Pounding the Rock

by Marc Skelton

  Timmy’s size was intimidating to tiny guards flying into the paint, and it also was a problem for some police officers. In the summer of 2014, the same summer Eric Garner was choked to death by an overly aggressive police officer in Staten Island, Timmy was also brought down by several policemen in a stop-and-frisk gone wrong, and a choke hold eventually made him relent. I was happy he was in college and sent him a text.

  “How’s the season going?” I typed.

  I missed him. I end up missing all the guys who play for me. I also worry about them after they leave Fannie Lou. We spend a lot of time and effort to help children transform their lives, but poverty has the power to undo a lot of the work we accomplish. I feel it’s important to try to keep in touch with everyone, even after they graduate. What would have happened if I wasn’t there? Would the team have been arrested? I don’t know.

  FRANKIE’S RETURN

  “It’s dumb cold,” Bryant said, his large red headphones keeping his neck warm like an ermine scarf.

  “I told y’all it was mad brick,” Shamar said.

  We stood frozen, waiting for the bus. The vapor of our warm breath clouded the Bx11 bus windows when it finally came. But wouldn’t you know it, we would still have to walk a half mile in the cold to get to Morrisania High School, past the frozen carpet of leaves and the puddles of ice. Our extremities will have given up and the blood will retreat. Not a testicle will be descended. One of the biggest drawbacks of away games is the commute. New York City public school varsity teams use the train and the bus. There are no yellow buses to bring us to the games. Once or twice a season, the school can procure us a white omnibus for away games. The rest of the time we use public transportation. Can you imagine trying to squeeze a basketball team onto an already packed subway car with tired commuters at rush hour? It is an act of magic.

  Here we are in the heart of winter. It has been several days since I have had direct sunlight. We got off the Bx11 bus and made our way across the sylvan Crotona Park. The hills were blanketed in hoarfrost. The smell of the Chinese restaurant over on Third Avenue made me hungry. Once we get into the school, we passed the mercurial school safety agents and quickly changed in the locker room. Often it’s a bathroom stall, where the guys rotate in like a dressing room at Macy’s. Here we do our best; we walk long distances in the cold to our games and we don’t have a proper place to change or store our belongings. We put our bags behind our bench. I start to think back to the conditions at the charter schools.

  Here at Morrisania High School, you walk into the gym and the lights are fading like the four o’clock sun. The crowd doesn’t dare take off their jackets. It might be warmer outside than it is in here. The ancient gyms of New York City are small; they are from a different era, contradicting everything we teach about basketball. We want spacing on offense, but there is no room to move when the top of the key touches the circle at half-court.

  “Tonight, I want you to pretend we are playing half-court. There are no fast breaks in this gym,” I said.

  Over the last few years, I have applied the famous lines from Dante’s Inferno to this gym. It should read, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” above the entrance. Morrisania’s is the smallest gym in the PSAL. It has the dimensions of a Porta potty. Of course Morrisania was undefeated at home this year, because everyone plays like crap here. Our bench and their bench almost meet at half-court, separated only by the scorer’s table. At the table were three oversize teenagers. The refs looked like they were also worn-out from the long season. One ref is fighting ennui and losing. The other is so intent on this game getting over as quickly as possible, he leaves his earrings in. Over the years, I have gotten to know these guys pretty well, and I knew this was going to be a quick game. A 4:30 p.m. start and a 5:30 p.m. finish, maybe six whistles, and they would cut the halftime minutes from a ten-minute break to five. That might not be so bad, because tonight was Salome’s first birthday and I wanted to get home for some cake and ice cream.

  “Coach, where is the bathroom?” Bryant asked.

  “Down the hall to the left,” I answered.

  Somebody had to pee. Somebody always has to pee. The gym was filling up. Space was limited, and yet more and more fans arrived. They sat on the floor opposite the bench, their warm backs up against the cold cement wall. There I spotted Frankie’s mom. I waved and walked over to hug her.

  “You know, Coach, I couldn’t come to the games and see him on the bench. It broke my heart,” Caridad said.

