Pounding the Rock

by Marc Skelton

  Basketball allowed me to trust adults again. That my trust in the universe was sometimes broken didn’t matter on the court. Coaching allowed me to reestablish trust with young men who may have had the same issues with adult trust that I had. Truth lives in the space between a player and coach. The hours spent in the gym allow different conversations between a coach and his players. I started to see coaching like the Great Gray Bridge: a chance to build something trustworthy. A chance to build something kids could depend on. Nobody walks over a bridge they don’t trust. A bridge to a better version of ourselves. Yet these playoff losses were weakening the bridge.

  There was an absurdity in expending all my emotions on this sport, on the season, on this game. I was depleted.

  The target was winning. It never moved. I was a good coach, but far from great. Minor calibrations didn’t work. New plays were fruitless. New players weren’t as committed as the older guys, leaving us in a position of never quite being a varsity team; always three juniors and four seniors. Maybe it was time for a junior varsity team, I thought. How could we make the leap? Increase practice intensity? I’m fairly intense, so I don’t think that was it. My coaching philosophy of team ball versus hero ball wasn’t going to attract the most talented individual players. The championship formula seemed unsolvable.

  Being driven by the same feeling of being semi-competent each year is dizzying. Anthropologists call this the liminal space or liminality. To be more precise, I lived on the threshold of meaningful coaching. Coaching makes me feel my life is important and has meaning. Art does this too. It was the same mechanism. I coach because I wanted to be recognized as someone who could coach. I knew my X’s and O’s. Still, something was missing.

  The familiarity of our season ending before the playoffs did, not dissimilar to reading a book over and over again, felt like I was building a bridge to nowhere. In The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, the forgotten lighthouse becomes the hero of the story. A children’s book was the embodiment of the season and my career. The idealistic approach to coaching was to coach with your heart, coach them unconditionally, and win a championship in the meantime. In theory this was a solution to the passion trap that shows up every March. Like a mad captain who knows that without hunting for the whale, you’ll never find out what it feels like to kill the whale.

  Obviously, I didn’t quit. The following season, Jimeek Conyers and Michael Castillo, now seniors, willed the team to the school’s first PSAL championship. Michael and Jimeek grew up with Dean Oliver’s Four Factors. Our practices and film sessions were fortified with basketball analysis: offensive rebound rates, effective field-goal percentage, turnover rate, and how many times we were able to shoot free throws. We eliminated all mid-range shots. We strictly shot three-pointers and layups. By this time Mike was an undersize power forward with the heart of a lion, and Jimeek a water bug of a point guard with the armor of a rhino. We added Corey Morgan, an athletic center, and a few three-point specialists: Kenny Bonaparte, Tony Crespo, Oscar Norales, and Isaiah Thomas. We were well on our way to the top of the pyramid among small high schools in New York.

  With data applied to basketball, I now had a weapon of math destruction. But the championship in 2013 wasn’t won just with analytics. Numbers don’t protect you from the emotions of teenagers, or poverty, or the vagaries of the game. In coaching you are always waiting for the unexpected shoe to drop, unfortunately, you are waiting for Chekhov’s gun to go off. When will the mercurial forward quit? Who will be injured? Suspended? Who will have a cold shooting night?

  I started to bring Nina to Sunday practices for two reasons: I love the feel of how a basketball team works, and I thought she could see our partnership in action; and out of necessity—Jessica worked the weekend shift at the hospital. I thought it was important for Nina to see how hard the guys worked in this little shoebox of a gym. Nothing fancy going on here. Just old-fashioned teamwork.

