I knew my place and went to the farthest court, where two half-court games of three-on-three were in progress. I stood on the sidelines, practiced dribbling the old rubber ball I had picked up at a yard sale, and waited for a chance at joining a team. Despite several game changes and a few half-hearted attempts on my part to get the players to notice me, no one picked me for a team. As angry as that made me at them, I also really didn’t blame them. I had grown up but not filled out the previous year, so though I was already a little over six feet tall and almost to my adult height, I still weighed barely a hundred and forty pounds. Despite my weight, my height would have made me attractive to potential teammates if I hadn’t been so obviously uncoordinated, a guy who had trouble dribbling for more than two bounces without losing control of the ball. I could have claimed a shot at a game and picked up two other guys when my turn came, but I was afraid of the anger that would roar out of me at the humiliation I would feel when all of them turned me down.
Around lunchtime a lot of guys headed out to get food, and the games on my court shrunk to two on two. I was watching a game carefully, studying the moves of the players just as I studied the NBA stars on TV, hoping the knowledge would help me when I finally got into a game, when up walked the only guy in the place who looked like more of a geek than I did.
He was an inch or two shorter than I, and he looked like he weighed a good thirty pounds less, a bag of small bones wrapped in sickly white, acne-scarred skin. His shorts were unfashionably short, and he wore a tee shirt that said, “Jocks suck.” He came straight over to me, stuck out his hand, and said, “Hi. I’m Jim, Jim Peterson. Looking for a partner?”
I stared at him for a moment. I couldn’t imagine a worse partner, but then again, any partner was a way onto the court, and I probably looked like just as bad a prospect to him. I shook his hand. “Matt.”
“Gotten in yet?” he asked.
I laughed. “What do you think?”
“You’re not sweating enough to have played recently, and I’m betting you’re about as attractive to these Neanderthals as I am, so I’d guess no.”
“You’d guess right.”
“Well, we’ll fix that now.” He turned and yelled to the four guys playing on the half court in front of me, “My partner and I have next. What’s the score?”
None of the guys looked happy about it, but one of them said, “Eight to five, us.”
Jim sat with me and watched the game.
“Have you ever played here before?” I asked.
“A couple of times,” he said, “though getting on without a partner is tough.”
“Have you ever won?”
He laughed this time. “What do you think?”
I liked his honesty. “I’d have to guess no.”
“You’d guess right.”
One of the guys on the floor hit a rattling jumper from just north of the foul line, his teammate high-fived him, and the other two guys grumbled. The guy who hit the shot waved us onto the court and said, “You’re up.”
Jim jumped up and headed toward the foul line and the guy with the ball. “I’ll take this one.”
I walked to my man, Jim checked the ball, and the game started.
We could do no right. Though both of them were shorter than either of us, they shot over us, went around us like we were rooted to the ground, out-rebounded us, and generally kicked our butts. Playground rules were make-em, take-em, and they either made their shots or got the rebounds, so we barely touched the ball. The game ended eleven to one, our only point a lucky heave by Jim on a move that I think was supposed to have been a lay-up but that ended up looking like he was tripping over his own feet while running. I was hugging my sides for wind as I walked off the court.