My Losing Season

by Pat Conroy

  I met Moates as he crossed half-court every time he came downcourt, his other four teammates lining up to pick for him in endless combinations all afternoon long. “Pick left,” I’d hear Doug cry out behind me. “Pick right, Pat!” John screamed. “Double pick,” Danny cried out as Buster Batts came out to set a high post screen. Because I was Mel Thompson trained, I knew that my only job was to stop Johnny Moates by myself. Moates dribbled toward me, six feet one inches, lean and long and flowing, his game princely and dangerous. I went into my defensive crouch and slapped both hands on the shining floor and motioned for Moates to come and get it. Unfortunately for me, Johnny Moates accepted my invitation.

  Richmond’s coach, Louis Mills, based his game plan on his belief that I was neither athletic enough nor big enough to stop Moates. Like a wide receiver in football, Moates roamed the perimeter as his four teammates set a series of picks that started to look and feel like the Maginot Line to me. Sometimes Moates would dribble right where Tom Greene set a devastating pick on me, again driving one of his bladelike knees into my left thigh. Fighting over the top of that pick, I would lose one step on Moates and in that step, Moates would go into the air, his eccentric-looking shot held high behind his head. He would release it straight up, then it arched high in the air, so high that the crowd would hum with disbelief. Gravity would bring it down, and the hiss of nylon would echo through the gym.

  In one agonizing three-minute stretch in the first half, Moates came at me four times in a row, took me over a series of ten well-placed picks, and hit four long-range jumpers and a free throw when I fouled him out of frustration on his last shot. My teammates shouted encouragement: “Get ’em, Pat. Fight him, Pat. Fight your ass off. We’ll make these other guys work their asses off. Fight Moates.” In the customs and courtesies of my team, the only time they ever called me by my given name was in the dead center of games. Then and only then did I become Pat.

  On our first offensive play, I moved the ball down the right-hand side and Doug Bridges called for the ball. Doug did something awkward and strange, something arrhythmic and ungraceful, suddenly shot the ball without his usual stroke and flair, but the ball clanged in for our first two points.

  “Get me the ball,” Bridges said as he passed by me and I went out to meet Moates again. After Moates made the nine straight points against me, I changed my tactics. Now I realized he was planning to and fully capable of scoring sixty against me. In the first ten minutes of the game, he had shot almost every time down the court and had made a high percentage of them. I started taunting him: “Hey, Moates, don’t you have some other guys on this team? Hey, Greene, don’t you like to shoot, every now and then? I’ve seen ball hogs in my life, but this guy thinks he’s the only guy out here.”

  “Shut up, Conroy,” Moates said as he passed to Tom Greene for the first time all day.

  “Wow, give him an assist,” I screamed. “Nice pass, Moates. You’re not a virgin anymore.”

  Though Moates seemed like the only player on the Richmond team in that first half, The Citadel had also brought their A game to the coliseum. In both halves I looked like I knew what I was doing whenever I got the ball to Doug Bridges or Dan Mohr. Bridges played in a special realm, as though he was not subject to laws of physics that bound the rest of us. Every time I threw it to Bridges—every time he called for it—I simply got out of his way. Several times I backed out to the far wing instead of cutting to the corner, simply to give Bridges more room to work against Tom Greene. When Doug was hot, his jump shot was a work of impossible art. He made shots that game, spinning, wheeling jump shots, as he faded backward toward the out-of-bounds lines, off-balance, uncontrolled. He would stroke them in, one after another, each more preposterous than the last, our antidote for their antichrist, Johnny Moates.

  Under the boards Mohr was scrapping for rebounds against the taller Buster Batts. In fact, the rebounding was relentless and physical. Our big guys were beating their big guys, keeping us in the game as Moates emphasized the difference between a first-team All–Southern Conference guard and an also-ran like me. Taking me over three picks set to free him, he put up a jump shot that arched at a much steeper angle than a rainbow. When it scorched the net it felt like the sky was falling in on me. Moates was exposing me for the fraud that I knew I was.

  Yet my coach was a man famous for the spotless integrity of his fighting spirit, and I heard him scream at me, “Fight him, Pat! Fight him for everything it’s worth. Don’t quit on me.”

