by Dan Garmen
By the time I got back to the gym a few minutes after 6pm, 12 guys were already on the court, split into two groups. Several basketballs bounced and were shot as everyone warmed up. Usually, the teams tended to split by whatever end of the court players found themselves on. Will Curry warmed up at the far basket, so I walked toward him. As I tossed my gym bag onto the courtside bleachers, I noticed Amanda sitting down in the bleachers a few rows up from courtside. Our eyes met and she gave me a little smile. I waved back, and turned to see Will looking at Amanda, then me. I nodded at him, and Will threw me a ball, which I caught, dribbled once and shot a 22 footer that slipped through the hoop, not touching the rim. Several of the guys exclaimed their appreciation, and one of them, Tommy Walsh, another friend since 7th grade smiled and snapped the ball back to me.
Tommy, tall and skinny, had to be 6 foot 4 but I'd have been shocked if he weighed more than about 160 pounds. I caught the ball again, didn't bother dribbling this time, but spun the ball in my hand so the Spaulding trademark was visible, set both feet and let loose another jump shot that sailed through the basket exactly like the first. I could tell I had a good night coming.
Boy, was I right.
I turned to glance behind me to see the other ”team” moving our way. Will punched the ball out of Tommy’s hands and bounced it a couple times before shouting, “Shoot for possession,” and snapped the ball to me, which I caught. My eyes scanned the other team and saw it was heavy with guys who had graduated in the past couple years, including Mark Daniels, Paul Dumont and, just as Amanda promised, Steve Collins, who was dribbling a ball while doing his best to ignore me. I stood at the top of the key, and again not taking a dribble, popped a jumper almost without leaving my feet. The ball swished through, not touching the rim.
The tradition had always been hit the shot and your team gets the ball, but plays skins. Plenty of reversible jerseys were stacked in the equipment room, but wearing them would be evidence the team was practicing outside of the IHSAA rules and so we went “shirts and skins.” I didn't mind, being in much better shape than a few months ago. It was a hot and humid night, so it would be cooler without a shirt.
We had seven on our side of the court, so Tommy and Larry Kinsey sat down, while our opponents discussed who to start the scrimmage with. The five staying out on the court to play us were Steve, who had graduated in May, Paul and Mark, who along with Jimmy Harkins had graduated two years before and Shane Mathey, another senior, like Will and me. On the bench sat Ned Conner, an incoming Junior and Nicky Collins, Steve's brother, a sophomore this year. Nicky was huge, a chubby kid already 6 foot 2, who idolized his brother Steve, and was considered by just about everybody, an arrogant ass. I hadn't kept in touch with any of these guys after I left high school, not even Will, and had a moment of regret over it, as while we walked back from depositing our shirts on the bleacher by my gym bag. Will, who was four inches shorter than me, pointed at my chest and said, “Yech, what's that?”
My gaze followed his finger down, only to have him run it up and over my nose. “HA! Every time, Girrard, God, you'll never learn,” he laughed as he shoved me toward our basket, and went the other way to get the inbound pass and start walking the ball up the court.
On our team, besides Will and me, we had Alan Glazer, a solid 6-5 center, Tom Porter and the only black guy on our team Phil Moore. Phil, a Junior in the fall, stood about the same height as me. He played well in high school, but grew another 4 inches by the time he graduated, and was recruited by Indiana, playing four years for Bobby Knight. He didn't go pro, but his scholarship paid for a degree, and thanks to the basketball funded education and Coach Knight’s way of pushing his smarter players to take every advantage of the books and classrooms at IU, he followed up graduation with med school, becoming an orthopedic surgeon. A few years after my accident, I'd consulted Phil about my leg. In reality,I'd been hoping a new doctor who had been a friend and teammate would be an easy mark for painkillers, but I’d been wrong, and seeing him here today, even though none of that had happened in 1976, made me feel a little guilty.
