Tourney Week!

Is there anything more exciting than ACC Tournament Week? Maybe your first plate being handed to you at a buffet. But that’s it. Desperately trying to sprint out of school to get home to watch the first round games, hearing rumors every year re: Maryland upsetting UNC etc. As a young buck I prided myself on being a great, nay – amazing shooter. I was what you’d call a “chucker.” My brother called me the Black Hole, cause once the ball came in to me, it wasn’t going back out. Pass? Why would I pass it to anyone else? MAYBE I would if it was a Bird-esque number that would draw ooohs and aaahs from the crowd; otherwise, head back on D cause I’m firing it up. And defense? Defense, I’d rest up for my next shot. Hey, quicker my guy gets by me and scores, the quicker I’m gettin the ball back!

How I became such an amazing, show-stopping shooter is a bit of a mystery, since 1) I have such bad depth perception I was laughed out of my Air force physical by the doctor “oh, I’m not flying with you!!” and 2) I learned to shoot on an 11-foot goal. Bout 8 or 9 years old, we had the hoop and backboard and finally we found a downed telephone pole to mount it on. Dragged it over to our backyard, started digging. And digging. And digging. Finally we’re like fuck it, we ain’t digging no more, we’re puttin the fucker in. 10 feet high, 20 feet high, whatever. Course, it didn’t occur to us to just cut the pole, but hey. So now we gotta get the fucker up. And it’s killing us. We’re both about 5 feet tall and 80 pounds; we’re even trying the laws of science, using a barrel as a fulcrum. No dice. Pole must be 1000 pounds! Finally, after about an hour of watching through the window and laughing each time the pole would fall and narrowly miss his sons’ heads, my dad came out and with one hand threw the pole up; my brother and I hurriedly filled the hole in with dirt and were finally ready to gun the rock in our own backyard. Heaven. I can’t begin to fathom the number of hours we spent on that court. Me in my “God may have made the sky Carolina blue, but he made Ralph a Wahoo” t-shirt. All day, all night, dribble dribble dribble. Thump thump thump. Even the time I left the ball next to a heater and a baseball-sized lump appeared and we couldn’t get a new ball for a few weeks. Thump thump....chase ball down in the garden. Every serious decision I had to make between 1980 and 1990, I made there. Every piece of advice my brother gave me, was there. All the laughing, all the crying, all there. I’d daydream about girls while shooting, or I’d fantasize I was Jeff Lamp, 5 seconds left against Carolina and down by one (how is it possible the above picture is the only one on all the internet of him I could find? wtf?!??!!.) At least once a day my brother would piss me off, and my fury would be white hot, I’d hurl the ball at his head, clamp my teeth down on my bottom lip and go after him. After he was done laughing, we’d keep playing. Sometimes just casually shooting/yapping, other times clawing each others eyes out trying to beat each other. There was no grass there for a decade, just solid packed dirt. Bout a year ago I rode by our old house for the first time in years. The goal was still there, but all the grass had grown back in and I just wanted to fucking cry.