August 19, 2024
Greetings from the player,
I saw him in the driveway and thought it must be an older brother or something. This boy was too tall, leaner, and he seemed to move differently, more agile. I stared through the windshield a second too long and tried to puzzle it out. No, I’d never seen a brother there, maybe a cousin.
When I come to the stop sign at the end of my street I am facing his house across the way. The driveway slopes down slightly away from the T in the intersection, down to where the basketball hoop is mounted. Sometimes he is waiting for the bus, but even then he has his basketball, dribbling and shooting while he waits.
It is not a cousin, it is him, he has grown up while I was watching him. I don’t know the boy’s name, I’ve never met him. I see him regularly but just infrequently enough that somehow years had fluttered by and he is now this other boy. He springs nearly straight up, swinging the ball up past his eyes, held and not held by his finger tips and just as he reaches the top of his vertical, the ball is in the perfect spot, and he flicks his wrists and it leaps from his hands toward the hoop.
For a second I click over to this other place, miles away, decades away, and at the same time exactly here. I am in a narrow driveway slotted between the house and the neighbor’s fence, teetering near the edge of the grass, which, today anyway, is out of bounds.
I have been dribbling furiously, trying to move past my friend Tom, and now out of desperation I am going to take my shot, even knowing he is taller than me and might block it, and I switch hands and go left, not my strength, but he moves the other way and I set my feet and spring up, nearly straight, and swing the ball up past my eyes, holding and not holding it, and just as I reach the place where gravity insists, I flick my wrists and the ball spins out toward the hoop.
We played basketball everywhere there was a hoop. When we were on the court at St. Matts it was different, the lines, the key, the sacred maple floors, but it was also the same. We played at the schoolyard, at the Wittbrodt’s at Brian’s, and sometimes we just dribbled around between all those places. But mostly we played in Tom’s driveway.
The backboard was wooden for a while, worn from the weather and thousands of shots from every angle. The back porch, the edge of the grass, the corner of the house, the long shot, right by the window. If you missed the ball might go into the garage, or bounce over the fence into the neighbor’s yard, which threw off the momentum of the game. Close the garage door, take your shot from the other side of the driveway. Don’t miss next time, try a hook shot moving away from the guy crowding you on the gritty cement.
We played one on one, sometimes two on two if we had enough but there wasn’t room for more. We played HORSE, we shot free throws, but mostly we just shot around. We had old basketballs, or we aged them, the texture worn smooth from use, the grip different, the logo faded, Wilson or Rawlings or whatever brand the Yankee store had. They sat out in the weather sometimes, and that added a patina, mixed with the sweat and dirt and the relentless dribbling.
We played until dark, and then turned on the back porch light and played until Tom’s mom told us to knock it off. Then we would dribble up and down the driveway, talking, bounce passing, trying to spin the ball on our finger like the Globetrotters. Walk along under the streetlights, not going anywhere, just bouncing the ball back and forth and talking.
When it’s inflated right the ball makes this sound, you can hear a little echo inside it. Pang, pang, pang, as you dribble. There is a little patting noise as you move it from hand to hand, different from one player to the next depending on their touch. Even the dribbling sounds different, depending on the person’s skill or intent. Without looking I could tell if Tom or his brother Andy was moving toward the net, pang pang pang, tap, tap, then the sound of his Converse on the cement, and then the little silence as he lifted into the air, maybe a little grunt, and then quiet as the ball went into the air. And the sound of the net gasping as the ball whisks through without noticing the hoop. Huhsssh. And then Tom saying “Dammit.” And his mom shouting out the window, “Tommy, you guys knock it off now.”
We played because we wanted the skills the older boys had. We watched them pivot and dribble behind their back and through their legs and make a one-handed layup and watch the ball take a lazy lap around the hoop and drop in. Or see them drive a full court and stutter to a stop and bang one into the square and ricochet into the net and the look on their face was the look on our faces.
Someday we will care if the coach saw us, or that girls would notice us, or we would be admired by other athletes. But for now and for most of the time we played it was just to play. To hang out, to show off a little, to get better, to try something silly, like a hook shot from almost to the sidewalk.
It was the sound and feel of almost every night, under that hoop, or one just like it somewhere. The endless summer nights, the dense wet air, the sweat, the fireflies cheering us from the lawn, the sound of cicadas and traffic on Franklin and the music from the house. Taking one more rebound and moving back to that one crack in the driveway, and turning without looking as you leapt into the air and your left hand barely skimmed the stippled surface as the ball sprung from the fingers on your right hand and sometimes you just knew.
I am watching through the windshield, a little too long, I know. In the driveway turn-around there is a basketball hoop, one of those adjustable backboards that has been raised as the boy has grown taller. He is still in midair as I thought all of this, still suspended at the top of his jump, the ball just now leaving on its journey. I can see on his face that he already knows. And that he will be under the net before the ball can sink through and he will dribble back to the corner and shoot again. Because that’s what we do.
Hope this finds you filling it,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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