  “That’s two broken hearts,” I confessed.

  “Well, good luck, and thank you for all you do for my son.”

  Coaches across the country shudder at the phrase “parental involvement.” I welcomed it. Sigmund Freud said, “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of conqueror, the confidence of success which often induces real success.” I needed all the help I could get, and Frankie’s mom, while absent a large part of the season, was here tonight with bottles of Gatorade for the whole team. Tonight was Frankie’s first game back since breaking his foot, ironically playing the very same team he broke his foot against in December. He had been practicing, but we planned to play him only a little in the second and fourth quarter.

  A few days before he was medically cleared, he asked me, “Coach, so how’s this going to go?”

  “How does what go?”

  “Me coming back and stuff,” Frankie said.

  “Did Tom Brady come off the bench when he came back?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Frankie said.

  “Never mind, you are going to let me know how your foot feels. Your lungs and legs will burn too,” I warned.

  He was worried about the team’s chemistry. We were 19-1. I wasn’t worried at all about the team’s chemistry, because Frankie’s the best teammate of all time. I was worried that he would move like a starfish while everyone else moved like barracudas.

  The game begins and we can’t move. Morrisania can’t move. The beautiful game of basketball was not meant to be played within these dimensions. It was claustrophobic at best, and at worst it felt like it would be a better idea to play three-on-three. Here we are in a tar pit game on a frozen night in January struggling in Morrisania’s inferno. This is what dinosaurs must have felt like after the asteroid hit. It may not be the end of the world, but this game feels like it. I see the two basketball teams and I don’t recognize what they are doing. Suddenly I realize I have seen this type of game before. It looked like Miami Heat versus the Knicks circa 1998. Ultra-physical, plodding; I thought this type of basketball had been outlawed when Jeff Van Gundy was used as a broom at Madison Square Garden.

  When Frankie entered the game, he looked and moved like Han Solo after he was removed from carbonite. Unsteady. He was out of tune, like dusty piano strings. Yet this was the perfect game to slowly get his feet wet. Not one of those greyhound games we played against Smith or Comprehension Model School earlier in the year, which would have been too much for him.

  Before the game, we reminded the guys over and over to play the game the best they could despite the conditions. It was great to have Frankie back with us. It was the same feeling I had when my daughters’ grandparents came to visit. Someone is going to sweep the floor after dinner, someone can help do the dishes. I wasn’t expecting a lot from Frankie, but a little bit of housecleaning goes a long way.

  We traded the lead all game long, and the horn sounded with the teams tied at 64. The Morrisania players celebrated at half-court. It was the surreal moment of the season: the game was headed to overtime, yet they were acting like they had won a championship. I had to look at the scoreboard multiple times. I asked the refs what was going on and they didn’t know. They’d thought they were going to get home quickly. Ulysses S. Grant begins his memoir this way: “Man proposes, God disposes.”

  We won 77–66 in overtime. Frankie was
4-for-4 from the free-throw line in the extra period. He ended the game with 7 points. His comrades did what they had been doing all season. Charles had another monster game, 20 points and 20 rebounds. Walfri and Ty had double-doubles too. While those four guys played well, I saw Shamar looking over his shoulder too many times. Tonight would be JB’s last start, effectively ending his season. Mack’s minutes would also shrink now. They were all worried about Frankie’s return.

  FEDERALISTS

  Frankie had come back, and the potential for a bad chemical reaction was now becoming more obvious. He was going to take playing time away from guys. He was going to take shots. We also knew he was going to add things to the team. Teams, regardless of an injured player’s return, have a tendency to implode toward the end of the season. This interval between the regular season and the playoffs is usually when the pull of the season goes slack. In order to minimize unforeseen mischief and maximize our chances of not losing in the first round or the second or ever, I needed to do something. Most of the time we scrimmaged other teams. I hate scrimmages. I was preoccupied with finding something else to do. Something creative. Something new. Something exciting.

  “Marc, you guys want to scrimmage this week?” A text from Chris, the Clinton coach, arrived.

