Showed Up

Today at the gym, I decided to switch my routine. I would practice my shot in the gym first, then hit the weights. As soon as I walked in the gym, a man who, based on his height and build, I am pretty sure was Lebron James hollered to me, "Yo! Ya lookin' to hoop it up?" When I declined his invitation he persisted so I put my things on the bench and walked over. I have never been very competitive. This is disadvantageous to sports even if it is a simple pick-up game after work. Compound my lack of sporting spirit with my unparalleled tendency to freeze-up when competing in front of strangers and its not hard to see that I wasn't expecting much out of myself. Because the last time I played basketball against people I didn't know was in 7th grade, it should come as no surprise that I managed to go 45 minutes without making a basket.

I did rebound, though. My initial excitement at this was soon tempered when I realized my competition was letting me get the rebounds. I know what you're thinking: "Aww... they felt sorrry for himmm". I would stand there eyes up to the rim and wait like a bottomfeeder waiting for scraps. When they came my way, I would flail at them and if I was lucky enough to hold onto one, I would dribble it erratically away from any threats. One such case didn't quite go my way so I headed out to the three point line to defend. I only had such bravado because the guy with the ball was the only person in a 200 yard radius that I had a weight and height advantage on. This turned out to be meaningless. In all of three seconds he had blown by me on his way to the hoop. One of the older players took the scenario as a teaching point for his younger friend. "Hey, did you see his (referring to me) feet? He was like Michael Jackson! If you'd even held up or stutter-stepped he would been flat on his ass! Man, I know you beat him but if you just did something fancy,he woulda been right on the ground!" The younger looked at the older slyly as if to say, "I know, but did I even need to?" The sympathy had progressed from giving me a chance to preventing me from being humiliated.

The game we were playing wasn't exactly pickup. It was more similar to something I've heard called Shooting for Change. When you make a basket, you get to shoot again until you miss. Missed shots are possessed by the person who rebounds them but until you cross the three-point line, anyone can try to swat, steal, swipe or smash the ball out of your possession. I was robbed several times in this manner. Another more subtle aspect of the game is defense. If you want to challenge someone to defend you while you have the ball, you can pass it to them. Passing them the ball (or checking, as I've heard it called) seemed to be a courtesy so when I got my first rebound, I cautiously dribbled to the three-point line, saw nobody was going to steal the ball from me and casually checked the ball to the nearest person. Everyone's eyes went wide and their mouths formed O's as I realized what I had done. The cocky white boy who hasn't made a single shot yet just challenged Naval Air Station JRB's equivalent of Dwight Howard to a one-on-one drive to the hoop. The ensuing confrontation was anticlimactic. There was no Gatorade-ad-worthy drives, no furious elbows and intense grimaces. Instead there was just me striding straight for the hoop with no stutter-steps or flourishes and floating the ball straight through the net. Yes, I had made my first basket. Yes, I had done it in traffic. Yes, I had taken on a defender twice my size with forty times my skill and prevailed. I had no delusions, though. Again, the tough-talking, hard-walking court-lords had let the pipsqueak in. They'd let me have my fun.