Chapter 6: Hooping with the Enemy

Growing up, B loved two things: Running his mouth and getting buckets. This is a story about basketball and trash talk, two things we learned how to do in the nineties.

This is Chapter Six of The Stories We Tell, a nostalgic lookback on friendship, growing up, and the hopes we have of becoming heroes.

It’s The Wonder Years meets The Sandlot with sprinklings of Friday Night Lights. New stories will be published weekly. For a list of all chapters, please visit the Chapter List here: Chapter List - The Stories We Tell.

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June 1993

B lived for basketball and started every summer morning with the same routine.

He slipped NBA Superstars, Volume 1 from a scratched VHS box with tattered edges into his VCR and watched highlights of his three favorite players. (Author’s note: all three videos are included in this story, along with a poll to vote on your favorite).

Next, he went to the park to practice.

• Full court figure-8’s till he started sweating

• Full court layups until he needed water

• Suicides till cramps sparked pain in his sides like branches bursting in a bonfire

• Free throws till his body memorized the motion of making shots with a thumping chest while short on air

Then, he started shooting.

• Ten jump shots from ten spots around the court

• Ten free throws between each set

• One dribble, stop, and shoot

• Two dribbles, floater in the lane

• Cross-overs, straight drives, stop and pops

• Left-hand, left-hand, left-hand

• More free throws

Our town had a YMCA and a rec center with indoor courts, forgiving rims, and real nets. B never hooped there, claiming those courts made for fake ballers “scared to do the dirty work.” He played at the park down the block from his house, the one with a long crack running through the blacktop for a free throw line and rims forged of double-iron meant to reject jumpers.

We were all there playing one day when B stood behind a half-foot deep pothole at the three-point line. “Listen to that,” he dipped his wrist into the cookie jar. Metal chains rattled with his make. “Music to my ears.”

During our 4th grade season, we squared up against another elementary school. We led 8-2 midway through the first when B went to the bench. A few minutes later, a kid on the other team clipped the legs of one of our players when he went for a layup. The ref whiffed on the call, and their side went the other way for an easy basket.

We trailed 10-8.

B stood, walked past our coach to the scorer’s table, and stepped onto the court at the next dead ball. He never said a word, rare for him, but after each of his sixteen straight points he jogged back on defense with his face a foot from the player on the other team who had p****d him off grinning like a kid you definitely wanted to hate if he wasn’t your friend.

When B left the game, he walked over to our coach and said, “We’re good now. They’re done with their s**t.” We led 24-10.

None of this is the story I want to tell about B, though. None of us witnessed that story, and B never spoke about it.

Once, years later when spots of gray decorated his beard and we had a table of empty Busch Lights in front of us, I asked him what happened. He squinted against the sun, took a long, slow sip, then wiped his mouth, and said, “They got some shots in. But I made more.”

The nice thing about retelling old stories is the facts matter less than what we believe happened. The story, as I know it, starts two weeks into summer with B at the park in the middle of his morning routine.

Justin, Chad, and Jared, now heading into 6th grade and sporting muscles blessed by growth spurts and push-ups and with mouths that ran like a bird’s a** in berry season still talking all about The Tournament they won last fall, rolled up on their Schwinn’s and surrounded B at the free throw line.

Them: “You wanna play?”
B: Stare. Silence. Jump shot. Chain rattles.

Them: “Come on. You scared? Big bad B is too scared to play.”
B. Stare. Scowl. Free throw.

Them: “What’s wrong? We’ll make it two-on-two and take it easy on you. It won’t be like the football game. You remember that, don’t you?”
B: Stare. Sigh. Head shake. Another free throw.

Chad caught B’s ball through the chains and punted it over a blue-gray metal merry-go-round, past an “s-shaped” curly slide, and laughed as it bounced in the grass field off the side of the court. Anger and annoyance came off B like the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.

Them: “What’s the B stand for anyways? Oh, right, b***h.”
B: Long silence. Menacing chuckle. Then, “You three vs. me. One game to fifteen. Make it, take it. Your ball first.”

Them: “You gotta be kidding. We’ll kick you a** again.”
B: “Your ball. Make it, take it.”

Blood dripped from B’s mouth after a drive to the basket ended with an elbow into his lip. A forearm cracked his ribs on the left side. Another turned his cheek yellow-green for a few days after this game. Three on one, they raced to a 5-0 lead, taunting and smiling and pushing B around.

When they finally missed, B grabbed the rebound and dribbled behind the pothole at the three-point line. Over a few more dribbles and a deep breath, he collected himself. Justin clapped at him. Jared barked. Chad smacked the blacktop.

B smiled back at them, knowing something good and awful was about to happen. The game was over, they just didn’t realize it yet.

“I’m going right and gonna score,” B said before bursting to the basket in two rapid dribbles and spinning a layup through the chains.

Next, he stopped and popped a step inside the right elbow.

“Same move, just going left this time,” Jared shoved B in the hip as the shot went up. B popped up, brushed gravel from his hands, and casually walked behind the three-point line to start again.

“Three ball, left pocket.”

“Rain drop.” he called.

B hit a floater as Justin lunged helplessly toward him. “You’re too small,” he said and stared at the wasted defender under him.

As the game played on, Justin, Chad, and Jared shut their mouths and quit their taunts. They jumped to block shots they could never reach. And they moved their feet to cut off drives they were too slow to stop. Their bodies kept playing, but their hearts gave up.

Nothing they did could stop B from doing the two things he loved: Running his mouth and getting buckets.

“Come on. You’re just gonna let me have this,” B laughed as he backed them under the basket. By the time his baby hook dropped it was 14 to 6. Game point.

B held the ball at the top of the three-point line. He cocked his head at the sun burning high in the blue, late morning sky. He looked back at them and said, “Getting late boys. About time to go home.”

B took two casual dribbles left before rocking back and pushing hard with one more dribble to his left before crossing back harder to his right. Chad’s legs failed at the ankles. Jared bounced off B’s shoulder. A step later, B rose and lofted a soft jumper above Justin’s stretching hand.

While the ball floated toward the double-iron rims and chain-link net, B turned and walked toward his basketball in the grass forty yards away. From over his shoulder, he heard chains rattle home his winner.

B never told this story.

Because he never had to.

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s this: A good story is one others will listen to you tell. But a great story is one others will tell for you.