids being about 9 or 10 years old, of which I was one, would stand on the sidelines waiting for the older guys to finish and then us younger guys would get the court and not before. Occasionally the old guys would need and extra body to fill out one of their one of their teams and they would pick one of us underlings to play. Well one day I was picked…and I made the most of it…I hit my first shot from the corner and the next as well. By the third shot they were yelling for me to shoot just to make one of their friends look bad because he was getting schooled by some kid from the sidelines...ME!!. Well I hit the third shot with the older kid landing in my lap as he attempted to block the shot. We went to the ground with me smiling and him trying to salvage what was left of his shredded on court reputation now ruined at the hand of some punk kid….ME!!!
I played thousands of games in my life . From inside courts with the same friends that I hang with now getting stiiches from random elbows hitting my face to shooting foul shots with my 15 year daughter in the dark on some local court because she wouldn’t leave until she got ten in a row from the free throw line….(she did)….but that day that I beat those older kids with the jump shot from the corner was probably the best day that I ever had on the court. Maybe because it began a life of memories or maybe because of the sound and feel of the ball going thru the hoop with a hand in your face is the best feeling in the game…SWISHHHH!!!!!