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The Basketball Diaries

The Basketball Diaries

(Originally published in two parts: July 6, 2010 and July 11, 2010)

1.

BETWEEN 4th AND 9th grade, I lost all interest in sports. Before that I played soccer, tennis, and Little League baseball, but all of a sudden I just stopped. If not for growth spurts and freakish metabolism, the Pop Tarts, popcorn, and several cans of soda a day I consumed would’ve consumed me.

What was I doing during this lost period? At age 10 I got into acting.

There was a summer program at our local library for elementary- to middle-schoolers, and I won the lead my first time out. I thought I was hot shit, the next River Phoenix, on the fast track to a brilliant career and an OD outside the Viper Room. No such luck. I wasn’t able to parlay my first role as Connecticut folk hero Nathan Hale into anything remotely resembling a heroin addiction. I didn’t get another lead until two years later, in Romeo and Juliet, a production notable mainly for my unconvincing love scenes opposite a girl who later came out as a hardcore lesbian upon arriving at college.

It was also the first time the Pop Tarts started to show. I’d gone from young River Phoenix to full-blown Brando.

There were insults about my weight, but only from friends and family; I imagine they’d signed a non-compete agreement with the local bullies (“This is our turf, guys. We got this”). My mom, always sensitive, would comment on my “spare tire” if I ever took my shirt off, and “lost” all family photos from that period except a novelty Old West picture in our upstairs bathroom with me as a fat gangster, my brother as a henchman, and my sister – age 7 – as a bar floozy.

Toward the end of 9th grade, I decided to do something. I went on a diet and began working out, and within a month I’d lost 30 pounds. You know the show The Biggest Loser? I was as big a loser as anyone.

Much, if not all, of the credit needs to go to a guy named Scott.

Throughout the preceding months, my family had been slowly accumulating gym equipment in our basement. Due to my overall level of sloth, it didn’t  register; thanks to cognitive dissonance, I was in denial of the very existence of fitness. But then Scott, a former competitive bodybuilder, ex-marine, and film and television actor began stopping by the house as my mom’s personal trainer. He looked like you’d expect, and made a convincing argument for being in shape, especially when he asked me to come down and try a few things at the end of my mom’s sessions, intermingling instruction on proper bench press form with casual stories of his ludicrous number of sexual conquests.

“About 1000 women,” he said matter-of-factly. “Before I settled down.” And he’d been settled down for years. Here are three quick Scott stories:

1. Scott was summoned to the home of a well-known blonde Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Supermodel. He, she, and an equally-gorgeous brunette then had a threesome on a bearskin rug.
2. Scott in his teenage years left Coney Island with a cute Latina and wound up scraping his knees very badly on the old upholstery in the backseat of his parents’ car.
3. Scott went to the dentist’s. The dental hygienist had him sit back in the chair, closed the door, took off his pants, and straddled him.

Scott made a strong case for a lifestyle that consisted of little more than working out and having sex. Never underestimate the motivational power of sex to a teenage boy. (You weren’t planning to, were you?)

I spent a lot of time throughout the rest of high school working out. As I was still involved in theatre, it led to choice roles like “Prison Warden,” “Large Gangster,” and “Electrician, a non-speaking part.” In other words, I put myself even further out of contention for lead roles than when I was fat. (Later I realized the problem wasn't my body, it was my attempt to employ realism and method-style mumble-acting in Rodgers and Hart musicals.)

Not cut-out for Broadway, I persisted with the weights and saw Scott on and off all the way through senior year. But while I started to look fairly athletic, all the time I’d missed playing sports caught up to me. After five straight years of doing nothing but high school theatre and eating, the only skill I had was stuffing things into my mouth. (This is an outdated and anachronistic gay joke.)

Take basketball for instance.

I’m tall, but I couldn’t put a ball in a hoop to save my life. Even layups – “layup” having become shorthand for anything that’s practically a guarantee – I was only good for about 40% of the time. I quietly developed into a world-class passer because it was the best way to get the ball out of my hands. Pickup games were a disaster for people who didn’t know me. I’d get picked early due to my size, and play like the biggest bust in history. Midway through the first game my team would usually demand a trade.

