The first memory I have of playing basketball is being in elementary school and
playing a game called "around the world." You had to make a basket from
various spots surrounding the hoop, and if you made it from each place,
then you had successfully gone around the world.
Then I found you can literally do that, without the basketball. You can bounce around the ball as opposed to bouncing the ball. In many ways, it is much more fun, and important.
Even so, I've been bouncing the ball again lately. I began a week ago and returned again tonight. I am having a great deal of fun. I can always dribble and penetrate extremely quickly, and complete fancy passes, play vigorous defense and get my hands on plenty of rebounds. Then again, shooting is a whole different matter. You need to practice shooting.
When I was younger I was much better at hanging around the arc and nailing three pointers from the outside, where I was safer from the taller and stronger players who would inevitably block me, or at least my view. I was very short growing up, and it took me a very long time to grow to a normal height, something I did slowly but surely through high school and early college. My height had always bothered me, and even gotten me picked on throughout junior high school, especially in a sport like basketball. That never stopped me from guarding whoever I had to, even if they had a foot on me. I couldn't always stop them, but players later admitted to me that they hated playing against me because they knew I was going to guard them with everything I had and that even if they scored, it was going to be very difficult. Then I got taller. By senior year I could grab the rim when I jumped (I can't do that anymore!), and when I would return to play pick-up games during college I was as good as any of the other alumni, aged 18 to 45. You couldn't stop me from hitting 3's, no matter how tall the person guarding me.
That was all after the serious competition had ended. I was never a basketball star in official play, with the exception of a lucky award for a small tournament where I had played well. Despite that, I still love to play, because it's a way to PLAY. Writing can be fun, but you don't get to run and jump with other people.
The best "season" I ever had was playing pick-up ball with fellow alumni at Cambridge Central School on Thursday nights from January through March of 2011. I had just traveled around the world and the United States for 9 out of the previous 12 months, and I was waiting to go to Japan. I wasn't the most talented player or the best shooter, but I made sure my teams scored lots of points and that I played as hard as I could with as much creativity as possible. Once I caught the ball and just threw it behind me without looking and it went in the basket, and another player--who I think was overall a much more consistent shooter--asked me what planet I was from. I'll always remember that one.
This evening, after the game was finished, I walked to the PATH train from NJ to 33rd street. There I saw all of these TV's showing the news of the day. One of them showed sports news. Athletes make incredibly enormous amounts of money. One basketball player just signed with a sports company for $300 million. And that's not even for playing basketball. That's just for saying he likes their stuff, even though he almost said the same thing for a completely different company who offered him almost as much money.
As for me, I'm back in my small room in Harlem, writing, or practicing my shot, so to speak. I'll never get paid $300 million by a company to say that I like writing on their laptops or with their pencils (Sanford, L.P., I'm looking at you...), but that's not why I do it, and that's not why the athletes do it either, although I'm sure they're not complaining about the added perks. However, I would like to make enough money to spend more time writing, traveling and influencing the world in positive ways. The only way to make that happen is with practice, patience, publishing and help from the lucky ones.
I don't have any money to show for my strange basketball career, but I still have something very valuable to show for it: a compliment. The greatest compliment I ever received from the game was during pick-up in 2011, when I was flying with confidence from feeling at home just about everywhere on the magic spin ball. One of the players, who had known me since I was 4'8", asked me how tall I was. I said I was 5'11", which is about average for Americans. He said, "You play like you're 6'5"."
Whatever you do, play like you're 6'5".
Unless you're 6'7". Then you should step it up a notch.
Then I found you can literally do that, without the basketball. You can bounce around the ball as opposed to bouncing the ball. In many ways, it is much more fun, and important.
Even so, I've been bouncing the ball again lately. I began a week ago and returned again tonight. I am having a great deal of fun. I can always dribble and penetrate extremely quickly, and complete fancy passes, play vigorous defense and get my hands on plenty of rebounds. Then again, shooting is a whole different matter. You need to practice shooting.
When I was younger I was much better at hanging around the arc and nailing three pointers from the outside, where I was safer from the taller and stronger players who would inevitably block me, or at least my view. I was very short growing up, and it took me a very long time to grow to a normal height, something I did slowly but surely through high school and early college. My height had always bothered me, and even gotten me picked on throughout junior high school, especially in a sport like basketball. That never stopped me from guarding whoever I had to, even if they had a foot on me. I couldn't always stop them, but players later admitted to me that they hated playing against me because they knew I was going to guard them with everything I had and that even if they scored, it was going to be very difficult. Then I got taller. By senior year I could grab the rim when I jumped (I can't do that anymore!), and when I would return to play pick-up games during college I was as good as any of the other alumni, aged 18 to 45. You couldn't stop me from hitting 3's, no matter how tall the person guarding me.
That was all after the serious competition had ended. I was never a basketball star in official play, with the exception of a lucky award for a small tournament where I had played well. Despite that, I still love to play, because it's a way to PLAY. Writing can be fun, but you don't get to run and jump with other people.
The best "season" I ever had was playing pick-up ball with fellow alumni at Cambridge Central School on Thursday nights from January through March of 2011. I had just traveled around the world and the United States for 9 out of the previous 12 months, and I was waiting to go to Japan. I wasn't the most talented player or the best shooter, but I made sure my teams scored lots of points and that I played as hard as I could with as much creativity as possible. Once I caught the ball and just threw it behind me without looking and it went in the basket, and another player--who I think was overall a much more consistent shooter--asked me what planet I was from. I'll always remember that one.
This evening, after the game was finished, I walked to the PATH train from NJ to 33rd street. There I saw all of these TV's showing the news of the day. One of them showed sports news. Athletes make incredibly enormous amounts of money. One basketball player just signed with a sports company for $300 million. And that's not even for playing basketball. That's just for saying he likes their stuff, even though he almost said the same thing for a completely different company who offered him almost as much money.
As for me, I'm back in my small room in Harlem, writing, or practicing my shot, so to speak. I'll never get paid $300 million by a company to say that I like writing on their laptops or with their pencils (Sanford, L.P., I'm looking at you...), but that's not why I do it, and that's not why the athletes do it either, although I'm sure they're not complaining about the added perks. However, I would like to make enough money to spend more time writing, traveling and influencing the world in positive ways. The only way to make that happen is with practice, patience, publishing and help from the lucky ones.
I don't have any money to show for my strange basketball career, but I still have something very valuable to show for it: a compliment. The greatest compliment I ever received from the game was during pick-up in 2011, when I was flying with confidence from feeling at home just about everywhere on the magic spin ball. One of the players, who had known me since I was 4'8", asked me how tall I was. I said I was 5'11", which is about average for Americans. He said, "You play like you're 6'5"."
Whatever you do, play like you're 6'5".
Unless you're 6'7". Then you should step it up a notch.
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