Hot Hands, Cold Hands

My occasional report on the happenings within the NAS JRB Fitness Center Gymnasium continue below.

Outing Number One happened a few days ago. I was shooting hoops by myself when I was asked by two others if I wanted to join a game of 21. This is more or less the game I described in a much earlier post (props if you know which one I'm referring to!). The three of us lasted through a few rounds with my score never rising above 10. Before long, the game swelled to eight people. At this point, my hopes of rebounding had been dashed and shooting was simply out of the question. As I've said before, my shot quality seems to decline exponentially based on the number of eyes that are watching. I'm like the Invisible Boy in Mystery Men. You know, the one who is only Invisible when nobody is looking? That's my shot. It only goes in when I'm the only one around.

Because of this, I became more of an observer than a participant. Fortunately for me, I was in for a treat. Our eighth player was a man I've seen at the gym many times before. I saw man, and not guy, dude, bro, broham, cat, or any other synonym, because that's exactly what he was. The mustache on his face caused Burt Reynold's whiskers to take an early retirement. He was so tall, I rejected the possibility that it was a coincidence that a guy wearing an air traffic controller's shirt followed him into the gym. A mere glance at this behemoth brought me to an understanding of why wishful rappers say that they "command respect". This was all before he even touched the basketball. When he did, I felt like I was at a Harlem Globetrotters practice. Shot after shot fell straight through the net and withing five minutes of his entrance to our humble little game, he was one point shy of winning. On his way to this absurd hijacking, he put on a display like none I'd ever seen. At one point, the guy loitering around the hoop with me, waiting for loose rebounds tapped me on the arm and said "Look". I looked. Michael Jordankobekareemshaqlebron was dribbling nonchalantly in the far corner of the three point line. Three guys surrounded him on defense. My neighbor lazily added, "He's gonna shake all three of 'em". Almost unsurprisingly, he did. All it took was a quick head fake, a stutter step and the fastest pull-up I've seen all summer (not to mention a dash of accuracy mixed with some well-aged muscle memory) and the ball floated beautifully down through the net. And into my outstretched hands.

Not long after, an ambitious soul decided to take on our resident professional one on one. I'm sure his reasoning held that because he was half the age and maybe twice as fast as his opponent, he stood a chance. What ensued was an impressive duel that lasted much longer than any of us expected. The adversaries danced around the three point arc, battling back and forth. Tricky dribbling and fancy footwork finally brought them to the same corner where the three other unfortunate souls had met their demise. Their battle crescendoed and Michael Jordankobekareemshaqlebron found his opportunity. Taking a step back from the line, he pulled a fast spin move that put him another two feet back from where he started and one foot closer to the baseline. An easier visualization would be to say that he was standing in the very corner of the court with absolutely no angle of a shot. Reaching deep into the recesses of whatever black magic juju that fueled him, he let loose a high-arcing shot just as his defender reached up in vain to stop him. The ball fell perfectly through the net. The gym erupted. Every last person in the place was hollering and hooting, myself included. I can honestly say that I have never seen a person make a basket from that place on the court and he had done it. Appropriately, his opponent instituted a self-imposed time out and watched in disbelief as the next round of the game began.

Epilogue: I had the honor of competing mano-a-mano with Jordankobekareemshaqlebron today. In order to tip the scales in my favor, I kept our competition a secret. I did this by counting the number of three pointers that he made while tracking my own progress as well. This was possible because by some lucky accident, he decided to share the basket I was shooting on. Surprisingly, his shot seemed a little bit off but I'm sure it wouldn't have been had he known I was keeping track of his misses. y first game consisted of a "First to 10" match. I found myself leading 7 to 9 (granted, I was shooting many more shots than he) but, unsurprisingly, I went cold and he won.