I decided to do something about it.

While subletting a loft downtown with good friends Nick and Quinn, I read a biography of Pete Maravich, Pistol. Maravich’s life is the story of a child who became a world class basketball player thanks to what would today be considered child abuse. Forced by his father, Press Maravich – a brilliant coach who was miraculously never nicknamed “Full Court Press” – to practice upwards of eight hours a day, Pete even developed mental exercises to visualize taking shots while lying in bed or dreaming, and became the most spectacular college player of all time. (He set the all-time NCAA points record in an era before the 3-point line, and did so in only three years.) Sadly, chronic injuries derailed his NBA career – probably something to do with practicing eight hours a day since age 4 – and he died at 40 from a congenital heart defect that was so severe it should’ve killed him twenty years earlier.

Just before Maravich died – ironically, on a basketball court during a pickup game – he created a series of videos called “Homework Basketball.” Digitized VHS copies exist on YouTube, videos of Pete himself demonstrating the basketball exercises he taught himself as a child which would later cripple his limbs. I watched them all and soaked them up. I dreamed of someday behind halfway decent, maybe learning an impressive trick or two I could use to make myself seem better than I am, a good practice for almost any casual habit.

Unfortunately, there were no courts near my apartment at the time. Basketball would have to wait.

But this past October, I moved into a studio in the Miracle Mile district, a fifteen-minute walk from a part with a pair of outdoor courts. Shortly after I discovered them, in December, I got a basketball and decided to go three times a week, every morning before work, or, when I was unemployed, every morning before masturbating.

You meet some interesting characters at a public basketball court at 7:15 AM. Some I played against, some I just played beside. The “basketball diaries” are my attempt to chronicle their stories. (Note that this is also the name of a Leonardo DiCaprio film about a basketball player who slowly descends into drug addiction. My dream of becoming Rivers Phoenix is still alive after all…)

2.

IT’S BECOME A ritual…

At 6:50 AM most weekdays I get up, put on my USC sweatshirt and basketball shorts, drink a glass of water, grab my basketball, and head to the park to shoot hoops.

The park at which I play is like LA in general: very Asian and very Jewish. At the entrance is a statue commemorating the life of “Haym Solomon,” a Polish Jew active in the Revolutionary War. (True story: not only did Haym Solomon have the most stereotypically Jewish name of all time, his contribution to the war effort was as a financial broker.) There’s also a Holocaust Memorial at the north end of the park that’s been under construction since I moved here, and just sits there half-finished behind chain link fences; people will never forget the Holocaust but they've apparently forgotten to finish its memorial. Whenever they choose to complete it, it will be right across from the basketball courts and the athletic center, because nothing gets you fired up about fitness like the most heinous crimes of all time perpetrated against history’s worst athletes.

Then there’s the Asian population: always out playing soccer or baseball, feeding the pigeons or doing Tai Chi. Note that I mentioned I only play basketball on weekdays; on weekends, some kind of Asian youth club swarms the courts at sunrise. Watching them play reminds me of an ultimate Frisbee tournament I played in at summer came some years back. Our team of big, tall Americans lost in the finals to a group of small but efficient Asians, a handy metaphor for the automobile industry.

My decision to wake up at 6:50 is also no accident. Most people get to the courts at  8:15. Up at 6:50, I arrive by 7:15 and get to stake out a basket at the southeast corner. That gives me a solid hour before three older black guys arrive, set up lawn chairs on the court facing my basket, talk about their glory days, then start playing on my court whether I'm still there or not.

This really happens.

There are four usable half-courts at the park, and only two on Mondays, when they run the sprinklers and flood the whole area (it’s been going on for some time now and no one’s told the city that asphalt doesn’t need to be watered). However many hoops are available, I take one. A kindred spirit of mine usually occupies the other. He’s a guy with glasses and the physical build I had in 8th grade, but all the sporting ability I never developed. I once heard a construction worker yell over to him, “Hey, Man! Are you ever going to miss?” That’s what I aspire to. He’s always there before I am, even in the winter, when 7:15 is right around sunrise, and always drenched in sweat. Always. It looks like he just got done showering with his clothes on.

