On the Phenomenon of Basketball (Part 1)

Though I cannot say that I am "good" at basketball, I’ve come to love the ritual of playing during PhD school and my last four years in China. I’ve become addicted to the bonding, dopamine when a shot goes in, sweat, luck, and variations of a kind of bro-ness that temporarily dissolves my ego. I started playing basketball sometime in high school, during the swimming off season with Aric and Nate and sometimes Aric's brother Jake and Aric's neighbor John, who Aric and I also knew from the arcade and the side-by-side cabinet days of Street Fighter II. I played a little bit of pick-up basketball in college with my friend Makoto and occasionally in San Francisco and Oakland with a group of middle-aged engineers who lived in my neighborhood but didn't really get into a regular game where I made genuine basketball friends until PhD school when I started playing at the luxurious and well-populated Purdue Co-rec. After early flirtations with regular games with people within my department that maybe weren't all that into basketball, I found a regular Saturday morning game with international graduate students and professors. The main crew was a group of late 40's Taiwanese guys joined by younger graduate students like myself; Americans, Indonesians, Malaysians, and a few Chinese students. Most of these folks attended the same church so it was fairly collegial game that wasn't punctuated by the argument-driven stoppages that typically accompany American pickup games involving fraternity brothers and ball-is-life gym rats (respect to the gym rats). That, and the Saturday game was a bit slower and had at least some half-court orientation in that there was more to the game then fast breaks and 3-pointers, which at least at Purdue was the pick-up style of play most favored by the undergraduates.

Asides from the immediate pleasure, the joys of spending time with a familiar group and of the game itself, of exercising until exhaustion and the emptiness of mind the comes with it, was a kind the intellectual and social exercise of asserting myself on the court. So as, I would tell myself that part of the reason I played was to perform a kind of aggression, one that might transform my non-predatory nature into something/one more competitive, more fearsome, less nice, polite; less deferential. In basketball one's habits of personality emerge in elemental forms, confident shooters, aggressive rebounders, passers as leaders, reactive defenders or vice versa, self-conscious shooters, timid rebounders, those-who-never-look-to-pass, defenders that lose their man or woman, unwilling or unable to keep track of the moving bodies or unsure how physical one should be. Like dancing, one exposes parts of themselves without knowing it when playing basketball. Being aggressive as a defender is something I can do as I generally have an awareness of what the person across from me is doing. This tendency one part paying attention and one part a habitual mechanism to avoid revealing my own intentions. That it is easier to ask questions than to talk about yourself. Being a physical defender is also something I learned playing with Aric who has about three inches on me, is a skilled shooter, and has always had a lot of patience with me climbing all over him to get at the ball or push him off the block.

As an offensive player then, I am much more comfortable playing a supporting role, setting screens, rebounding, and passing rather than taking the ball to the basket or shooting. If I have the ball I also have the spotlight, a critical form of attention where my lack of confident aggression is not just an passing observation but an articulated strategy to take advantage of in that one is to exploit another's lack of confidence. Self-consciousness, especially the kind of self-consciousness that accompanies doubt, is not to one's advantage. Instead, a shooter benefits by a ruthless indifference to others accompanied by an ability to quickly set aside failure. That and actual skill. Thus, I should also mention that my shot appears hopelessly broken in that my shooting mechanics involve my hands and arms going back over my head such that every shot resembles a kind of lob. In the past I've attributed this to the fact that my right shoulder is "double-jointed" which means that I can pop my right upper arm out of the ball socket and there isn't enough stability to shoot the ball in the stereotypical arms extended and elbows bent in front of the body. This shoulder is incredibly flexible but also seems to lack the kind of muscles to generate enough torque (?) to keep my arms in front of my body when shooting the ball. In the last year or so I've been doing strength building exercises and have noticed that it makes it a bit easier to shoot, so perhaps my odd-looking shot is something that can be rehabilitated. My deference to others and self-consciousness, however, is in the architecture of my personality.

That said, I can find comfort in my lack of confidence as much as one can be or not be confident; confidence a dynamic that emerges depending on the situation. Confidence then is not a binary, to have or not to have, but situational and wrapped up in perception and performance. That one can perform confidence when they don't have it, 'fake it till you make it.' Or vice versa, one can perform unconfidence, to humble oneself or be deferential because that is what our role calls forth. All of this at the base of the habit otherwise known as personality, wrapped up in gender, race, class and the hierarchies of status we consciously or unconsciously surf from moment to moment. We might use these performances to accomplish what we want or to help others accomplish what we think they want, that is, if they are even remotely under our control. Or more simply, in basketball, we might use the performances of confidence to win the game--the point--the moment, which maybe is a very contemporary American way to understand the goal of sport. Regardless, that I flit in and out of confidence, in basketball, in life, sometimes intentionally but usually not. In basketball then my lack of confidence, anyone’s lack of confidence, becomes an expression of self.

**

One Hundred Hands Slapping Five

For Kobe & Phil

He grabs the ball, the ball

already in his hands.  He runs

towards the bench.  Coach!

is nowhere. 

 

His arm cocks back: he goes in

for the dunk— The Man is a function

of the game. There is only one

ball. Pay attention.

 

In the center, the court opens

in every direction. He’s open.

He spins around

nobody. Nobody can stop him.

 

The best ones already know,

most are already known. Sweat

pours from his face. Master

of what?

**

The problems come when one’s performance becomes total, that one is or is not a something eternal and unchangeable. Which is what happens when the dynamics around us don't change, either because have a vested interest in maintaining them or because they are forced upon us, or both. We think that we are confident or not, that another is this way or that, which is a natural and necessary trick of language: that this computer I write on is a computer and not a indeterminate mass of waves and particles but a real thing that is there. That solidity and consistency is a necessary presumption to live, to hunt and gather, and further, that a given situation brings forth the need for this solidity. One is good or not good at basketball and this is useful when choosing your team, your clothes, your words to describe yourself. Yet, that choice to judge, oneself or others, on the grounds of confidence is an act brought into existence by exigence, that a given situation calls forth this judgment and the articulation of the judgment then makes it a fact. The other night I was playing with a group of guys and the guy guarding me was fairly big, wearing a grey t-shirt. He played in the post but did not take any shots, instead deferring to others around him. It seemed to me that he hadn’t played a lot of basketball and didn’t have much confidence. When there was a break in the action I said to A, “pass me the ball, the grey guy can’t do anything.” I would not have said this out loud if we weren’t playing a competitive game. I certainly would not have said that out loud to this guy (though with my current Chinese ability I would not have been able to say that anyway). I’m not sure I even would have articulated that thought to myself. What I noticed about this particular moment is that upon saying this, upon making this judgment I felt a kind of guilt for taking advantage of what I imagine to be this man’s struggle.

And so these materials self-perpetuate, a life form reproducing itself. In basketball I can perform as predator, cloak myself in a wolf’s skin when the situation allows. I have told myself that this is what I want. At other times I am devoured, by my opponents, teammates, myself, or some combination therein. At other times I am neither predator or prey but egoless and free. All three of these states produce a kind of pleasure with a beginning and an end, a game that can be stopped. Also in these states are the means of their production, the projection of my imagined likeliness into the interior of others. The grey man’s lack of confidence symbiotic with my fullness, that somehow I am responsible for how he feels. Thus, I become trapped in my past performances, be it the immediate past or the matrix of performances I've seen before and apply in comparison. My performance of unconfidence and this particular register of vulnerability I write in is not the entire story but a necessary starting point. In professional basketball the announcers on television talk about 'getting to your spot,' meaning, getting to a place on the court where once can make the kinds of shots they are confident shooting. Thus, here, I mark a ground to stand on.