by
John McCaffrey
The
best year of Allen Iverson’s life was my worst. Determined to shed a “me-first”
image, AI had bought into a team concept under new coach Larry Brown and
propelled the underdog 76ers into the 2001 NBA Championship series against the
star-powered Los Angeles Lakers. On the way, he had won the All-Star and League
MVP trophies, dazzling fans and fellow players with his mercurial quickness and
relentless offensive attack. He was relentless and fearless going to the basket
against much larger foes, flinging his tat-laden, skinny body into thick
seven-footers, finding a sliver of an angle to arch the ball up and under
massive arms, taking the invariable hit, and falling, his cornrows glinting in
the arena light, like a spent bottle-rocket. The miracle was never that the
ball went in, which it almost always did that year, but that he got up off the
floor after such a beating. But he did, every time.
For a while that year, I wasn’t sure I’d
get up. Not literally, but emotionally. The hit I took was my wife leaving me,
and while it might not have been as breathtaking as an AI swoop to the hoop, it
had still been a six-year journey together as a married couple, and it hurt to
have it end. Basketball helped to relieve the pain: watching, as well as
playing. Like AI, I was a guard, and while I held none of his absurd
athleticism, I could move well, dribble well, and shoot, I must admit, very
well. I excelled in pick-up games, or at least held my own, and while I had
never stopped playing once I got married, my forays to the court multiplied,
and intensified, after my separation. I literally wore sneakers out, and nearly
my knees and feet, but the game, the competition, the sweating and striving,
helped me let go of tension, ease depression, and forget my troubles for a while.
Nights
were spent scouring the television for games, and, as I had gone to school in
Philadelphia (Villanova University) I gravitated toward the Sixers, and, naturally,
AI. He was an underdog and so was the team that year, overachieving and winning
games in bunches. I identified with them and felt inspired by them—if they
could beat the odds and make a run for a championship, I could surely overcome
my grief and feel good again. But like an NBA season, it was a long haul—feeling
good again, that is. There were times when the grief was overwhelming, and with
it came doubt and insecurity. Bouts of sadness led to fits of anger, tears
produced clenched fists. I hardly ever felt comfortable, or at peace. I had
trouble enjoying things I always enjoyed: reading, writing, even day-dreaming. About
the last thing I wanted to do was spend time in my head, but that’s the only
place I seemed to dwell, deep inside, a dark place. It was like a
self-inflicted prison sentence, and my pain was the warden. Break time from
this metaphorical cell came from hoops. The basketball court was “my yard,” a
place where I could breathe fresh air, even if it smelled of sweat, where I
could loosen my limbs, release anxiety and let go of aggression, where I could
feel like myself again, or at least as long as I held “winners.”
About
the same time the Sixers made it to the NBA championship that year, I was
taking steps forward, small, incremental movements of progress, moments when my
shoulders would release tension and I would take a whole breath in, rather than
just an anxious sip. The growing sense of ease encouraged me to take chances,
to be less isolated, to think again about a life lived and not hidden from. To
this end, my family had a vacation house out in the Hamptons, in the bucolic
town of Wainscott, just a mile from a beautiful beach and the Atlantic Ocean. It
was just after Memorial Day, the start of the summer season, and I had a
hankering to go there and spend the weekend away from City life. I also was
looking forward to playing basketball.
Wainscott,
at that time, contained in its small confines one of the few remaining one-room
school houses in the country (it since has added a separate building to
accommodate an increase in students), and on the grounds was a sun-bleached
(and cracked) concrete basketball court. It was here that an evening hoops game
was played every evening during the summer. There were no lights on the court,
but from early June to late August games would last until darkness, or until
the players gave up from exhaustion. I was a habituate of the game, considered
it my home court, and must have launched thousands and thousands of jump shots
(during contests and alone) at those two rusted rims over the years. There were
others who were regulars, but none as regular as me. I lived for the game
throughout my high school and college years, never too tired from a summer job
or from having too much fun the night before to be first on the court. Graduation
from college, moving to Hoboken, getting a full-time job, and, eventually,
getting married, limited my time in the Hamptons. But I still put in enough
weekends to maintain a presence at the evening game, gaining comfort in its
continuance and my place in its history.
That
Memorial Day weekend, 2001, I left New York City on a Friday afternoon, taking
as a mode of transportation the Hampton Jitney, a bus by any name, but one
jazzed up, perhaps, by its destination, the haughtiness of the mostly wealthy
riders, and the provision of free orange juice and peanuts for the
just-over-reasonable fee. The Jitney was good for me because it dropped me in
Wainscott, and I could walk to my house. It was something my ex-wife and I
liked to do, that walk, easing the transition from the cacophony of the City,
the long bus ride (always traffic on the Long Island Expressway), enjoying,
finally, the quiet calm of passing under a tree-lined, non-lighted street and,
when conditions were right, the distant sound of ocean waves finding the shore.