  Those words ignited like gasoline inside me, and I vowed to put Moates on the floor the next time down the court. Then I had a better idea. We had run the court since the opening whistle, fast-breaking every time we touched the ball, and keeping the lead for most of the first half. I first noticed exhaustion on Moates’s face with nine minutes left in the first half, and I saw him gasping for breath as he guarded me. “Hey, Moates,” I yelled. “You know what I noticed at Camp Wahoo last summer? You can’t play defense worth shit.”

  “I can sure score, though, can’t I, Conroy?” he said back.

  “But Johnny, how you gonna keep me out of the paint?” And I blew by Moates and left him flat-footed at the top of the key. I was flying into the lane when six-foot-eight Buster Batts moved out to intercept me with his hands held high. Here is how a point guard thinks on the fly: if Batts is covering me, then Dan Mohr is free. I flicked a bounce pass to Mohr who laid it up under the basket all by his lonesome. Each time we came downcourt I drove past Moates, and if no one came out to contest me, I laid it up. If Tom Greene picked me up, I passed to Bridges at the wing. If McCann or Ukrop dropped off DeBrosse, John would drift to a spot and I would hit Kroboth or Zinsky or anyone else who was open.

  To end the half, John retrieved a jump ball and hit Danny Mohr going upcourt before the foul line. Mohr dribbled once, then launched a shot from half-court that flew to the basket in a predestined arc and swished through the net at the buzzer. Richmond led us 47–45. They had shot for an amazing 65.5 percent accuracy from the field. On fire, Johnny Moates had lit me up for twenty-one points. I walked into that locker room feeling like the worst defensive player in America.

  Sportswriter Louis Chestnut described the first half in the News and Courier the following morning: “The Citadel and Richmond played each other to a standoff in what may turn out to be the best basketball game of the Southern Conference Tournament which opened here Thursday. . . . Doug Bridges, having possibly his best game as a Bulldog, and little Pat Conroy, jumped The Citadel out to an early seven-point lead after seven minutes of play. Moates then went on a nine-point spree and the Spiders finally pulled even at 26–26. From that point the lead swayed back and forth until the Spiders took their two-point lead into the intermission.”

  In the locker room, the Green Weenies surrounded me and told me I was making Moates earn every point he got. Adrenaline pumped through us like enzymes of pure energy. Mel was as animated as I had seen him all year. It felt like we were on the edge of something big. I prayed to God that He would let my team win this game and I prayed hard.

  The Citadel came out into the second half scratching and burning and clawing for every loose ball and rebound, and at the twelve-minute mark, the score was 61–61. The crowd swooned for both teams that afternoon; they loved us with their applause and their joy at the valor on the floor.

  Every time Moates guarded me, I drove the lane as hard as I could push it, flashing by him, dangerously loose in the paint. Richmond knocked me to the floor again and again. I ended up shooting fourteen free throws—a career high—and made eleven of them. Both Roberts and Larry Patterson fouled out taking me to the floor.

  Bridges remained ethereal and untouchable throughout the second half. His shots grew longer and more preposterous, but he kept shooting and Mohr kept shooting. I screamed at Moates and dared him to shoot it, he screamed back, went off two picks, put up his odd jump shot, and hit it from what seemed like a quarter of a mile away.

  Six times during the
game, Greene’s knee, which he used as part of his screen, hit my thigh squarely, the pain as bad as anything I’d experienced on the basketball court. It was smart, not dirty, basketball that Greene was playing, and it was having a damaging effect on my game. But I noticed that Moates was slowing down and fighting for breath at the same time I was running out of gas completely.

  We went ahead—they went ahead—we responded—they answered. The game was tied at 84. We stormed back and went ahead. Greene scored. Mohr scored. Batts scored. The game went into overtime.

  DeBrosse later told me that at the end of the regulation game, I looked like I’d been in a death march. I’d chased down Moates for a full forty minutes, scored a bunch of points for our side; I was one beat motherfucker.

  Gasping for air, I wished the time between the game ending and overtime beginning would stretch to an hour. When the horn sounded, Connor and Kennedy lifted me to my feet. Cauthen pushed me out toward the court and I heard the Green Weenies screaming for me. I looked back at them—Cauthen and Kennedy and Bornhorst and Connor and Halpin—and filled with admiration for these unrewarded and invisible, disparaged boys. The heart of our team was there, right there, on our bench. That is where all the spirit and fight was. That is where I had to go when I reached back to them for the awesome tenderness of their sweet praise. I bring your spirit to this court, Green Weenies, I remember thinking. And I promise you and myself that I’ll walk the world a Green Weenie forever. My boys, the Weenies, were cheering for me and the Blue Team, and I raised my hand to salute them as they screamed their salutes back at me.