  Nina has never asked me why I’m so devoted to this team or the school. She just knows that when she comes to practice she gets to play with the iPad. Nina is unaware of which player lives in a shelter, or which player didn’t eat breakfast because he didn’t have any food in his house. She doesn’t know about the young man who limps because he has fragments of a bullet in his knee. She doesn’t know about the player who has SAT flashcards in his backpack. She can’t see his dreams of being the first person in his family to go to college. She doesn’t know whose brother is locked up. She doesn’t know that not one kid in the gym, including me, actually grew up with his biological father. She has no idea of the number of unrelenting demands on the players. They think it’s funny she won’t even pick up a ball to dribble. She gives some players high fives, and with one or two she’s unnecessarily coy. I have always thought she needed to see where her father spends a lot of his time, with young men who love this game and depend on me to help them become better versions of themselves. Her world consists of eating a cheese stick on the bleachers with an iPad on her lap at this moment. A little girl with her glowing iPad helped me cut through the fog of coaching.

  The beam of light from the iPad, like a lighthouse, glows in the gym. Unknowingly, she was helping guide me to become a better coach. You have to enlighten as a coach, not build a bridge on hope alone. Help your team understand the complexities of life. When they ask why a certain school in the suburbs has an athletic trainer and an ice machine, the conversation moves into how public schools are funded. They need adult answers to teenage questions. Nina became the fuel to become a great coach because I wanted her to be proud of her dad. Nina helped me embrace the imperfections of my team. We all have them. She taught me that a committed coach should grasp his team’s dysfunction and their incompleteness as children, as students, and as players. The same way a husband loves his wife or a father loves his daughters. If deep inside we know we have our own dysfunctions and weaknesses, then by truly understanding my team’s blemishes I could help them shine.

  Nina became my lighthouse. When I started embracing our difficulties and not trying to hammer them straight, she helped me see that those rough playoff games were unsuccessful because stress was not distributed throughout the team. Assistant coaches had a duty to perform; the last guy on the bench, the shot clock operator, the managers all had jobs to do. In all sports you need to win in the playoffs to legitimize the program, and everyone needs to perform well in their duties.

  I was focused on building a bridge and I forgot I needed a lighthouse. Rereading a book I had read dozens of times to my daughter on the worst night of my coaching career helped me realize what my coaching needed: light. I asked Nina why she likes The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge so much, hoping to add more insight to coaching, fatherhood, and life.

  “Because,” she said. “It is right there.” Pointing outside the window to the illuminated George Washington Bridge. I didn’t have to swivel my head. She was right. What was missing, in two words, was a lighthouse.

  QUARTERFINALS

  On to the quarterfinals and back to Uncommon High School in Brooklyn. We were scheduled to play my friend Mike King’s team, the number-ten-seeded Community Health Academy, located in Washington Heights.

  “They love to shoot the three,” Kyheem said. “They have this one kid whose release is unreal.”

  “They play the Modern Game,” I said.

  The Modern Game is where threes are shot more than twos. Hasn’t three always been more than two? The Ancients believed the closer to the hoop, the better. Pass, even force the ball into the paint was how the game was played for a very long time. Times have changed. Think about this for a minute: In 1991, at the age of thirty-four, Larry Bird averaged 3.3 three-point shot attempts a game. In 2016, Stephen Curry attempted 11.2 three-pointers a game. The Phoenix of Community Health Academy were burning up the nets. They were averaging 76 points a game and making almost fourteen threes a game.

 
I wrote our postseason shibboleths on the board: PACE, PRESSURE, AND COMPOSURE.

  “This is the best shooting team in the city. They have five guys who can shoot the three.

  “We have to defend the three.” Then I repeated the words I had written on the chalkboard as we boarded the bus. (This time, once again, we had a bus.)

  We couldn’t get out of the Bronx. Traffic snailed and the lights were uncooperative. A quiet hush fell behind me. I intended to let the team sleep the whole way to Brooklyn. After some foolishness, they did.

  When we finally arrived in Brooklyn an hour and a half later, I heard a conversation behind me.

  “They are Amish,” someone said.

  “You mean Jewish?” someone corrected.

  On the way to Uncommon for the quarterfinals was an ocean of furry sable hats parading around on the Sabbath.

