So why keep playing? Dad doesn't talk about it, but I have an idea. Jack Kirk, who ran marathons well into his 90s, once said, "You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running," and surely this is part of the reason. There's the joy of competition, too, but there's something else. When I asked my mom what playing basketball means to Phil, she didn't hesitate: "With his boys? How about everything."Two months ago Dad and I were on the same team at the Y. As usual, the defense sagged off the old guy, daring Phil to shoot and, as usual, he hesitated. But he hit the first shot, and then a three. Emboldened, Dad went in the post and unfurled a little jump hook. Money! Then an up-and-under, spinning away from the defense like a creaky ballerina and bringing a whoop from the sideline. After winning two games, we faced a stacked team. Soon, the score was tied at 19, next basket wins.
By my count Dad had hit seven of his eight attempts. Yet the defense again left him open in the corner. As he caught the ball, he ignored his shoulder and the two men racing at him and his balky knees, and pushed his shot up and out, just like his dad taught him, just like he taught us.
And then, the moment we all play for, no matter our age. As the ball dropped through the net clean, I roared in triumph and the opposing players argued about who left the old guy open. And Phil—well, as usual, he didn't say anything.
But he did smile.
This might be better for a Father's Day article, but I'm reminded of when my Dad taught me how to play basketball. Because my sister steadfastly opposed getting out on the court (although I found out this past weekend that she's got nerves of steel playing tennis at the net, making me look foolish on multiple counts when I tried to sneak passing shots around her), it was largely 1-on-1 ball between the two of us. And for several years, until I got tall enough to shoot over him unimpeded and he lost his first step, I could not for the life of me fathom how a 5-6 guy who sits in an office all day got around me over and over again for layups.
My dad played point during open gym at Chinese school. Other than the white guy who coached basketball to the kids (I think his daughter was a halfie, which was why he was there), I've never played with another guy with the kind of court vision and ability to execute a bounce pass to another guy on the run like my dad. While most of the other dads stood around either to post up (Chinese dads, I've found, being by and large office folks, are very good at pushing you backwards with their butts), or pop threes in the corner, my dad was a whirling dervish, darting back and forth between the larger trees in the paint, exhorting everyone else to make their backdoor cuts, where he inevitably found them for easy layups. He wouldn't score much - he didn't have much of a shot (I really learned to shoot by necessity when I played my buddy who was taller, faster, stronger, and generally a better basketball player than I was, so that the only chance I ever had of winning was grabbing the rebound, run to the other side of the court, and pop a 3 before he got there) - but at the end of the day, he was the guy the defense had to focus on over and over again, because he just made them look foolish. Despite being smaller than most of the other players, my dad parlayed his lack of physical gifts into an ability to outsmart people on the court, to see angles that other players couldn't, and to execute perfectly the skills that he did have. No flash - he wasn't much into the behind-the-backs or the full-court football passes that I do from time to time - but he could bounce pass a basketball into a mailbox while driving by on the highway. On a court with MIT Ph.D's, doctors and CEOS, my dad was the brightest one of them all.
Even though my dad doesn't play much now, that was the player that I had the great fortune to grow up with, and, with good luck, that's the player that I hope to be when I take my kids out to the hardwood someday.
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