What About Bob?
Basketball
thank you the cockeyed court
on which in a half-court 3 vs. 3 we oldheads
made of some runny-nosed kids
a shambles, and the 61-year-old
after flipping a reverse lay-up off a back door cut
from my no-look pass to seal the game
ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
grinning across his chest
—Ross Gay, "
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude"
2002
Slinging a maroon duffel bag over my shoulder, I walked uphill towards Kirby Sports Center. The bag stored socks, shorts, sweats, shoes, and other stuff that announced, in gleaming white and maroon, that I was a Division I basketball player. But not anymore. Today I would surrender the bag and quit the team.
I hovered outside my coach's office. He gestured me inside, saw what I was holding. In that instant he knew.
Two years earlier, as a promising small forward from New York, I had joined five other freshmen recruits from Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Virginia, and Germany. A handful of others—including my roommate Mike, a lanky shooting guard from Pennsylvania—came to campus as walk-ons. They, unlike us, received no promises or perks. But we all had plenty in common. We had excelled in high school. We had poured in points, pounded on weak opponents, punched tickets to state and regional tournaments. We were drunk on the dream of college athletics.
On the first day of preseason pick-up, in a chilly gym a few miles from campus, the upperclassmen swaggered on the sidelines and told inside jokes. Then they pounced. We freshmen flailed wildly on the court. The next day, nursing sore torsos and sprained ankles, we fought for our livelihoods again. And again. And again.
Class was meaningless. Sometimes I staggered to my morning lectures, sometimes not. The real work started after lunch: workouts, pickup, lifting, massive meals to beef up my slender frame. The night before our first official practice, Mike and I jogged to the gym for one last shoot-around, feeding each other hundreds of shots in the corner, at the foul line, from the top of the key.
Practice. Countless hours of squeaking sneakers, rattling rims, slide-talk-slide drills.
As the season progressed, I found myself in the middle of the pack. I was clearly better than a few floundering freshmen (like Missouri and Virginia) but not good enough to earn playing time (like Florida and Arizona). My parents, traveling hundreds of miles to away games, gave me plaintive looks from the stands. I avoided eye contact and brooded on the bench.
I still hadn’t played a minute when, during a long December road trip, my coach summoned me to his hotel room. It was surprising, he said in a soft, lispy voice, that such a promising student-athlete like me was on academic probation. It was
certainly surprising—he shifted to his real concern—that my progress on the basketball court was also lagging.
The message was clear: improve or I was gone.
I was condemned to double duty with the jayvee team, a collection of scrappy walk-ons like Mike, who'd been busting his ass for months, and underperforming recruits like me. Jayvee meant practicing before varsity practice, attending noon pickup, and scrimmaging bums in empty gyms. It meant twice the work with no reward.
In January we played a rag-tag community college squad and lost. Fuming in the film room after the game, our assistant coach eviscerated us one by one. Chris couldn’t dribble. Sam couldn’t shoot. Mike couldn’t defend. “And you, Bob,” he said, his stubby fingers jabbing inches from my face, “you’re worthless without the ball. You don’t move, you don’t screen, you don’t rebound. You’re
worthless.”
He stalked outside and slammed the door. My teammates slinked away until Mike and I sat alone, cold and clammy, in the dark. Finally his weary voice punctured the silence.
“It’s a disappointment to be here.”
**
Throughout freshman year, as Mike and I managed our misery with playlists and ping-pong and Wawa runs, one thing was clear: we wouldn’t give up.
We practiced after practice. We watched more film. We tossed heavier weights onto the bench press. Soon I was earning playing time. Suddenly I was a starter. Sprinting downcourt inside Jadwin Gymnasium, I competed in front of 7,000 screaming fans. Who cared if they weren’t cheering for me? I snagged rebounds and drained threes and defended against Princeton’s vaunted backdoor offense. We lost, but I felt good anyway. I had played well. After the game our assistant coach—the one who’d called me worthless—gave me an approving nod in the locker room. I ignored him.
Mike was also doing well. Others had whined, transferred, and quit, but he’d kept his mouth shut and outworked everyone. He was rewarded with traveling privileges, gear to flaunt on campus, and a locker that had been occupied by another freshman, Missouri, who hadn't lasted the year. Mike was one of us now.
We had survived.
I went home for the summer to the Hudson Valley, Mike to Wilkes-Barre. We returned in the fall with swagger in our step. During preseason pick-up, we told inside jokes and pounced on weakness.
I began sophomore year as a starter. But something was wrong. In one game I played two minutes. In another I played the whole game. In another, I scored sixteen points in ten minutes and was benched for the rest of the half.
Who got benched for scoring too many points?
My coach had an ingenious basketball mind, but his coaching philosophy had befuddled his players—and even his assistants—for years. Like everyone else, I could only speculate on whether I was doing something wrong.
Mike had bigger problems. He was under the impression that, thanks to his improvement as a freshman, he’d earned a permanent spot on varsity. But no, my coach said. A new recruiting class was here. No promises were made. Mike would start on jayvee and maybe—
maybe—he’d join varsity later in the season.
Bitter and confused, Mike and his parents—who had burned thousands of tuition dollars—explored transfer options. Plenty of Division 3 coaches were interested. At the end of the fall semester, I helped Mike load his stuff and said goodbye to my best friend. Returning to my dorm in the rain, I realized that in the eyes of his coaches, his teammates, and some of his friends and family, Mike would always be a failure—a quitter who couldn’t hang with the big boys.
It was bull****.
The season dragged on. My playing time slipped. I dreaded practice. Searching for wisdom or encouragement from the upperclassmen, I found nothing. All the seniors wanted, it seemed, was to reach spring semester and have a “real” college experience that didn’t involve 8 a.m. Saturday workouts.
A familiar question tormented my mind:
why am I doing this?
In February I called my mom and told her that I would finish the rest of the season. “Then I’m done,” I said.
There was a pause. I couldn’t tell if she was crying.“What will you tell your father?” she asked.
I didn’t know.
In March we lost to Navy in the first round of the Patriot League Tournament. Half-watching from the end of the bench, I felt relieved and anxious.
Only one step—the hardest one—was left.
The next morning, on my birthday, I packed my duffel bag and drove to the gym. I told my coach about everything that had been lost in the last year—my desire to play, my respect for the program, my friendship with Mike—and that I needed to quit.
Smiling sadly in his office, my coach said nothing. He’d heard plenty of rants and rationalizations from disgruntled players. Maybe that’s why he didn’t disagree or lecture or negotiate: he just listened. I respected that. Despite tirades that lit his face on fire, despite his fondness for Coors Light on the rocks, despite a cutthroat approach to coaching—despite all of the things, he still seemed like a gentle man.
We shook hands. “Thanks for the opportunity,” I said.
“Good luck, Bob,” he said.
I glanced at the maroon duffel bag on the floor. Then I left.
Last edited by bob_124; 01-13-2017 at 11:55 PM.