The (Bouncing) Circle of Life

By his own admission, my Dad was not the star of his high school basketball team; not the leading scorer; not the best point guard; not even a starter during his career. When he remembers his playing days, he talks of coming down with rebounds in a crowd of forwards 5,6,7 inches taller than he; he talks of locking up with the best player on the other team and taking pride in not letting him score; and of course, the humble guy that he is, he talks of his Achilles heel – the soft spot in his game; the reason he didn’t get the shoe contract; the shot opposing teams happily allowed: the almighty LAYUP…given 10 attempts from the top of the key or 10 breakaway layups, he’ll make double the jump shots just about every time. These facts and the stories to support them I’ve come to learn over years during countless backyard shooting sessions…

There’s a little slice of heaven back in Interlaken, NJ on Woodmere Rd where a patch of blacktop has sat tastefully cornered for over a decade in a perfectly self-manicured landscape just wide and deep enough to fit a regulation three point arch that half moons around a full fiberglass backboard outfitted with a red white and blue net like you used to see at the playgrounds…”backyard of the year” kind of stuff...a peaceful, private spot where a guy has no excuse for not getting hundreds of jumpshots up every day…a place where Dads rebound for sons while passing down the stories and recollections of “rebounding amongst the trees” . If we all had to choose just one place to live down the rest of our days, this is probably it for me. The concrete was first poured at some point between my 12th and 14th birthday…I’m a little hazy on the details obviously and I’m sure my Dad would know for sure, but I can back into this two year time frame because I know it was there when I started high school and it wasn’t during one of them indelible moments that a guy will never forget.

As a 10 and 11 year old kid, you don’t know and probably don’t care how many points per game your Dad averaged in high school (but you assume it was a lot, of course). When you’re regularly playing one-on-one in the backyard, the only thing you know and care about is that he’s taller, stronger, quicker and that you’ve never beaten him. As an 11 year old, he could probably shut you out every time if he really wanted to but he lets you compete for a while before shutting the door and imparting the life lessons of humility and the value of a strong work ethic…these lessons, as we all know, don’t become apparent until later in life and lacking any perspective at that age, you wonder if there will ever be a day that you find that first victory…that is, until you actually pull it off on your 12th birthday. I’m pretty sure the plan was not to let me win that day…I would imagine the script called for letting the young pup get close enough but then clamping down and preventing any real chance of victory…ahhh, but alas, the script would be thrown out...

One in a million. A total prayer that had no right to go in. The memory remains pretty vivid. I couldn’t tell you how we got to game point, but I do know that I was checking it up with a chance to hit a two (pointer) for the win. I know that it wasn’t the new court because we dribbled on a patch of dirt/weeds and shot at a backboard in worse condition than the ones at the DS Basketball camp held in a tennis facility. He checked it up and stood toe to toe ready to thwart any attempt at moving an inch closer to the basket. I had no chance and I knew it. My only option was to take a dribble away from the rim, spin with my back to the basket and heave desperation in the general direction of the goal. It could have ended up in any one of a hundred different places that it deserved to: the most predictable being over the fence, down the hill and in the neighbor’s yard across the street…BUT, it didn’t. Nope. It first landed squarely in the center of the box on the backboard (a place no self respecting balla player ever aims for) and then dropped cleanly through the net, signaling that first victory and sparking a celebration replete with loud noises, high stepping and double overhead fist pumping. Equally goofy as it was obnoxious I am sure…but hey, what did I care? I just beat my dad (my hero) for the first time ever in basketball. I’ll never forget it.

As the years wore on, the games of 1v1 became more and more competitive and then less and less so…I continued to grow (and figured out that Achilles heel) and eventually our time in the backyard was spent mostly doing shooting workouts. Some real quality father-son bonding back there in our own little slice of heaven…and we didn’t play the 1 on 1 game but twice a year: His birthday and mine. When I eventually went off to college and was only home during the summer, the ritual stretched to just once a year: the 4th of July. Father vs Son, 1 on 1. It’s funny how things tend to come full circle. He now playing the role of unlikely underdog and I the boring favorite. Mom would come out and watch from the steps of the back deck tsk-tsk’ing and shaking her head while I backed him down in the post as if to say, “If you send your father to the hospital, you’re out of the will”. We found subtle ways to level the action and keep things competitive but inevitably if he ever got close to game point, I would check it up, stand toe-to-toe, take away the top of the key jumper he loved and force him to the rim. We battle it out once a year every summer: no injuries; loser pours…

This past summer, with me off at College Part Duex, the annual tradition was put off until the second week in August (during my two week break). We laced ‘em up, he put on his Ursinus basketball shorts and an old school ND jersey (class of ’75) and we checked it up out back with Mom watching from the steps. Game 1 followed the script: a close, scrappy contest with more bricks than swishes but eventually less bricks from the 26 yr old…a predictable outcome. Game II followed a similar pattern from the start. We seesawed for a while in the summer heat conceding open jumpers to each other while conserving energy. The score stayed tight as we got closer to 11 and I finally found myself checking it up with the old man a two away from victory. So what did I do? This was crunch time...I got low and close and was determined not to give up that top of the key jumper….what did he do? He shot faked, looked right, drove left and you’d never believe it, but he went up for a contested layup and actually made it…oh boy…now the 16 seed is just a point away closing out the 1 seed…check it up…determined not give up the game winner and convinced the last point was a fluke, I assumed the stance. Same move: head fake to the rim, I stay on the ground…he fakes right, starts the drive left…there’s no way he’s getting that layup off again; I’m with him the whole way. One dribble and he stops…on a dime he rises up and shoots the pull-up…I’m caught off guard, expecting the layup and he gets a clean look….ball in flight …hits the front the rim, bounces off the backboard and finally drops through…game over…with all of the goofiness and none of the obnoxiousness of a 12 year old, the routine of high knees, double overhead fist pumping and hollering ensues. The crowd (of one) empties from the bleachers (the step) and rushes the court (lightly jogs through the arbor) to join in the upset celebration… needless to say, I poured three beers that night…one for the loser and one for the victor and his cheerleader.

At 57 years old and playing on stiff knees, he’s still teaching life lessons on the blacktop in the backyard…today’s thesis (with an assist from Mom): You’re never too old to live with a 12 year old’s joie de vivre.