Usually the two of us have the courts to ourselves, except on a handful of occasions. This was one of those occasions.

I have a limited number of basketball skills I’m slowly honing to adequacy. The free throw, for example, is useless in street basketball because no one calls fouls, yet I shoot 100 of them to warm up. Halfway through my hundred, a homeless man on a bicycle rode onto the court, parked his bike against the Holocaust Memorial fence, and shambled in my direction. I kept an eye on him as I made my shots. “46, 47, 48…”

At “49” he was standing three feet away with a crazed look in his eye.

My view of the world is simultaneously fatalistic and optimistic. The thought that kept racing through my mind was that if I were murdered that early in the morning, they might be able to squeeze my obituary into the LA Times midday edition rather than waiting until the following day. Somehow that seemed better; I don't like a lot of attention.

He smiled at me. He had at least one gold tooth. “Good,” I thought, “he won’t try to steal my teeth; his are more expensive.” Other thoughts came and went while he kept staring. Finally I said something:

“Hey. What’s going on?”

I tried to be non-threatening so he might follow suit. He did. He smiled again and mumbled. “What?” I said. Mumble and smile. “What?” I said again.

“Do you want to shoot?” he said.
“Oh. Sure. But let’s go over there.” I pointed to another open half court, because it was Monday and the one I’d been standing on was half underwater.

He took off his sweatshirt and threw it over his bicycle. He was wearing a white undershirt, jeans, and boots, and seemed fairly athletic. He said something about wanting to play a quick game “before I gotta go to the Social Security office,” then motioned for me to pass him the ball.

Proper shooting form (as taught by “Pistol” Pete Maravich) is to cradle the ball in the dominant shooting hand, put the other hand on the side, then extend the dominant arm and flick the wrist in one quick motion (the final position being the “gun barrel,” of course). The homeless man, by contrast, seemed to hold the ball between the backs of both hands and flip them outwardly, in a kind of scissor motion. Somehow it went in every time.

“How are you doing that?” I asked.
“I dunno. Just gettin’ the ball in the basket.” He flashed another gold-toothed smile and shot another optical illusion. Swish. I figured this had to be one of those magical homeless people you read so much about.

After ten minutes, he suggested a game of “21.” The rules of “21” seem to be different for every person I’ve ever played with. Here are his:

One player shoots from the three-point line for three points. If he makes it, he shoots again. If he misses, whoever grabs the rebound gets a chance to shoot for two. A shot made for two provides a trip to the three-point line. The goal is to reach 21 points exactly, and the final shot must always be from the three-point line.

I took him up on the offer, assuming he’d win quickly and easily and then murder me. But he made one fatal, tactical error: he wore jeans. Why a homeless man in LA would wear jeans and not shorts, I don't know. With shorts, your legs stay cool and you don’t have to take them off if you crap your pants. Not only was he wearing jeans, he was also wearing heavy boots, and soon he was spent.

How spent?

I took most of my shots from the three-point line while he stood underneath the basket, and I still got most of my own rebounds. That is to say I missed almost everything, but it didn’t matter. On the few times I made a shot, he’d say, “You’re good under pressure. I’m not. That’s my problem.” I really didn’t have anything to say that might’ve cheered him up.

When he did get the ball, he’d dribble outside the arc and ask for a breather. He didn’t seem to appreciate that I played defense. Me in my shorts.

The game dragged on because neither of us were making enough shots. At 8:15, the three black guys who always took my court showed up. They began to watch us and stretch. I knew we didn’t have long.

Soon after they arrived, I made a shot, went to the line, and sunk a three to win. (I guess I could’ve made the sports aspect of this story more compelling, but it was what it was: a sloppily-played game between a twenty-something non-athlete and a homeless guy stopping by on a Tuesday morning on his way to the Social Security office.)

I shook his hand and thanked him. He told me he’d be out there from time to time and maybe we’d play again. Months later, he hasn’t, and we haven’t, but I’ll never forget him, whatever the hell his name was. That guy.