Shane Mathey met Will at half-court, comically crouched on defense. Even though Shane had always been a complete and unabashed ass, half the time I kind of liked him. For some reason, he insisted on making the aggravation of Will his prime directive in life. I never understood their relationship. They were friends, but a times, we would have to be constantly on guard, ready to pull one of them off the other to keep the peace. I circled behind Will and moved to the baseline on the right, with Paul picking me up and guarding me. Steve went to cover Phil, and Alan, being the biggest guy on the court, sauntered down the middle to a post position. Will head-faked Shane to the left, crossover dribbled to the right, as I pressed into Dumont faux-clumsy, then rolled around and backdoored him to the hoop. Will and I did this all the time, but no one ever seemed to learn. He lobbed the ball to me as Alan drew his man out away from the basket, and I had an easy layup.
The game went back and forth pretty evenly, though no one kept score. During these sessions, we’d run for an hour or so, break, shoot for new teams and go another hour. When you got tired, you'd sit down and let whoever sat on the bench have some playing time. Pretty loose, it was almost always remarkably fair, the lack of score-keeping making the whole thing work. No overall win/loss, the only goal playing well, it makes sense for fairness to become the best strategy. Only when bragging rights, won/loss records and state championships mattered did how many minutes you got to play become an issue. This trip back to my past was full of interesting surprises and revelations that I hadn’t been mature observant enough to pick up on the first time. So much goes on around us when we're young, things we participate in and take advantage of, but aren't even aware of, much like my relationship with Steve Collins.
I'd gotten a lot of attention from Amanda in the past few months, she clearly staying close, even though her relationship with Steve seemed strong. My first time here, I had been oblivious to all of it, but age and experience made me more in tune with the games she played. I can only imagine what she did on the other side of the triangle with Steve to keep him off-balance. My rival had the most to lose with Amanda, because he had possession, and I admitted to myself if the situation were reversed, I’d probably have a less than positive attitude toward him, too. But this evening was about basketball. Or so I thought.
My tolerance and empathy toward Steve and his unenviable position came to an abrupt end 40 minutes or so into our scrimmage, and it wasn't pretty.
Phil Moore and I had been running some baseline pick and roll stuff, designed to confuse the defenders and free up one of us up near the basket. When you're on defense and you find yourself being picked (or blocked), the standard defensive play is to call 'switch' and have your teammate take over guarding your man as you take his. So, from time to time, I would find myself guarded by Steve. After one of these plays where Steve found himself guarding me, Phil had gotten the ball, taken the shot, but missed, the rebound heading straight for Steve and me. He had the better position, blocking me out pretty well. We both went up, and Steve came down with rebound, holding the ball in both hands after landing. Seeing he securely had possession of the ball, I pulled both my hands back to avoid fouling him , but Steve swung his arms around to the right, elbows extended. His right elbow connected with my jaw.
Hard.
The impact shocked me, my legs disappearing from underneath me as I hit the floor. My vision swam, a number of voices exclaiming “ooooooooo,” as they had seen the elbow thrown and me stagger backward, crashing to the floor. In my first trip through 1976, I would have been up and at Steve like a shot, but years of experience and a cooler head made me stop, feel my jaw for broken bones while still lying on the floor, and catch my breath. Don’t think I wasn't pissed, however. I'd been disrespected by this guy for more years than at this point in history we'd been alive, and now he's throwing elbows at me on the basketball court? The heat on the simmering stove representing th
e relationship I had with Steve Collins had now been cranked up, in danger of boiling over, but I didn't want it to boil over without effect. I wanted the experience to mean something, and as I lay on the hardwood, I knew just what to do. I rose with an arm up from Mathey, and looked up to see Amanda, now with a couple of her friends sitting with her in the bleachers. To her left, several yards away, sat Coach MacLaren, looking straight at me. His eyes unreadable, underneath the perfect flattop crewcut, and heavy black-framed glasses. I figured he was a little mystified I didn't jump up and go after Steve. Looking around, everyone else seemed surprised, too. Steve though, his back turned to me, walked casually away, dribbling. No apology or even a hand up.
What an ass.