  “My place or yours?” I asked.

  In a lot of ways, teams evolve like the United States. The transition from the Revolution to the failure of the Articles of Confederation to the genius and stability of the Constitution wasn’t easy. A few years ago I was selected for a James Madison Fellowship. One of the requirements was to attend its summer institute. The James Madison Summer Institute lasts six weeks and is held at Georgetown University: the same grounds where Patrick Ewing blossomed, John Thompson fought Proposition 48, and the Georgetown president sold 272 slaves to resolve some old debts in 1838. One of the requirements for the fellowship was an essay on the Constitution. As a basketball coach, I tackled the Federalist Papers with a particular interest: “Madison clearly envisaged the imbroglios that would ensue during ratification. He agreed with Hamilton that safety was paramount. To secure safety, he wrote Federalist #10, suggesting some remedies against the fear of a monolithic society.” I was not satisfied with this essay. I sat up late every night, reading Madison and Hamilton, thinking about getting in shape, and writing fragments about the 2014 San Antonio Spurs. What I really wanted to write was a treatise on how to prevent my team from killing each other before the playoffs started. Madison and Hamilton seemed like the perfect candidates to study. A New Yorker and a Virginian wouldn’t make great teammates, but they had agreed on a common goal: a constitution.

  While coaches traffic in preparation and avoiding losing, players enter the playoffs with uninsulated bravado about winning. Who doesn’t prefer the glory of the latter to the sadness of the former? This part of the season makes me want to jump out a window: From February 10, we would have to wait until March 2 to play in the first round of the playoffs. That’s twenty days without a game. Each February we also get a week off from school. That’s five days without school. February eats my soul.

  Everything we worked toward gets unraveled in February. The rhythm of the game fades, practices are less intense, and the season stops. Over vacation those vital sleep patterns are disturbed. The structure of school evaporates; it’s difficult to be late for a three p.m. practice after school, but it’s likely that 75 percent of the team will be late for an eleven a.m. practice on a Wednesday during the inaptly named Winter Vacation. We needed this time to improve in a few areas. Frankie’s injury had a dual effect: the team now knew we could win against most teams without him, but we needed him to beat SBP. Some fractures don’t heal in a cast.

  The deceleration of basketball invites distractions. Miraculously, this season we sidestepped the girlfriend insurgency or siren call, the call of duty to babysit younger siblings, drugs, evictions, suspensions, arrests. Of course, girlfriends become more important as the season draws closer to an end. The sirens call, or more likely they text. Twenty days off and there were numerous ways to “disturb the tranquillity” of the season. I didn’t want to lose our dexterity, finesse, endurance, timing, grit, strength, or hunger. I was helpless not to.

  When pushed to come up with ideas of what to do over this break, we set up fake games called scrimmages. Clinton became one of three scheduled scrimmages. The guys have limited patience with these delusional activities. Ideally, the scrimmages work and we get to run our offense against another team’s defense, stay in gamelike shape, and break the monotony of playing against each other in practice. On occasion, there can be an ego bubble that bursts.

  For example, against Clinton, Charles came off a dribble handoff and launched a three-pointer.

  “Can you take one dribble and attack the rim, please?” I begged.

  Charles paused. Obviously upset and embarrassed, he walked off the court and sat at the end of the bench. He thinks that I think he can’t shoot. Here there is an issue of communication and trust. I probably should have explained for the twentieth time this season that his jump shot is not statistically sound. This was our first confrontation in three years. Yet I seemed to have one like this every year. Last year it was with Rory Brown.

  I remember it well. “We can’t double-team if you’re not playing defense!” I yelled at him. I was already hoarse in the first quarter. Rory’s shoulders dropped, his eyes closed, and his jaw muscles flexed. On the next possession, Rory dribbled off his foot. Then, back on defense, he didn’t even bother to rebound. I was forced to sub Rory out early in the game. Sometimes, removing a player from a game can be like dancing with a rabid wolverine.

  “If you’re not going to rebound or play defense,” I told him, “you can watch from the bench.”

