I played basketball in high school. I wasn’t very good. Technically I was part of a team that went to the state finals, but in reality, I was a freshman who was practice fodder for the real players. I learned to throw entry passes to our star center mostly. That I got very good at.
But when basketball season was over, there was pickup basketball. I played pickup too much. Every chance I could get. I got in trouble for skipping class TWICE to play pickup in the gym one year.
I moved on to college and I kept playing pickup, oftentimes to the detriment of my GPA. Had a stint at an East Texas community college, a satellite campus with no gym, not even an outdoor court. I stocked groceries part time, and we would get out late, after ten o’clock at night. Sometimes closer to midnight. Afterward, we would go to the local park, the only park in our small town. There were no lights for the court. We would set up cars so that their headlights lit up the court. It wasn’t ideal, headlights can somehow both blind you and not be enough light. But we were able to play, and that’s what mattered.
Then I moved to the Dallas area for a different college. Maybe I started spending too much of time on basketball. I would wake up at 5 a.m. and play at a church with middle aged men and be back home before 7 a.m. I would sleep for an hour or two, then head off to school or my part time job at the bookstore.
Basketball became an obsession. I lived with my cousins, and our friends lived in an apartment complex down the street. All we did was play basketball and watch basketball. Watching the Dallas Mavericks two or three times per week. Every game. Every single game. Catching whatever national games were on TNT on Thursdays, too. Listening to Charles Barkley rant.
We found a court at a church in Sunnyvale. Full court, covered by a pavilion, with full sized glass backboards, and most importantly, fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, providing light on a timer that stayed on until midnight. This was basketball paradise for college kids with a basketball addiction.
When there were enough people, full court runs would get intense. Sometimes there was only enough for 3-on-3. Those games with friends and acquaintances, where you know each other’s game so well, and the teams are evenly matched. They turn into rock fights, sometimes fist fights, gritty games that would make Z-Bo’s Memphis Grizzlies proud.
Dirk Nowitzki at his physical peak, fully unleashed, on our TV most nights. Still a shooter, the kind that panics defenders, but now he could post up, get to the basket at will and finish. The type of offensive player that spooks opponents. He seemed unstoppable, and so did the Mavericks.
Sometimes the lights at the church court wouldn’t work, and we would have to search for other places to play. Another church nearby with a cheap portable hoop, illuminated by the orange glow of sodium lights in the parking lot. The hoop set up at the edge of the lot, right by the curb, so if you weren’t careful on layups you could kill yourself. Clint almost did one time. Basketball in the shadows.
A West Coast game on, a nine o’clock start time after three hours of pickup. Dirk getting a guy on his hip at the top of the key, the rhythm of a couple of dribbles and then that patented fadeaway falling. We’re exhausted, but still able to get riled up about foul calls, or lack thereof. Manuel falls asleep on the couch before the game ends. Jason is on the patio, arguing with his girlfriend on the phone, again.
More late nights of basketball, sweat and sometimes blood staining our clothes. Nights where I couldn’t miss from three, others when I didn’t score at all. The way it felt to knife through a crowd and find enough space to lay the ball gently off the backboard and watch it fall through the rim. Handoffs to Seth cutting baseline after breaking the defense down. The thud of a basketball on concrete the underlying score for it all.
Miles clocked running up and down the court. Perpetually aching shins and joints, backs too stiff for men in their early twenties. The workers at the Wendy’s nearby came to expect us, showing up after midnight, ordering concerning amounts of chicken nuggets, burgers, fries, and Frosty’s. If that wasn’t enough, maybe some leftover sesame chicken and fried rice from the place on the third floor of Town East Mall. Watching Josh Howard slithering through the paint and finishing, a smoother version of Manu Ginobili. Adrian Griffin out there like everyone’s steady and stern uncle, directing traffic, making sure everyone is in line.
I left a Super Bowl party at my church, a lopsided game between the Steelers and the Seahawks too boring to stay. We ended up at Sunnyvale, because where else would we go. One game, I jumped high for a rebound, and came down on someone’s foot. My foot rolled violently and I didn’t just feel a pop, I felt a symphony of ligaments crack. Waves of pain so intense I felt nauseated. I made it off the court, near a flowerbed, and writhed on the ground, pulling up fistfuls of dirt and grass.
My ankle swelled so much I couldn’t take my shoe off at first. Danny had to drive us back to the apartment, there was no way I could push the gas or brake. I couldn’t play for weeks. I didn’t have Dirk’s bionic ankles. All I could do was watch, but at least the Mavericks were good. More than good, they were a contender. Devin Harris on my TV, barely older than me and looked like it, too young to know the moments should be too big for him, barreling into the paint with the reckless disregard of youth.
All of us liked to play, but for Danny and me, it was pretty much all we did. Some nights it was just the two of us, on the court, pushing each other to get better. We’d play one-on-one until we were exhausted, then play shooting games. Some familiar, some we made up on the fly. Shooting from the free throw line, the 3-point line, half-court shots. Everywhere. The whole time we’re thinking of Jason Terry, emulating him, dribbling a little too much, taking shots he shouldn’t take, making too many of them to make you really mad.
Some nights shooting wouldn’t do. We had to play. Sunnyvale would be deserted. We’d drive around Mesquite, Garland, wherever. Call people and ask if they’d seen a court with people on it. Roaming the Metroplex, looking for a game, Fort Minor’s “Remember the Name” on repeat. Two-on-two at least. Motion on a court catching our eyes, the sight of a ball going up under pale lights, someone yelling at the driver to turn around. Sometimes finding a good game, sometimes not.
Basketball always on the TV, slowly coming to enjoy every player on the roster. Jerry Stackhouse, making tough buckets at the rim, hitting corner three’s, ready to brawl with whoever. Desagana Diop, lanky, lurking, laughing in the paint. Erick Dampier, target of all my frustrations, a tank under the bucket. Marquis Daniels doing a little bit of everything with a bit of a shrug, an undrafted guy playing with house money, willing to do whatever it takes to win.
That year felt different than all the rest of them. Game after game, then series after series. When you watch sports enough, you can sometimes feel it, the momentum building, the stories that will be written at the end of the season, the way it feels inevitable. That’s how it felt up until June, until it didn’t.
The Mavericks didn’t win a championship that year. They would five years later. All of us that played so many games of pickup together, had watched all those Mavericks games together, had scattered into the wind to start our adult lives. We watched Dirk lift that trophy in separate living rooms across Dallas-Fort Worth.
That summer night in 2006, though, we were devastated together. We drifted away from the television into separate parts of the apartment. I went to my room and laid in the dark. Danny turned on the Xbox and played some game. Manuel smoked on the patio. Jason, Clint, and Seth went home.
Eventually, though, someone called and said the lights were on down at Sunnyvale. Of course we played. Basketball never stops, even when it hurts you. We got up shots until the lights shut off and we couldn’t see anymore. Then we left for our separate homes and slept away the exhaustion of disappointment, the sound of a basketball on concrete in our dreams. Still.
