My word, a nickname is a christening, meaning you got a shot, meaning they think you can go, which is one chance more than most of us, so no wonder the chosen are all there is to speak of. No wonder when, for most, hoop’s about our only shot to be better and bigger than the rest, to secure a life that counts.
But on the flip side, fall short and then what?
Best-case, you join a city league and/or wake early on the few weekends reprieved from rain to hit Wilshire or Irving or Laurel-hurst for full-court four-on-fours; you catch a rare weekend park run and on Monday semi-limp, half-swank onto your dronerific of a nine-to-five, fatmouthing to anyone with ears about who beat who by how much. You carry that same chatter to the shop or the grocery store or just outside the entrance of whatever club is crackin that month, carry it to the sidelines of an open gym or to a perch in the crowded bleachers of games between — the likely highlight of a nigger’s week, month, winter — your old high school and an archrival.
Not a failed life for most, but fordamnsure not no dreamland neither.
Worse-case, you’re addle-brained and haggard and wandering a main street with a decrepit semi-flat hoop rock tucked at your side or shooting air jumpers at a rim nobody but nobody but you can see. Worser, you’re left plotting on a way to prolong the cheers: you’re peddling hard or soft, or gangbangin or dumping seeds in every used-to-be-sorta-bad who saw your name bolded on the front page of Prep Sports — BKA slipping raw dog in community pussy. Fall short, and what the fuck can you do? Catch a sex-abused-low-esteemed-runaway teen girl on a humbug and risk your heretofore faulty luck: first as the dude who strong-arms the paltry tips of an amateur stripper, then as a local pimp sending runaways, strippers, the de-esteemed on escort calls, then graduating to a road show, hitting Cali, Vegas, NY, and all ho-strolls in between.
Let them quit screaming your name, and worse-case you just might rob a bank (who gets away with that?), just might hatch a (hand to God this happened) a flawed murder-for-insurance plot.
But maybe it’s just here. In my city. Not yours.
Canaan dickers for snack funds, leaps the bleachers, disappears out the gym. Next dead ball, the ref shoos youngsters too close to the baseline, too close by the sideline, most of them wearing team sweat suits and sandals with white socks peeking from their open toes — neophytes who I can’t help but think right about now ain’t lived near long enough to even earn a single real foe. A crowd of some fortunate-ass young bucks plus a few teenybopper chicks dressed for spring or summer, which I suppose ain’t all that bad since, though it’s cold and damp outside, inside this heat is cranked to Africa.
And before I forget (me hypermnesic? Yeah right) about enemies, let me say this: Fuck a sycophant. They way I see it, you ain’t lived till somebody don’t like you. Shit, a few somebodies.
Grown folks loitering by the door chomping on pencil hot dogs or oversalted chips, slurping pull-tab pops, all of them held captive by the sign: NO JUICE OR FOOD IN THE GYM NO EXCEPTIONS! The old man who runs this sweatbox roosting by the entrance, guarding against anybody who so much as looks as if they’d break a rule. Side note: I used to think this same old head was one of those ultra-fastidious, follow-all-the-rules-or-perish types till I saw him at an after-hours all by his lonesome gulping Cognacs.
KJ sluices hyperspeed through a press (even he handles it the way I never could), tries to split a three-man trap, and dribble-kicks the ball out of bounds. He boots the ball and watches rapt (a regular midcourt Madame Tussaud statue) while it scrawls its way to a stop, while the white-socked sideline crew soundtracks his gaffe with a loud-ass, Ooooooh!
Shake it off, shake it off, I yell from up top, and people below twist around to look.
Mom shows near the end of the first quarter. She’s got her coat, not a winter coat, zipped to her throat and her cheeks are flushed. She searches the stands for so long I’m compelled to get up and wave. You can see it on her way up: either Mom’s getting old or she’s laying serious hot sauce on the trouble it takes to climb.
So, new wheels, but the same old on-CP clock, I say.
It wasn’t me this time, it was them, she says. Caseworker popped up right when I was about to leave. Oh my gosh, these folks and their rules, she says. I’ll be overjoyed, you hear me? Overjoyed when this is done. Mom’s new ’do still looks proper, but her nails could use new paint. This is how I’d describe her to strangers: Perfect minus a touch or two. She unzips herself, snakes out her coat (it’s thinner than I thought, with rips in the lining), and asks what she’s missed.
Not much, I say. Coupla points, an assist, a bonehead play.
Good or bad? she says.
Try average, I say.
Next thing I know, Mom’s screaming KJ’s name when I swear the boy ain’t done shit but toss the ball inbounds. KJ gazes up at us with game-time eyes as fierce, no, fiercer, than mine ever were.
That’s my boy, she says. My baby.
When I was my brother’s age, with not a care I’d admit to beyond my box score, I lived for playing games in front of my family, ached for the times when a cousin or an aunt or unc would attend, but especially Mom, who missed many more than she made.
How’s the electric-blue chariot? I say. You still in love?
Yes, in love, she says.
All to the good, I say. So everything’s working? No troubles.
None that I know of, she says.
Great, I say. So you good on funds for gas? Your pockets straight otherwise?
Son, you’ve done enough, she says. More than enough, she says. Let’s enjoy the game.
Next time downcourt KJ dribbles hard left and banks a layup over a boy that’s hit his growth spurt hella-early. It’s a nice play, but you’d think my bro rescued a newborn from bullets, with the racket Mom makes: thunderclaps and stomping and high-pitched rah-rahing.
Mom, I say. It’s two points. One. Two. That’s all. Which means it’s our two points.
No. It’s your brother’s two points, she says. You could show more support.
Support, I say. Me? Wow, Mom. Like really, wow, forreal.
KJ’s game is one of those back-and-forth contests where each mistake is mega, the extended remix of an original blunder — BKA nerves for the players, fever for us. You know what I’m saying, an atmosphere to birth a hoop hero — or lay a hyped prospect’s name to early rest.
Midquarter of next quarter, KJ shakes by his man, spins out of control, and slings a pass that smacks his teammate dead in the face: BLAM! His teammate drops to a knee and then falls on his back. He covers his mug and moans. The coach flurries off the bench with a towel in hand. Bench-warmers fly on the court and make a half-moon around the boy. Can’t tell you how long the youngster mewls, how long the coach presses a towel against a gang of blood and tears.
Oh my gosh, Mom says.
He’ll be cool, I say. Bloody nose or a headache. No worse.
Well, I hope so, she says. But I meant your brother.
KJ is gaping at the harm from steps back, his face my face from years ago, high school, maybe further: a boy with something precious knocked clean the fuck right out of him.
Second half, no fist-pumping pom-pom plays for Team KJ — not a one till minutes in, when he reaches for a steal, lets his man slip past, and, trying to recover, hazards a hero-block that damn near decapitates a boy. The refs’ whistles trill in sync. The opposite bench screams flagrant foul. The boy lays out for counts, gets up woozy, heads to the line. KJ’s coach calls time-out and hastens to meet his players, but KJ drops his head and drags tacit past the huddle. He grabs the farthest seat, a chair a motherfuckin city block from anyone else, and makes himself an avalanche. With attitude like this, he seems headed down the same implacable road I was, seems a trial or two from blowing the faith of the ones who believe and don’t have to. This is what I’ll tell him later, when we’re away from the lick of this flame.