of men and hoops

I have a basketball problem. And like any obsession, it has a dark side. The problem becomes most apparent at this time of year, when all the amateurs whip out their NCAA Tournament brackets, make their uneducated picks and beat me in assorted pools, while I scream and curse or put my fist through a wall (first happened when I was sixteen). Before it all starts, Julia always asks a passive aggressive question like, “You’re not going to fill out those brackets and yell and bang things again this year, are you?”

At times I have wished that I could have the basketball-obsessed portion of my brain lobotomized – just think of all that I could have accomplished while I was reading box scores, trying to watch every NCAA tournament game or reading summer league re-caps. At least now we have cable and I can actually watch the games instead of following online – there was one year when I didn’t watch a single regular season NBA game, but read EVERY box score. But there is something soothing – numbing even – about basketball, and I’ll take it any way I can get it.

I grew up in a sports family, but not the traditional kind. My father has an encyclopedic memory for baseball statistics and sat in the bleachers at Candlestick Park as a kid, trying to catch Willie Mays home runs. From his thorough stories alone, I have a fairly solid grasp on all the greats that came before my time.

My childhood was blessed with multiple Redskins championships and the Orioles winning the World Series, but I was raised to appreciate the statistics, eccentricities and (above all else) excellence of sports over die-hard fandom. We watched baseball, basketball, football, hockey, tennis, boxing (back when it was still relevant) and devoured entire summer Olympics.

When I was eleven, we were at an Orioles-Angels game, and when Reggie Jackson came up, thinking it a grown-up fan thing to do, I screamed, “You suck, Reggie!” My father was furious and threatened to spank me right there, not so much for my crass-ness, but for my ignorance: Reggie Jackson did NOT suck.

Somewhere in there I became a basketball junkie, which is weird, considering that our local team, the then-Bullets, were by far the worst D.C. area team. They were so void of legacy that when they changed their name to the Wizards (disassociating “Bullets” from what was at the time the murder capital of the country), no one really cared all that much.

But basketball was the perfect choice for someone who grew up loving sports and as teenager became infatuated with black culture through hip-hop. My friends and I played endless pick-up hoops and did our best to emulate swagger and trash-talk. It wasn’t so much about how well you played (which was good, because I sucked) as much as it was about how you looked. We always tried to one-up each other with ridiculous combinations of headbands, bandanas and baggy-shorts, looking like white suburban teenage pimps. My friend, Chad, once trumped us all by bringing a cane onto the court.

As I got older, I stopped following baseball, football and other sports, but basketball, as a deeper part of who I was and still am, stuck. I still get goose-bumps filling out my brackets – not so much for the thought that I might win a pool (a hope which has dulled, but still resonates) as much as knowing what it means: the beginning of basketball season. One of my goals in life is to work fulltime from home as a freelancer, mostly so that I can be at home for the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament. I once bought a small Black and White TV on my lunch-break and wedged it between my monitor and cubicle wall so I wouldn’t miss the games.

A few weeks ago, we took my parents out to dinner in D.C. for their co-60th birthdays. Since Julia and I are expecting, it has been the constant family conversation topic for months now (none of my siblings have kids). In that spirit, my father told me a sports story I hadn’t heard yet: when I was a baby, we would fall asleep together on the floor, watching the great Rick Barry lead the Golden State Warriors to the most improbable championship run in basketball history. My dad then ran down the ENTIRE list of Barry’s unheralded teammates, providing a brief bio and lasting legacy for each.

Our son is due in mid-May – just in time for the later rounds of the NBA playoffs. The inevitable meeting of the Mavericks and Suns (two of the more dominating teams of recent years), looks like a classic in the making. It’s time to pass the torch.