My father was a very good player, a starter on his high school varsity team in Munnsville, New York, albeit in a school with a graduating class of about eight people, but nonetheless fundamentally sound with a very accurate midrange shot.
If he was hoping that I would be the second generation of good ballers, he was undoubtedly disappointed. I was tallish, skinny, myopic, and uncoordinated to a fault.
To give you an idea how in athletic I was as a child, my greatest physical skill was the ability to fall down - usually after tripping over a tree root or uneven sidewalk while reading a book - and then instantly get back up and act as if I had not fallen at all. I am sure passing drivers watching me would turn to a passenger and say, “Look at that klutz!” and then do a double-take at the sanguine teenager in the rear view mirror, seemingly just fine instead of splayed out on the ground.
We had a basket on our driveway behind the house, with a playing space about the size of the lane on a basketball court, room enough for my father to post me up and knock down turnaround shots over my sad defense. I used to think that he was overly competitive, like Robert Duvall in The Great Santini, but nicer about it. I now think he was actually kind to me, letting me get a basket now and then to keep my hopes up, instead of just sweeping me aside over and over for easy wins.
He coached my youth basketball teams and maintained his integrity by not favoring his own son. I’d come in at the end of the first half, and play a little more midway through the second half before I would be benched in favor of the real players. He was unapologetic about it. “You’re doing your best, that’s all
I can ask from you, but we want to win, right?” he’d say. I always felt like a consolation prize in those moments, the kid he had to take home instead of the one he really wanted.
I tried out for the high school team my freshman year, but years of playing on a driveway with my dad had taught me how to make a ten footer and not much else. Passing, dribbling, rebounding, defense, court sense: all of these things were not in my tool box, and the high school coach did not have a place for a 130 pound midrange shooting specialist. He offered me a spot as a team manager, but my pride would not let me be the towel boy for a bunch of preverbal mesomorphs. I went back to the band, and then got a varsity jacket on the swim team my senior year.
I played some high school church ball, playing with a mix of kids and dads, us Catholics against the various Protestant sects in my hometown, no love lost, and I learned how to take an elbow to the face and give one back. I was still an uncoordinated stork, but I began to see how the game really worked, the movement of the players and the angles for defending and attacking the other team. I also came to really appreciate my father’s skills, not just as a shooter, but as a team leader, always cheerful and supportive, pretty much universally loved by his teammates. He was one of those guys who just fit in naturally with others.
I then went to Texas and started playing pickup ball at Gregory Gym and on the outdoor courts behind Jester Dormitory. This was my real education in the game, learning how to fast break - it was like speed chess, always attacking - and how to find my role. The game was Darwinian, pushing you down until you were on the right court playing the right way against players at your own level. Sometimes you’d get to play with much better players, but not for long, and those games were not much fun. I’d play the third court out of four, steering clear of the studs and near-studs, but also avoiding the terrible court where the ball could easily end up over the fence down a storm drain because the guys did not play well or seriously. Court three was my speed - the semi-athletic dorks wanting not to embarrass themselves and to have a good run before going back to work on a term paper.
During that time, my dad got me a job during the summers working for the city’s parks and recreation department, mowing park grass and emptying out garbage cans in the lake parks. The work day would start at 7:00 and we’d work until 11:00, and then spend the entire lunch hour playing three on three in the truck yard on a nine-foot hoop attached to a rail timber. The game would be the full-timers, the guys who worked year-round for the department, against the young summer guys. The full-timer team was headed by a wiry guy named Marshall, a Moses Malone lookalike named Eddie (who once tried to convince me that professional wrestling was actually real by putting an Iron Claw in place on my temple), and a slow guy who had been in my graduating class but had decided to work for the city instead to pursuing more education. My team was me and the Mueller brothers, farm boys with short hair who would not have been out of place in the movie Hoosiers. It took us all summer to figure it out, but we eventually started regularly whomping the full-timers in games that became dunkfests. I’m pretty sure that was my apex as a ball player, getting raspberries on the gravelly concrete court, shirtless and sunburned, plenty of motor and flexible muscle from swimming for hours as a 50 free specialist, catching alley oops on that nine-foot rim on backcuts that Eddie never saw coming. So much fun.
I kept playing ball throughout undergrad and law school, including on Rec Sports teams that never won but had a good time and beers afterwards. (I did win a coveted Rec Sports Champions shirt once, playing co-ed water basketball with my sister one summer in a four-team league. I wish I still had that shirt.)
During law school, I played ball for the Texas Attorney General’s rec league. I’d gotten a clerkship there when the head of the Habeas Corpus Division, while interviewing me, looked at my height and asked me if I played ball. When I said I played all the time, he hired me with no further questions and slotted me in the low post on his league team. We also played once a week in a game on a cul-de-sac driveway owned by a plaintiffs lawyer who was a basketball fanatic. It was three in three and the games were very competitive in the Austin heat.
The relationships I made there paid off when my boss recommended me to the District Attorney’s Office. I moved to Houston and played some ball here and there, but aside from an ill-conceived YMCA team, nothing serious. There was a fun game in the old downtown Y during the lunch hour on a scaled-down court with middle-aged lawyers, but that game went away when they knocked down that building and opened a nice new building with regulation courts, too big for a quick lunch game.
But then in 1997 or so, I was invited to play ball by a local defense attorney who had built a half court in his backyard. This was not the cul-de-sac game: it was in a stand alone A-frame building with a composite floor, wooden bleachers, electronic scoreboard, air conditioning and heating, bathroom and water fountain, and even a hanging display naming the regulars in the game, like you’d see in a high school gym.
I’ve played in that game for nearly thirty years now. That’s where I was this morning, playing four-on-four half court ball with guys I consider my basketball brothers. It’s a highlight of my week, and a barometer of my physical condition. Right now, I feel pretty good, moving well at 62 against much younger guys, no back pain or ankle sprains or breathing problems. I suspect things are going to change at some point - age is always lurking - but I will do whatever I can do to keep going for many years to come.
I miss my dad, who died at 63 from colon cancer. If it had not taken him, I really believe he would be playing in this weekend game with me. You think about how the death of a loved one affects you, it’s not just the big stuff. You look for your dad, who was always open, and he’s not there. I’m just glad we had the time we did to play together. What a gift.
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Breakfast was a Chappell Hill sausage and cheese kolache and a glazed old-fashioned donut with a Diet Coke.
Detroit-style pizza and March Madness tonight! (My bracket is currently in the 98th percentile because I am great.).
Better choices tomorrow.
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