  In our pregame ritual, guys ran to the deli up the block for their meals of chop cheese sandwiches, chips, and Gatorade, each with his own soundtrack of Drake or Lil Uzi bumping in his headphones.

  Right before games I would often listen to Bloc Party’s song “The Price of Gas,” about consumption, innocence, an election, and an imminent war in a fossil-fuel-rich country. The song begins with a syncopated drumbeat that reminds me of a crowd clapping in unison, the way they do in Moscow after the ballet. Kele Okereke sings, with the confidence of a farmer predicting rain, “I can tell you how this ends. We’re going to win this.” This became the soundtrack of our season.

  It was our second time here, but Uncommon High School hadn’t lost its luster. It reminded me of the Hermitage Museum. Each time I am there, I discover something I had never seen before. This time the classrooms still had the Manhattan skyline in view, but the whiteboards seemed whiter, a thermostat on the wall newer, rugs on the floor more luxurious. There were also items that I didn’t inventory before: a prayer rug from Central Asia, graffiti-free desks, organized bookshelves. The money available to charter schools was well on display.

  “Why don’t we have desks like this?” Bryant asked.

  “I’m going to tell Jeff [our principal] about this place,” Walfri said.

  Directions were on the blackboard: RUN THEM OFF THE THREE-POINT LINE. CHARLES AND WALFRI WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST.

  * * *

  —

  The first half was an all-you-can-eat sushi platter of three-pointers. It was not the Phoenix, but the Panthers who caught fire. Shamar and Tyree couldn’t miss. Against Townsend Harris, Tyree’s shooting had been frigid, like the polar vortex that engulfed the city that week. Tonight both he and Shamar hit rhythm threes. Shamar picked up a steal, quickly took a dribble to set his eyes on the rim, and without hesitating hit a three from deep. Right before halftime Frankie joined in on the fun. He pump-faked, took a dribble into the primeval mid-range area, and nailed a beautiful, classic pull-up jumper as the clock expired. Even the Ancients would have loved it. Frankie’s bone was healed, and we were becoming something manifold and unstoppable right before my eyes. We were up 50–27. Watching us share the ball, hit threes, and play defense was like eating homemade khinkali, Georgian dumplings, and drinking endless cha-cha, Georgian brandy, with close friends on New Year’s Eve. It will alter your existence. This team was becoming historical.

  When we returned to the court for the second half, we waited to see what type of adjustments the Phoenix would make. They stayed in their 3–2 zone defense.

  During a time-out in the third quarter, I was kneeling when I saw that Frankie’s compression pants had a rip and his knee was bleeding. We threw a Band-Aid on it. He’s patched up now like a punctured bicycle tire, but he had regained his legs, shooting form, and confidence, giving us a “trio of lancers”: three shooters on the perimeter. We hit thirteen threes; Shamar and Ty hit four apiece, Frankie added two more, Walfri, Jaelen, and Kenneth added one apiece. Tyree was a virtuoso, with 21 points. Should I worry that Charles had only 9 points and 6 rebounds and a technical foul? No. My friend Lauren, an ethnomusicologist, once described Chopin’s left hand as the orchestra and his right hand as the vocalist. Tonight Frankie played like Chopin. He had 26 points on 11-for-13 shooting, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, and zero turnovers. Sweetest music.

  THE ADAMS CHRONICLES

  I was still suffering flashbacks from last season. We had to play at Uncommon again. For the second year in a row we faced a familiar-sounding foe in the semifinals. Last year it was Jane Addams; this year it was the number-three seed from Brooklyn, Adams Street High School. Same gym, same seed, same situation. Interestingly, we had met the Eagles last year in the first round and Frankie hit Charles for a winning layup in a buzzer-beating out-of-bounds play. We liked the play so much we named it “Adams Street.”