  When Mohr controlled the jump ball in overtime, I dribbled up the right side looking again for Bridges. “Get me the ball,” Doug had said every time he passed me, and it paid dividends each time I did. This time Doug took it deep in the corner and shot a jump shot that seemed stupid and selfish, but an act of daring and genius when he hit nothing but net.

  Buster Batts answered on the far end of the court with a tap-in over Mohr. Bridges, Mohr, DeBrosse, and I had not been out of the game. Zinsky had replaced Kroboth only when Big Al had fouled out. Only six of my twelve-man team played during the whole game. When our big men fell prey to exhaustion at the end of the game and in overtime, I looked to the bench at our fresh and willing guys like Hooper, Connor, and Cauthen—guys that could rebound with anybody—and wondered why Mel was not resting any of us. The overtime period proved just as racehorse and chaotic as the first forty minutes. Our rebounding slowed down and our big guys ran out of gas under the boards. Though we were the third-best rebounding team in the conference, the Richmond big men began to dominate the boards as exhaustion caught my big guys in the open floor. Bridges had given everything he had to give and Mohr had left everything he had on the court. DeBrosse and I held each other up during foul shots and jump balls.

  When Moates took me around Tom Greene’s pick, the Richmond forward’s lethal left knee knifed into my left thigh again and something broke inside the muscle. Mel called time-out and I limped to the bench. Moates staggered back to the Richmond bench gasping for breath, being helped by Ukrop and McCann. My leg hurt so badly I thought I’d be hospitalized that night.

  Mel screamed at the big guys to hit the boards, but they had given everything they had to give, and stared at him with oxenlike passivity. When the whistle blew again I reached out for Cauthen and Kennedy and they lifted me off my chair. I almost screamed out loud when I put my full weight on the hurt leg. I grabbed DeBrosse in desperation and said, “John, I can’t move my leg. You’ve got to take Moates for me. I can’t guard him now.”

  “Fuck you, Conroy, I’m not taking that son-of-a-bitch. He’s your man. I got my own man.”

  “Your man’s scored two or three all game. Mine’s scored a hundred and two. You’re fresh, Johnny. He’s tired as I am. Take him now and I’ll take him back in the next overtime. You gotta do this for me, Johnny,” I said, feeling delirium coming on. It embarrassed me to ask Johnny to take my man, but I wanted to win this goddamned game and I wanted to give my team its best chance to do so. Now I realize that I should’ve stormed over to my bench and ordered Mel to put Hooper in because I had become a liability. The simple fact of my being on the court jeopardized any possibility of a victory for us. That’s what a real leader would have done, how a classy floor leader would’ve played it. But I was a bottom feeder and born second-stringer. And let us face it—I had developed a finely honed loser’s instinct. I had years of practice doing the precisely wrong thing. Before the game, I should’ve approached Mel and said, “Our best chance of beating Richmond is to let Tee Hooper guard Moates. I think Hooper has the size and speed to stop the son-of-a-bitch. I don’t think I do, Coach.” I had actually rehearsed that speech that previous week, but I lacked all courage when it came to handing out advice to my temperamental coach. I feared that he would consider me a coward, someone who wouldn’t rise up to the challenge, someone his teammates couldn’t put their trust in—in other words, someone exactly like the fearful, tentative ballplayer I was. My insecurities had lost out again to my best instincts as they would so often in my life. I would always display a small genius for making the improper gesture or following the wrong impulse. Because of my moral cowardice, I hadn’t told my coach what I thought in the deepest, most honest realms of my heart: I was not a good enough athlete to guard Johnny Moates. My stellar defense had held Moates to a mere thirty-nine points, and I was lucky as hell he hadn’t scored fifty or more.

  In nausea and pain, gasping for breath, I watched an exhausted Johnny Moates bringing the ball upcourt. If he had worn me out with his extraordinary offensive performance, it was a dog-tired Moates who came upcourt to face a fired-up DeBrosse. I had driven the lane the whole game and there was nothing Moates could do but chase me. I made him pay for his humiliation of me in front of every coach and player and reporter in the Southern Conference. I put him in the runningest, passingest, ass-kickingest horse race of a game Moates had ever seen. I had scored twenty-five points against him, equaling my career high. There were pro scouts in the building that day and I’m sure they noted the unearthly skills that Moates brought to the task of scoring. I hope they also noted that a college guard who could not stop Conroy might have some difficulty with Jerry West or Oscar Robertson.

