How I Learned to Love the Hoop

Baseball starts with catch. When does basketball begin?

There's the undersized ball—football has that, too—as well as the Nerf hoop. Two wrongs don't make a right. But our first taste of hoops doesn't come from playing it. The basket is high, unattainable. We watch others drop shots in with ease. We are stuck on the ground, fumbling our way through dribbling drills. The gulf between NBA stars above the rim and the kids stuck way, way below it isn't frustrating—it makes it hard to remember that you're learning to play the same sport as they are.

That's where the lowered basket comes in.

I don't mean the 8-foot one; that's not a help for a while. I'm talking about the regulation basket brought down to a kid's dimensions. It allows you to make that bucket without straining, to realize that there is a point to it all. Two points, actually. Though since you're probably shooting without a man guarding you, it's more like one point, a free throw. One that happens to be right under the basket.

But still. You get there any way you can, and basketball begins.

At least that's the way it should be. I have zero memory of this first basket. For me, basketball began when I first got to log time on a hoop too low for me. 

When I was in third grade, my family moved, into a neighborhood that had been carved out of farm land. We had an enormous yard. But we still had neighbors, and in at least one case, it turned out to be a blessing. Our next-door neighbors, whose name I won't include here, had a son in a wheelchair. The father was quite a character: a musclebound Jewish doctor with a huge bushy mustache who drove a Pontiac Fiero and was a concert pianist in his spare time. But predictably, much of their life revolved around making life easier for their son. 

We had a regulation-height goal in our driveway. By the time we moved, I could passably make a shot on it. Next door, though, was a goal so low that I could practically dunk on it. And, insensitive and selfish as it may have been of me, that's when the game really came alive for me. Shooting a jumper was a lost, kind of surreal, cause. Driving the rim, though, was transcendent.

It was the first time I understood the connection between the game I was slowly learning—basketball camp stuff—and the gods of the sport. 

Here's where things got tricky, though. I loved this basket because it allowed me to experiment, goof around, flex what few muscles I had and show off a little for an audience of none. Anyone watching would have been out of the question, since it made me seem like a jerk. And certainly, when I came over to play hoops with the neighbor's kid, I had to keep it toned down. I was actually at a disadvantage, then. He was used to shooting at a lower hoop, and I had already adjusted to the real thing. Important point of reference: Shaq or Wilt shooting free throws with a regulation-sized ball. 

And I certainly couldn't dunk on a kid in a wheelchair. 

So I had to sneak over there, when the whole family was gone, to practice my Clyde Drexler moves. It was unfair, maybe even exploitative; I probably should have made a point of playing hoops with the kid, and learning how to execute the fundamentals on that 6-foot goal.

Instead, I decided to use it for something else. I discovered basketball for real there, and it felt great. It got to the point where I would sneak over when the family was home. The mother would sometimes come out, and in her friendly, embattled way, ask me if her son could join me. Of course, it was his basket.

If the dad was around—if that red Fiero was in the driveway—I stayed careful. He couldn't hear me when he was banging away at the piano, but if he caught me, he would come out and yell at me. In retrospect, I can see why. Bear in mind, though, I was nine. And I had learned, as a sub-average athlete, how to tap into a higher level of basketball. 

I was never much of a basketball player. Dogged rebounder and somewhat dirty. Good defender, poor balance, athletic but uncoordinated. This basket, though, was my workshop. I barely knew how to play, but I knew how to feel like I was playing the same game Jordan did. Maybe that's everything that has gone wrong with the NBA.

I can tell you one thing: It sure felt good.

When I was in college, and my family had moved to Pittsburgh, we once again had neighbors with a shortened hoop. They had young kids; the hoop was around 8 feet. That tells you all you need to know about their parenting. Anyway, I decided to take my father and younger brother on, one-on-two. Every play, I went straight to the hole and tried for the dunk. They beat me, badly. Old habits die hard.