This winter is driving me a little mad. The mud, the snow, the low sky, the heavy coat, the boots, the chill under my skin that will not go away, the dogs covered in frozen mud to their withers, two happy idiots, who I must towel down to plain dirt again and again. Like the hunched, dumb animal I have become in this endless gray cold, I sat on the couch two nights ago hoping that Villanova would continue to demonstrate that the game of basketball when played well is the moving stuff of beauty, and thus maybe even help Spring move closer to fulfillment. I cranked up a fantasy machine. I thought maybe because Villanova plays this best of all games with such unselfish brio, such crisp harmony, such relentless attention to sacrifice and passion, that they are a kind of perfect embodiment of a natural engine, of the heat that rises from a well conditioned body at the full extension of its skill. So c’mon heat, I thought, c’mon harmony, c’mon passion. Nothing else is knocking this winter back. Maybe they will.
At one time I loved basketball more than anything else. For a summer, I loved it more than books. Between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked at a supermarket and I played ball. That’s it. For seven days a week, I played every day for hours in the morning, heat-stroke inducing hours in the afternoon and when I did not have a shift, I played in a league at night. I spent much of that time alone — shooting, doing dribbling drills, laboring at footwork, racing up and down the empty court, wearing out two pair of sneakers in 10 weeks. I lived in a kind of delirium fueled by a desire to make myself a better player, but more important than that, out of the immaculate enjoyment for living half the time in the air, for rising up for rebounds and for shooting jump shots, the closest I have ever come in this impure life to perfect happiness. If you have never shot one from 20 and watched the net clip as if someone had snapped it with a knife, the moment will not make much sense to you.
Mikal Bridges shooting
Think of it this way: you have made yourself into an animal trained to do one trick well, and animals I have watched love the movement of it all, the unfolding of their bodies. Now add to that the touch of the ball lifting from your fingertips, the arc of it, the light above you, your body the master of gravity, the end of the arc, the ball slipping through. What joy. Even now in this 65 year old broken crankshaft of a body, I can remember the joy. I never became any better than a notch below mediocre, but my love for all of the game was the purest flame.
Maybe it is the vicarious joy that makes the heat, that will drive back winter. Two night’s ago Villanova floated those jumpers, found the open man, passed the ball as if it came with laser sights, cut off Michigan’s passing lanes, blocked shots, bloody well floated up and up, all five of them making sharp, new patterns all over the court, making spirit lines for your eyes to remember and smile over when the play was finished. What pleasure! What pride of craft!
Today the Baltic weather continues, but watching Villanova scoured it away for a time. One remembers … and the right hand comes up, cradles the ball, bends the elbow and dreams of the release and the heat and the blue sky.