  I had my hands on my knees, literally gasping for air, when I saw DeBrosse make his move. Because of his weariness, Moates was incautious as he dribbled. He was bouncing the ball too high when DeBrosse stuck a hand in and swiped it clean. Then DeBrosse broke for our basket and Moates, embarrassed and spent, did not even give pursuit. Instantly, I knew what I was supposed to do. Because I was not a shooter or a scorer, I made my name as a guy who dove for every ball, who fought you belly to belly for everything he was worth, a guy who would shed his last drop of sweat for the good of the team. That was my image of myself. The image proved false and damning to me as a man and as an athlete.

  When DeBrosse broke, I broke also as I’d been trained to do. It was my duty to follow John DeBrosse down the court, to spring fast and trail my backcourt partner, to be there to tip in his layup if he missed it. I took one step out of instinct, then stopped out of exhaustion and lack of character as an athlete. Shamefully, I stood on their foul line and watched DeBrosse’s glorious, triumphant flight down the court. I can remember being surprised that he was taking it straight in instead of laying it in off the glass as I would have done. When DeBrosse took off his layup there was an exaggerated bounce to his leap as though he had jumped higher than he ever had before. But his form was picture-perfect. I had never seen DeBrosse miss a layup in practice or a game. His game was steady as clockwork. He released the basketball at the height of his jump. The ball nicked the front of the rim, bounced off the backside of the rim, then rolled out, off to the left side. Any guard worth his salt would’ve been there to lay it back in, to cover his teammate’s back, to do for DeBrosse what he had always done for me. John DeBrosse went into a state of shock when he realized he had missed
the layup. Moates sprinted to retrieve the ball, and I had to leave Billy McCann to pick Moates up when he came across the center court with DeBrosse hustling to get back in the game. Richmond immediately scored to go up by one. If DeBrosse had scored, we’d have led by three with less than two minutes to play. They scored. We scored. Richmond got four straight offensive rebounds against our bone-tired big men. Greene scored. We got the ball again. Heroically, Doug Bridges scored. Moates made a free throw.

  With two seconds left, a jump ball was called. Mohr tried to tap it to Bridges but hit it too high, and the ball was rolling out of bounds when the buzzer sounded. We had lost the game 100–98 in overtime. Our terrible and deflating season had come at last to its sorrowful and fitting end. My modest career as an athlete had crashed and burned on the floor of the Charlotte Coliseum. I stood beneath the lights for the last time, then Bob Cauthen came over to help me limp off the court and into the locker room.

  All of my teammates remember what happened next—all of them. I sat by my locker for a brief moment, then fell apart at the far end of my boyhood, at the exact spot where it connected to my hesitant, unconfident young manhood. The first sob caught me by surprise and the second one was so loud that it didn’t seem to come from me at all. I wept as I had never wept before in public. I wept out of sheer heartbreak, unable to control myself. I was lost in the overwhelming grief I felt at losing my game, losing basketball as a way to make my way and define myself in a world that was hostile and implacable. How do you say goodbye to a game you love more than anything else? What was I to do with a sunrise when I didn’t get up thinking about going to a gym to work on my jump shot? What does a boy do when they take his game away? In front of boys I had suffered with, I sobbed and I couldn’t help it. I removed my jersey and put my face into the number 22 and my sweat mingled with my tears in the sacramental moment, when I surrendered my game to the judgments of time. I gave it up, gave basketball up, gave my game up, the one I played so badly and adored so completely. I gave it up in Charlotte, in emptiness, in sorrow, in despair that I played it so badly yet in gratitude for what the game had given me. Each one of my teammates squeezed my shoulder as they passed on the way to the shower room. Basketball had rescued me from the malignant bafflement of my boyhood. It had lifted me up and given me friends that I got to call teammates. The game gave me moments where I brought crowds of strangers to their feet, calling out my name. The game had allowed me to be carried off the court in triumph. The game had allowed me to like myself a little bit, and at times the game had even allowed me to love the beaten, ruined boy I was.