This was the first time in years I had done the trip solo, and, truthfully, the
first time I would be at the house alone for such a long weekend. It was a bit
daunting, but I comforted myself that it would be good for me, give me time to
reflect, and, mostly, play lots of basketball.
Unfortunately,
for the first part of the evening, time alone was not good for me. I paced the
house as the sun dipped in the sky, starting to feel sorry for myself, thinking
about my ex-wife, feeling sad and lonely. I finally called my parents, not
wanting to worry them about my state, but to connect and let them know I was
safe. Of course, I worried them. I wept openly to my mom and dad, telling them
all my struggles. They showed their support for me, let me know they loved me and that I
would be okay, and my mother, in infinite maternal wisdom, told me there was a
casserole dish of baked ziti in the freezer. I hung up and felt better. It was
enough to give me an urge to take a jog. I laced on sneaks, shorts, T, and with
headset on, took off.
I
had never run so hard and for so long in my life, not before, and not after.
Sweat and fury poured out of me, and when that was extinguished, out came all
the other emotions I was holding. By the time I made it back to the house, more
than an hour later, covering at least ten miles, what was left inside me, what
I felt, was one thing: relief.
I
was also starving. Remembering my mother’s suggestion, I took out the ziti and
popped it into the microwave. Then I turned on the TV. About the time the ziti
was ready to eat, Game One of the Lakers vs. 76ers was starting. According to
the announcers, and just about anyone who followed the game, it was going to be
rout. So dominant were the Lakers that season (they had won twenty games in a
row), and so stellar was the play of their two stars, Shaq and Kobe, and so
steady their coach, the renowned Zen-Master, Phil Jackson, that few, if any,
gave the 76’ers a chance to win even one game. A sweep, it seemed, was
inevitable.
Which
was what the LA faithful, including Jack Nicholson and other Hollywood
glitterati, were standing and chanting in unison before the opening tip that
night at the newly-opened Staples Center: “Sweep, Sweep, Sweep!” The sound of
their chanting reverberated throughout the arena, like a Roman Coliseum crowd
calling for a fallen gladiator’s head. But as I gorged on ziti, still clad in
my sweat-drenched shorts and shirt, it was clear the 76’ers had not gotten the
message, were not defeated yet, at least not that night.
And
it was all because of AI. Basically, he played out-of-his-mind, doing
everything he did all season and more, taking it to the rack with fearlessness,
ball-hawking on defense, breaking down defenders and causing uncontrolled chaos
on offense. His brilliance willed them to overtime, where he hit the shot that
has been since called the “Step Over,” a far-right baseline corner juke of a
“j” over a fallen, “ankle-broke” Tyron Lue, the then back-up point guard for
the Lakers, and now head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. They were just two
of the forty-eight points AI scored that night, butthe most memorable. Sportsmanlike
or not, what AI had done, after hitting the j, was take a giant monster-truck
stomp over Lue’s prostate body. I saw it not as bravado, but defiance, an
unwillingness to concede to a more powerful enemy, a David vs. Goliath triumph
(even though Lue was shorter). I stood, and with ziti sauce caked to my mouth,
cheered like a maniac. Then I cried. I cried and cried and cried. And at the
end, just like my run, what I felt was one thing: relief.
I
finally did clean up that night: showered, went to bed, and set my alarm. There
was supposed to be a special game the next morning, at nine am, and I planned
to get there early, to warm up and be ready. But when I got there, and waited
and waited, no one showed up. My information had been wrong. There was no game
that morning. Rather than go back home and risk feeling depressed again, I
ventured to the far right baseline corner and started to shoot jumpers, and,
whenever one hit the mark, I emulated AI, lifting my leg up and stomping over
my imaginary, but very real foe, feeling, at least for that moment, defiant and
in control.
John A. McCaffrey grew up in Rochester, New York, attended
Villanova University in Philadelphia, and received his MA in Creative Writing
from the City College of New York. His stories, essays and book reviews
have appeared regularly in literary journals, newspapers and anthologies. His
debut novel, The Book of Ash, was
released in 2013. His collection of
short stories, Two Syllable Men, was
published by Vine Leaves Press in 2016. John is also a Development
Director for a non-profit organization in New York City, and teaches creative
writing at the College of New Rochelle's Rosa Parks Campus in Harlem. He
lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Find him @jamccaffrey.
