So my boy’s, formerly my boys’, school announced that they would have the traditional parents/kids basketball game this year. Which is odd; this is the sixth year at least one of our boys has played basketball, well, off and on for quarantines and small class sizes, and this is the first year we’ve heard of the game. But I was kind of excited to participate with my son, who is off to high school next year, so it seems like our participation in school things kind of feels like a workplace after you’ve given notice—a bit distant, with the knowledge that everything will go on without you, and people might not miss you that much.
As you might know, gentle reader, I have only played a game and an inning of organized team sports—my brief stint on a recreational softball league when I was in college. I was ‘traded’ to the other team so they had enough to play in the second game, and I took a line drive to the face in the second inning, so after a ride to the ER in an ambulance and triaging down to “Eh, we’ll get to that guy strapped to the back board just in case there’s a neck injury,” I was thrown out of the league because they thought I might get hurt. But the league took up a collection for me, and I got like $30 to help with my medical bills, or pizza, as it turned out. But no little league baseball and no school sports for the scrawny, underweight, undersized, and nerdy young Brian J.
Perhaps I am overstating it; after all, I did have physical education class for a year and a half in high school, and we did have a basketball unit which featured some ad hoc half court games. The highlight of my gym basketball career was one game when I actually stole the ball from Charlie Lambert (probably not his real name, but a thirty-years-later approximation), a full-sized young man. Everyone chided him for it, so he drove at me again, and I stole the ball a second time. Feeling high on my basketball ability, when he got by me another time, I leaped up and tried to knock the ball out of his hands from behind. Apparently, this is not allowed—I am not sure Coach Snell presented all of the rules to us, as the expectation might have been that by high school, boys new sports rules. I also remember after fouling Lambert, someone shouted “Stuffed by the Animal!” Animal would have been my ironic nickname given to me by the other kids in gym class, which was slightly better than Waldo, the nickname given to me by the malcreants in the trailer park. Yes, I know it’s miscreant, but these kids were not just misguided, they were evil.
The only other experience I have with basketball at all is watching my boys play. And over the, what, four out of six seasons, I learned a little about the game. Enough for some bleacher coaching. Enough to know that ref hand signals sometimes look like football penalties, and turning your hand right side up while dribbling causes the ref to make a “making flapjacks” hand signal. Or is that crossing backwards over the center line?
That is not to say that I have not played a little basketball—we have a hoop at Nogglestead, and once they came into their middle school basketball years, we started playing some HORSE and some one-on-one or one-on-two. One of the other parents, in the weeks leading up to the game, asked, probably rhetorically, that it was hard to decide whether to play easy against the kid at home or to go all out. I said, “Play to win,” and I pointed out that one day, very soon, the children will start beating us, and when they start, they will not stop until we stop playing against them. So I have comported myself well on our driveway so far, making enough shots to generally not lose, but that’s different from a five-on-five team game.
The athletic director(s) of the school set the date and time a couple of weeks in advance, which gave me lots of time to worry about how I would do. I mean, I am fairly athletic for my age, but I’ve not been hitting the gym or the dojo too much over the last six months. So my conditioning is suspect. Although, to be honest, questioning my physical abilities and dreading upcoming physical events has become a bit of a hobby of mine—I worried about my pushup test and the black belt run for my martial arts rank confirmation testing last year, and I dreaded the Ruck and Run last November. So I worried about my physical ability to perform. Not enough to preclude me from going to McDonald’s and then to the frozen custard stand right before the game, though. Although I later said that fattening my participating boy up before the game was part of my strategy.
I also worried about what I should wear. I mean, the kids played with special shorts and jerseys. Geez, I didn’t even have basketball shorts or a jersey to wear. I worried that if I showed up in standard gym gear, that I might look out of place. So in the week leading up to it, I decided to get some longer shorts and a loose sleeveless shirt for the game. Alright, actually, I visited the local sports gear and collectibles store to see if I could get a Giannis Antetokounmpo jersey or just a Milwaukee Bucks jersey, but the shop offered very limited NBA apparel. Which is just as well, as someone would have asked me to pronounce “Giannis Antetokounmpo,” and I would have to reply, “Greek freak.” Also, I really shouldn’t spend that much money on something I would likely only wear once before it disappeared in to my biggest son’s room forever. But I did replace my athletic shoes, so I had a mostly new ensemble to wear. I wore two differently colored socks as a throwback to my oldest, who did that for his fifth and sixth grade teams and basically was his style, off and on, onto high school, but I’m not sure who would remember. Folks were surprised earlier this year when I told them that the grandson of a Milwaukee Bucks championship team used to play SLS—the institutional memory is not as good as high school.
So game night came. The youngest had archery practice, so I picked him up from school an hour and a half before the first game was to begin. We had some McDonalds and some Andy’s and returned to watch the fifth and sixth grade game.
And then it was time.
As I might have mentioned, all I really wanted to do was to comport myself well. Maybe a basket. To not embarrass myself. And, well, I succeeded, mostly.
Despite my worry, I was amongst the best conditioned adult, and I have a lot of quick burst speed, so several times when one of the kids would break out, I would sprint and be in the defensive zone quickly, much to the kids’ surprise.
However, it became clear that I had never played with a team before and had never been coached. I made some basic mistakes, like guarding on the outside instead of getting between the kid driving and the basket. I justify this not due to ignorance but knowing that the best players in seventh grade liked to go outside to take a three from next to the basket, and I cut that play off with some help inside. But mostly, I didn’t want to run into a crowd of kids. I mean, I was probably the biggest man out there at roughly 6 foot and 200 pounds. I could have trampled those kids. Heaven knows how many times I’ve run over my smaller son in the driveway.
Also, when someone passed across court from me, I would stop to catch the pass, but it would pass just by my outstretched arm. This happened a couple of times, but it was only after the game that I recognized that they were leading me with the pass, throwing the ball to where I was going. So when I stopped, I let it right by. Also, I lacked whole-court vision, so when I caught a pass or stole a ball, I would drive a couple of steps or immediately shoot. My experience in one-on-one on a small patch of driveway taught me this was the way to go. Spoiler alert: it was not the right thing to do, but I was not used to playing with people on my team. In our driveway, we did that, once, parents versus kids, but only once. One does not need to dribble far in our driveway.
So in spite of looking like I belonged there:
(Not really, I look like an old man who bought a missized Basketball Outfit), I did not end up with any baskets. I didn’t actually get a lot of playing time, either, as both teams coached themselves, and they kind of told us to go in when our kid went in. My son said the others on him team left him on the bench for most of the game, but he might not have been inserting himself when he should—his team coach, one of the refs for the game, shouted at him that he should be watching the clock to tell him when he should insert himself, and he might have forgotten.
We had fun; I covered him, and once when I drove with the ball, he chased me, and when I stopped, he bounced off of me and fell to the floor (unhurt—one of his wonts when playing is to play so aggressively that he hits the floor in overpursuit). The refs had their thumbs on the scale, though, helping out the kids by actually screening parents, helping the kids inbound, and calling strange fouls. But it was not supposed to be a competitive game regardless of what I thought.
So I survived, I did not embarrass myself (or perhaps I did and just didn’t know it). I did end up with a triple double if you write it 00-00-00.
