Scroll down to 12-19-16 to read from the
beginning.
Twenty-six years later I was doing
graduate work at the University of Iowa.
It was the last day before Christmas break and I was in the field house
"shooting around" with a friend.
We weren't working hard at it; after all, we were approaching forty
years of age. Only a few others were
working out. Most students were getting
ready to go home for the break. A few
players from the basketball team were there, however, out on the main floor,
scrimmaging on their own.
"Hey," they yelled at Fred
and me. "We need two more
guys. Come on over."
"Good grief," I muttered
to Fred. "That's suicide. Look at the size of those guys! We'd better just stay right here."
"Aw, come on," he
said. "How often do we get to play
on the big floor?"
One thing about basketball players:
they never lose the lust for the big floor. We went.
I was assigned to play opposite a
young man I had only seen on television before.
He was a product of inner-city playgrounds, so fast he could "turn
out the light and be in bed before it was dark." He stood six inches above my six feet and
one. He had the widest, happiest grin I
think I have ever seen, and it got even wider as he looked at me.
I was "shirts" and he was
"skins," which made him even more intimidating. Muscles rippled on him like waves on a tawny
sand beach.
The shirts had the ball out
first. Instinctively I set up just to
the right of the basket. Some foolhardy
guard threaded a needle pass between somebody's legs and it hit me in the
hands. My only thought was to get rid of
that "specious spheroid" as quickly as possible. I twisted right and hooked. Swish!
Everybody stood around for a moment; it had happened so fast, and it was
so unexpected...
Then the skins had the ball and my
man drove for the basket. I lunged,
thinking I might at least be able to tackle him. He was too fast; I couldn't even get the back
of his pants as he went by.
I set up again. This time I hooked
left. He was caught defending on the
wrong side. Swish! Everything I shot
went in. No shot was like the one before
it. I couldn't stop him, but he couldn't
stop me. Back and forth we ran. I went outside and hurled my overhead
shot. I went inside and hooked with
either hand from either side. He drove
around me or shot his jump shot over me.
The other players set picks for us and fed us the ball. It was
one-on-one with a supporting cast.
"Give me that rotund orb,"
I shouted at my fellow shirts.
"Man, you talk wierd,"
came the voice from over my shoulder. I could not see him, but I knew he was
grinning.
"Look out when I get that
bulbous roundel," I exulted, "or you'll wish you were in the
morgue."
I could feel it! This time I didn't even bother to look at the
basket. I just flipped it over my
head. Swish!
"Man, you are too old
for this," he teased. "You the
one gonna be in the morgue, from a heart attack. You from a different time zone!"
"You should be ashamed, letting
an old guy score on you," I shot back.
"I don't even have a scholarship."
"Can't give scholarships to
guys over a hundred," he informed me.
I was pleased to see that the game
was still played with the mouth.
At fifty to fifty the game was
called. It was time for Christmas
break. We staggered to the drinking
fountain.
He held the pedal down while I put
my head under the stream and drank. Then
I held it down for him. He drank as I
gasped. Finally we just stood there, on
either side of the fountain, heads down, fists grasping the legs of our shorts,
searching for oxygen.
By the time I thought I might live
through it after all, he looked up and grinned and said, "Man, you're the
baddest dude I ever saw. Where'd you
learn those moves, anyway?"
"Indiana," I gasped.
"I should have known it! You played at IU.”
He said it as though it were an accusation of unfair competition, as
though I had pulled a fast one.
"No," I said, my heart
rate slowing down to about 300.
"Not on the IU team. That's
just how I learned when I was a kid."
"Man, you mustv'e been some bad
kid."
"You ever get a basketball for
Christmas?" I asked him.
"Sure," he replied. "Played with it all the time."
"Must have been the wrong
kind," I said. "You gotta have
a really bad ball to learn to play where I come from."
"Yeah," he grinned. "A bad ball. I gotta get me one of them."
"Do that," I told him,
"or you'll wish you were in the morgue."
Then we went home for Christmas.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
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