BitterSweetLife

In Which I Brag About My Skills

Lately I’ve been indulging in a string of basketball posts and I don’t see any reason to end the trend now.

Saturday morning the sun rose to shine beatifically on a long-awaited test of my ballyhooed hoops skills. It was my seminary’s legendary 3-on-3 tournament, which generates bragging rights that hoopsters in Rucker Park, the Bronx, Lawrence, KS—hoops meccas everywhere—daily weep over.

Some of you are probably shaking your heads in disbelief. “Right, a bunch of puffy-bellied middle-aged men are definitely gonna cause some scintillating match-ups. What’s your catch-phrase? ‘Hoops!—with all the excitement of sumo wrestling?’” Observant readers of this blog will recognize a level of truth here (concealed as it is beneath a thick layer of sour grapes). Sadly, seminary students, and academia in general, are not known for their Herculean musculature—and I think that may just be the understatement of the year. I, of course, sharply defy this globular trend and encourage others to do likewise.

Anyway, the pear-shaped scholars that populate the halls and lunchroom of my school during the week were glaringly absent Saturday morning. As it turned out, the tourney’s massive reputation was justified, and game outcomes would be decided in reputable hoops fashion, rather than in a squashy battle of titans.

It's hard to know just which moments ought to be recapped, and which must be consigned to merely live on eternally in the minds of the spectators.

As I absorbed the surprise of seeing my school in a new light—fit!?—a sense of relief washed over me, combined with bewilderment. “Yes, we’ll get some decent games!—but where do all these people hide during the week?” The first impression would be proven correct; an answer to my secondary question remains elusive. But on to the games themselves.

I felt the tension when I walked on the court. Someone had been talking some considerable trash in previous weeks, and now that swagger would have to be made good, proven, or someone would be shown up as a pathetic phony. That someone was me.

In a situation like this, good players start feeling pressure like Atlas, the weight of the world on their shoulders. Great players, however, use the pressure to focus their abilities to a razor-sharp edge, make good their boasts upon the bodies of their enemies. I guess you don’t need to ask how things went with my game. I will, however, tell you anyway.

As is typical of highlight reel performances, it’s hard to know just which moments ought to be recapped, and which must be consigned to merely live on eternally in the minds of the spectators. In the end, one has to settle for mentioning brief moments—as when I swatted the shot of the opposing point guard, grabbed the “rebound” and drove the lane to shoot in a fall-away J over his desperately scrabbling fingers. No doubt he’s still replaying that sequence in his mind. Or there was the play when, frustrated at missing a couple outside shots in a row, I juked my man and drove inside to post up the 6’5” “center,” notching the shot and one to win the game. For a minute, I thought my 34” vertical was back, the old days of abusing the inside players. Of course, the pure joy of repeatedly knocking down guarded outside shots is also hard to match. What’s that old saying, “Being good is its own reward?”

That wiseman must have been a hoops player. At any rate, when the NBA comes knocking, I’ll have my contractual requirements ready.