A Bitter View

Y’know this subject is something that’s cool to have yet. When you’re not doing what others want the questions get tiresome. I was born with good jeans. I’m tall and I can’t change that. I also cant change the 4 word sentence that everyone always ask’s me that every tall man is sick to death of hearing.

Do you play basketball?

Man, I get so damn tired of hearing this. Ya’ll just don’t know. Don’t get me wrong I love my height I hate the stereotyping that comes with it. I’m black and tall so automatically I HAVE to play B-ball. I should. Play B-ball. I should be in the NBA. I should be making all the money that the players make. I should be in the spotlight. I’m supposed to play it. I was built for it.

BULLSHIT.

Let me tell you, the reason I stopped doing sports was because of the pressure of others. I’ve been even threatened to play. I still refused. I used to have love for the game. I played sports at school I was even in extracurricular activities back in grade school. When puberty struck I realized I had no interest to play. This upset my moms but I could care less. I had to do me. When she realized I wasn’t gonna play ball again she bribed me into playing. I stuck at it for a while but eventually I left it. I didn’t want to be apart of it at all. I hated that I was categorized into being a player. I admit when it came to playing actual basketball my skills were less than everyone else. I’m not even gonna lie, I sucked. My coordination was slow and I just wasn’t aggressive enough. Hell, everytime I tried to play I would end up in a fight. It would happen because someone didn’t like how I played or what I was doing. I was being pushed around and when I pushed back dudes tried to test me. I wasn’t a fighter either so I backed off every time. The nail in the coffin for me to give up playing was the realization that I couldn’t dunk. It used to be embarrassing. To the point that when people asked I would say yeah but in truth I couldn’t at all. Y’see I have small hands with slender fingers. I could never palm a basketball. I tried many times. I wanted so bad to do this and maybe encourage the love of the game within me to continue but no avail. I knew some NBA players to use the power dunk technique and tuck the ball into your wrist when you dunk, that shit never worked neither. The shit was discouraging because I wanted to be something that everyone wanted yet I didn’t know what I wanted myself.

My uncle is a vice principal and head coach of a well known school here in the city, He told me to come out and learn some b-ball moves if I was interested. At the time the school was located in the Altgerald Gardens. This is one of our ghettos on the south side I grew up there since most of my relatives lived there and I visited during the summer when I was little. Getting back to the subject, my uncle gave me a ball and taught me some moves to start on and I did. It was also the same time I met up with the basketball team he was in charge of. They were all taller than me and looked at me like I was the shorty. I can say that was one of my first times ever being intimidated by my own peers. Any way while I was doing my exercises, my uncle told me to work with one of the teammates. We did a couple of exercises together all the while he asked me questions.

Most of them were minor but the main one that stuck in my head was the simplest one. “Why you doing this and is it for yourself?” That shit blew me for a loop. I knew it wasn’t for myself it was to make others happy. It was to put my height to use the way they all wanted me to. It was around that time as I passed the ball to him he took it and cupped it under his arm and we took a walk around the gym. He let me know if this wasn’t for me then I shouldn’t be doing it. He was adamant in letting me know that in his own words “Man, the ghetto needs more brothers in otha stuff besides basketball and rapping.” I soaked in every thing he was spitting. I think it was the fact that he was coming from a low class neighborhood for him to say those things surprised me since I always thought this was in their view the way out. I read between the lines that if there was another outlet for him to do he would. I respected that. I thank that brother to this day. I haven’t played a lick of ball since.