  “I’ll watch from the bench and we’ll lose,” he threatened.

  We’re both about to start screaming insults at each other. Simultaneously, I considered this a direct challenge and understood that he was trying to assert his perceived importance to the team.

  “No, we won’t,” I retort. “We will not lose this game. Watch.”

  At that moment, Rory took off his jersey and walked out of the gym. Why? How? It was clear the disquiet of adult life had penetrated into his adolescent world. How many kids have wanted to quit because someone was asking them to rebound? The finality of taking off your high school jersey for the final time shouldn’t happen in public. It should be a sacred moment with your teammates. This isn’t supposed to happen, I thought to myself. Not Rory. He was a four-year player. One of the best defenders I have ever coached, who emptied his tank every game.

  Rory said good-bye to his youth, to his dreams, and begrudgingly walked out of the gym and into adulthood—his cocoon of high school basketball ripped open. When I entered the empty locker room after the game that night, I found his discarded shorts and sneakers scattered across the floor, as though he busted through his chrysalis too early. Why did Rory quit? I hadn’t seen anything coming at all, and Rory’s unprecedented departure that night left me and the team thunderstruck.

  Was Charles going to quit too?

  I was so attuned to how the players were treating each other, I lost focus on how I needed to interact with them. Charles’s angry reaction wasn’t the only thing that felt like last season. For the second year in a row, we finished 23-1. The absence of actual games allowed Frankie’s return to produce an aura of jealousy, and rivalries percolated underneath each pass and shot. Practices were chippy and more intense. Now a dark cloud of potential quitting reemerged on the horizon. If Charles went, I might lose a lot more of this crew. As the days went by, practices lost their intensity and spontaneity. Like Ahab, I wondered, “The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?” What would we do in the playoffs? Quit? Forget our roles? Misplace our desire?

  I returned to the Hamilton and Madison playbook. At the Summer Institute, there were some forty
high school teachers. Together, between lectures on Madison and visits to Montpelier, his plantation, I would sneak off to the gym and bump into old Georgetown greats like Dikembe Mutombo or Othello Harrington. I should have asked them about jealous teammates and irascible coaches.

  At the end of the Summer Institute, I figured out how Madison and Hamilton worked brilliantly together to produce the Federalist Papers. They would break up soon afterward. I was enthralled. This idea of people working closely together and splitting up later once the common enemy was vanquished was brilliant. The days before the playoffs were plenty, as were the distractions. I could create the common enemy—me—but I wasn’t sure that was sound practice.

  That evening I went to the gym and watched the Washington Wizard and former Georgetown guard Otto Porter shoot what must have been a googolplex of jump shots. In between water breaks I read Hamilton: “Men are ambitious, vindictive and rapacious,” he writes in Federalist #6. Well, so are teenage boys. We all harbor those “private passions”—like the ones where a guy thinks he deserves more playing time than another guy. I walked back to the dorms past the magnolia trees. Their scent was as unfamiliar to me as the song about Shenandoah everyone in class seemed to know.

  How can we survive these twenty days? Each day would be an iteration of Federalist #6: “revolt…menacing disturbance…rebellion…discord…hostility…aggrandized themselves at the expense of their neighbors.” Left alone, the team will make war on each other, or on me. I know other teams were experiencing the same thing. In Federalist #7 Hamilton “suggests that the motto of any country opposed to the United States should be divide et impera [divide and conquer]”; this became a useful strategy for us to employ before we cannibalized each other.

  This team had the benefit of a deep playoff run last year. But I kept seeing a thread of smoke that I imagined was a hidden blaze behind the door. A fire I wouldn’t be able to put out. For the whole twenty days, I suffered manic thoughts tackled by delirium, nightmares of missed free throws, disorientation, shoulder cramps, cold sores, night sweats, back pain, visions of Charles following in Rory’s footsteps, strep throat, athlete’s foot on my itchy right toe, joint stiffness, loss of appetite. My stomach felt like it was tied into an ancient sailor’s knot.