As I nodded my thanks to Shane, he turned his head slightly and stage-whispered 'I'd kick his ass, Richie.'
I smiled at him, lifted my eyebrows and said, “Nah, no harm no foul,” and to everyone else, “shirt ball.” I turned to and found Amanda in the stands, her friend Terri sitting to her left and in the middle of telling her something of apparent importance, but she appeared much more interested in what was happening on the court. She smiled at me, and grimaced, showing me she knew the shot I'd taken had hurt.
I smiled and winked at her.
Phil came jogging over from his side of the court and asked “you all right, man?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “Switch with me, OK? I want to cover Steve.”
“Sure, but watch out dude, Coach is here.”
For some reason, I laughed. Phil’s use of the word “dude,” was suddenly funny to me.
“What?” Phil asked. His expression showed that he was worried I’d suffered a concussion.
“Nothing, just…Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, patting him on the shoulder to reassure him I was fine. Language changes over time, so subtly that we don’t often hear the change day to day. When you jump back like I had, those changes are obvious and sometimes overwhelming. “Dude” was something still mostly in the black lexicon in the mid 70s, and had not yet migrated to white suburban America.
I remember when I was in the sixth grade, playing basketball against another elementary school, I had hit a shot, and running back down the floor, Phil met me, and we slapped palms. Boy, did I get chewed out at the post-game critique session at home that night. “What the hell was that?” My dad asked. I tried vainly to explain the congratulatory tradition of slapping palms in an at the time fashionable “low 5.”
“Don’t do that,” my dad admonished. “That’s what the black boys do.”
Now, I don’t in any way believe my father has a racist bone in his body. He has respect for almost race, creed and color, but his 12 year old son doing something he usually attributed to black ballplayers, with their huge afros and ten inch sideburns do just didn’t work for him. Phil and his family were at the house that weekend for a dinner party with my folks and another couple, Phil’s father and my dad were partners on a couple construction projects, but on the court, I guess he wanted me to stay close to my racial stereotype.
To hear the way Phil said, “Dude” just slammed me pleasantly backwards again into the 70s. Those little treats came out of the blue for a couple years, and it was one of the things that made my time travel so much fun.
Phil stayed on the other side of the court, and when Dumont came down, a few feet ahead of the ball, he began guarding him. On the left side, I waited for Steve.When he came down to his corner a few seconds later, Steve's eyes met mine, an unsettled expression in them.
“Hey, Stevie, I’m on you now. No more chickenshit elbows, OK?”
He pointedly looked away, dismissing the thought as unworthy of response. Two passes, and the ball came to Steve. Always a fundamentally good player — he knew how to do everything necessary to get the job done, but lacked the special something, a creative spark giving him the ability to really play in the moment, to feel what they should do rather than think about it, which was the difference between a good player and a great one. Steve, as I knew he would, started moving with the ball to his right, but I blocked him, so he did what a good (but predictable) player did every time and turned, protecting the ball with his body and started dribbling to the left. I had seen this all in my mind, laying on the floor a few minutes before, so I let him get a half a step on me before acting. I started to follow him around, but cut the route in half so I could do something I had an almost sixth-sense talent for, poking the ball away and starting a fast break.
Will, the smartest player I’d every played with, was waiting for me to make this move, and as Steve began to think he'd gotten a step on me, he pushed the ball down to the floor in a dribble with his left hand, but the ball disappeared just after it bounced. It took a fraction of a second for him to realize I had reached in from behind and poked the ball toward Will Curry, who grabbed it, and shot off toward our basket. I had accelerated into a sprint at the same time I knocked the ball from Steve’s hand, and lead the break by several steps. Before he got to the top of the key, Will passed me the ball and I only had time for one quick dribble before going up from one foot and rolling the ball in off the ends of my fingers. I could easily have dunked, but thought I'd wait a little longer. Technically, the poke move was a “reaching in” foul, but refs only called it about half the time, depending on whether or not there was any contact. After the elbow Steve had thrown, decking me, he didn’t have the guts to call the foul, though. Running back down the floor, I flicked my eyebrows up at a smiling Will Curry, who smiled back, and as he passed Steve, shifted his face to an expression of mock-surprise, his mouth an 'o'. I have to admit I almost choked up a little, regretting I hadn't kept in touch with him, and have no idea what had become of him after high school.