  We continued to share counterintelligence. Coach Bitis from Maspeth sent me her game against Adams Street. Coach Ben Newman, from Lab Museum United High School, sent me his game. Adams Street had knocked Ben, a close friend, out of the playoffs, so it was personal.

  Brian Shea, in his second year at Adams Street, had proven himself to be a good young coach. Jessica commented that he reminded her of me ten years ago. Young, ambitious, and squeezing wins out of a team without a whole lot of raw talent.

  I didn’t have the early success that Coach Shea has had. I didn’t make my first final four until my seventh year coaching. Our conquest of New York City basketball had started with watching lots and lots of game film. Until recently, it seemed impossible for us to win a city title. But once we won in 2013, it became something I knew we could do again, even though a few years of playoff disappointment had filled me with some doubt.

  Film creates accountability. It forces us to face our mistakes, because I’m also guilty of egregious errors on the court: substituting for the wrong reasons, calling plays for guys who weren’t even on the court, not knowing how many fouls Walfri had. We must look in the mirror at our imperfections.

  Every film session is a lesson in truth, but we also make sure we appreciate the beautiful things we do. We love the perfect extra pass, the precise footwork of a physical box-out, the extraordinary effort of a helping defender. If you want things to happen again, they need to be rewarded—a new backpack, a T-shirt, more playing time, a clip on social media. Film allows all of us to improve, and it also allows me to feed the monster of the teenage ego.

  I secured another grainy low-fi video of an Adams Street game in December. It felt more like a piece of samizdat than a game. In vain we watch the smuggled clips for insights. The numbers on the players’ jerseys are not visible. The names on the roster and their stats do not match up. Sometimes in getting ready for games like these, we just have to improvise. We can hear them yelling their offensive plays as “uptown” and “Brooklyn,” two offensive plays we will strategize to disrupt. On defense Adams Street likes to put all their players on the same side of the court. They form a wall in front of the basket.

  I learned about the oblique method of attack and how it worked for Frederick the Great during the Seven Years’ War. Professor Warner Schilling was a luminary on the history of war. During his class, like in most of my years in graduate school, my mind would drift toward basketball.

  While studying tactics and plans in Professor Schilling’s “Weapons, Strategy, and War” course at Columbia, I wondered what would have happened if someone tried to beat Napoleon by using Napoleon’s technique. Every so often now I get the similar urge to run the other team’s play against them. Or even run a play named after the school. The Adams Street coach had mistakenly posted all his games on YouTube. I stayed up late the night before watching their last six games. They were hard to scout. This was going to be a difficult game.

  In the first quarter, the matchup had the making of a conservative game of chess. Neither team could really pull away. Adams Street was up by one. Then in the second quarter we went on a 22–4 run to more or less put the game out of reach for the E
agles.

  With three minutes remaining in the third quarter, we were winning 42–29. All season Charles had been tenacious and ferocious, yet he was always the quietest kid on the court. He speaks in church-like hushed tones while thunderously pursuing every missed shot. At this point in the game, Adams Street tried to play some mind games—as our lead grew, so did the trash talking. They talked a lot and Charles listened. During a time-out I heard the guys complain.

  “Coach, they are talking wild out there,” Charles said.

  “What are they saying?” I asked.

  It didn’t matter. This was the moment I had happily anticipated: “Run Adams Street.” Walfri took the inbounds. Cris and Shamar, simultaneously as planned, ran to half-court, while Frankie cut to the baseline, caught the ball, and lofted up a soft pass just in front of the rim. Charles then drove to the hoop and caught the ball in midair for an easy layup. On the next possession we reproduced the same play perfectly with the same result.

  A nonplussed Frankie dribbled out the clock. It was a feeling we didn’t get to enjoy at the semis last year in the same gym. He paused, looking at the scoreboard, to gauge the score and the seconds evaporating, a look of monumental gratification on his face. We won 73–55. I remembered that January 4 game, his sad look, an abandoned puppy at the end of the bench. Alone, listening to music to dull the pain of not playing.