The look on Steve’s face showed he was seriously pissed. I glanced again at Amanda, and though Terri was again talking to her, she kept track of everything happening on the floor. Amanda met my glance with another, bigger, smile. She held my gaze for half a second, then dropped it, looking toward Terri and laughing.
Steve got the ball a couple more times in the next few minutes, but because I was on him tight, he had no opening. Given the chance, I would have pulled the poke-and-run on him again, but he didn't seem willing to try and move the ball. The third time he took a pass, I again got up on him tight, making it tough for him to find somewhere to get the ball to. Finally, Shane Mathey popped free of Will, or appeared to. Steve, looking relieved to finally have someone to move the ball to, telegraphed his pass badly and despite Shane's moving toward the ball, Will jumped in and intercepted it instead, put the ball on the floor and accelerated toward our basket. I took off too, but Steve, the first one of us who knew Will was going to be in possession of the ball, headed down court as well, and had 3 or 4 steps on me.
Though I was running hard, I lagged too far behind them to take part in an effective 2 on 1 fast break, so Will pulled up with the ball at the top of the key, circled to the right and let the other players catch up. Steve stayed on me this time, and I went deeper into the left baseline corner as the play set up. Will had dribbled the ball to the right side of the court, so Steve sagged in toward the lane, keeping an occasional eye on me. Will threw the ball into the right corner to Tommy Walsh, who held it above his head, looking for Alan in the pivot, but he was well covered. Tommy passed the ball back to Will, who was watching out of the corner of his eye, as I edged up closer to the lane before cross-courted the ball sharply to me. I was already moving when I caught the ball, and cut toward the basket, putting the ball on the floor.
Now.
My position on the court was perfect for something spectacular, but what happened next made it even better. Steve had sagged in a bit too much, expecting Tommy to get the ball to Alan, giving me a clear lane to the hoop. Will's sharp “flash pass” came right to me. Steve realized what was happening, understood his responsibility for it, and with a determined attitude meant to keep me from making him look bad, pushed off his left leg to make sure I didn't g
et the ball to the basket. He only had two steps to get in position to jump, and later, both Will and Tommy told me they had no doubt Steve was looking to hack me hard to keep me from scoring. By the time he jumped off both feet, left hand reaching high, I had taken off from my left foot, the ball in my right hand, and my left arm sweeping Steve’s away.
The laws of Physics ensured he didn’t have a chance.
Steve’s right arm removed from the equation, he was now off-balance, as I drove into him mid-air. I hit him hard on my way to the basket, but the collision didn't slow me down much at all. I had more than enough energy to get above the rim and Steve spun off me to the right, folding as he went down hard. The sole defender out of the way, I slammed the ball through the hoop, my momentum keeping me flying toward the backboard. To keep my head from hitting the foam rubber bumper outlining the board, I held on to the rim, swinging back toward the foul line twice before letting go.
The other players cut loose with shock and laughing admiration. The one voice I heard above the rest, shouting “HO-LEE SHIIIIIIIT!!!” was Will's
I looked down, and let myself swing back toward the baseline a little bit, to avoid coming down on Steve, still lying on the floor. I landed as the noise of the response to my move and dunk resounded and realized I'd never made a play like that, nor in all probability would I ever again. These guys would be talking about this day for a long time.
The game had stopped, everyone looking down on Steve, who had started to get up now, murder in his eyes.
“All right, ENOUGH!” Coach MacLaren's voice boomed, startling us, saying, “Game's over, clear out, gentlemen,” then, his directing his attention at the stands, “and LADIES.” I’d known Tom MacLaren for a long time, and knew he was not happy. Everybody went quiet, and in response to the Coach's order, started for their gear and the door.