In the fall of 1992, I went before the bathroom mirror, spread a heart-sized glop of white shaving cream through my hair, put the razor against the side of my head, and then proceeded to shear all of the hair from my scalp for the first time. After I was done shaving, I dappled a coat Aqua Velva onto my head to protect it from an onset of itchy razor bumps. I’d gnashed my teeth as the aftershave burned while settling itself into the pores in my head. I wheeled my head to the left, then to the right, and then back to the center again. My head was a lighter shade of brown than my pimply face. I whispered to myself: “I’m going to have to get some sun and even things out.”
I’d shaved my head for two particular reasons. The first one being that I was tired of having to endure traumatic homemade haircuts from my dad. Once a month, he would place a wooden chair on top of an assemblage of newspaper pages in the middle of the living room carpet, and then usher me forward. With shoulders slumped and head hanging forward, I would slowly approach, turn around and lower myself down onto the chair. Dad would use tape to connect the two newspaper pages that were draped along my shoulders.
He would pick up the electric shaver and say, “Are you ready for your haircut, Eze?”
I sighed. “Yes, I’m ready.”
“What type of haircut did you say you wanted?”
“Nothing fancy dad,” I said. “Just cut it short like always.”
Dad flipped the switch and I would reflexively tense up, knowing that there was a one-hundred percent chance that I was not going to like the outcome.
I knew that my dad meant well—he wanted to save money for the important things—and the haircuts were in no way physically painful. But he was not a professional barber. He wasn’t even a competent amateur when it came to cutting hair. Invariably, when he was done cutting, my hairline would always be uneven. And there would be bald spots all over, which gave my head the look of a leopard’s fur coat. My reputation at school and my fragile teenage psyche would suffer. Eze, what happened to your hair? It was a common refrain from many of the students who sat in class with me. And I got to the point where I just didn’t want to deal with the snide comments and giggles from my fellow teenagers.
The second reason for why I decided to shave my head? I wanted to emulate some of the great sports heroes of the day. In the early nineteen-nineties, a significant number of college and National Basketball Association (NBA) players were opting towards shaving their heads. The majority of these players hadn’t reached the age of thirty yet, they weren’t shaving their heads to obfuscate the onset of male pattern baldness. They were going for a certain look. These unbelievable tall, young men looked more attractive, strong, powerful, and intimidating, black heads gleaming under the stadium lights while they competed against each other before crowds of thousands of men and women—mostly white—who cheered their every move. I’m not sure if any of these adoring crowds knew that young black men brandishing shaved heads was an act of rebellion against a society that viewed bald, muscular black men as imminent threats. I certainly knew it.
I wanted so badly to be like these ripped gods of the sport. So, I attended basketball tryouts during my sophomore year of high school while sporting my bald head, and I was able to secure a spot on the junior varsity team.
As a sophomore, I was one of the most athletically talented kids in my high school. I could run the forty-yard dash in about 4.65 seconds and bench press two-hundred and twenty-five pounds without much effort. I wasn’t exceedingly tall—I stood about six feet, which was a constant source of frustration—but my arms were long and muscular. I could palm an entire basketball with one bare hand, and my legs contained enough spring in them to propel me skyward for powerful flushes/dunks of the basketball through the orange metal hoop.
I was also what a scout would call raw. Blessed athletically, but bereft of any prior organized basketball experience. So unlike most of the other players who’d played in summer leagues, I struggled with the simple practice drills—I hated having to participate in the three-man weave.
When the season started, I was still an inexperienced neophyte, definitely not ready to participate in basketball games, so I was relegated to sitting on the bench for the first few games of the season. However, as the season advanced, I learned more and became progressively better, and was rewarded with more time on the court. I was fortunate to be learning under the auspices of the gym teacher who doubled as the junior varsity coach, Mr. Patrick.
Mr. Patrick was a very tall black man in his sixties who’d been coaching high school basketball since the late eighties. His voice was gravelly, full of authority. I’d never been formally coached before meeting Mr. Patrick, and I didn’t have anyone to compare him too. Some of the other junior varsity boys didn’t take to his coaching style, and would end up quitting the team altogether as this season progressed. I took to Mr. Patrick because he was patient and calm most of the time. Sure, he would yell at me after I’d make a mistake, which is what coaches everywhere are paid to do. However, when Mr. Patrick yelled he was also constructively criticizing and trying to coach me up because he knew that I could do better. He was right to invest his time and effort into seeing me develop as a high school basketball player. My confidence began to swell a bit as I’d vastly improved by the end of my first season. When it came time for me to hand in my secondhand uniform—a faded green jersey and crotch hugging shorts—I made myself a promise: I was going to wear the shimmering white and green uniforms that were reserved for members of the varsity basketball team.
When I told my Spanish teacher of two years my goal she clapped and cheered. She also offered me a warning. “Connolly, the coach of the varsity team, is a really intense guy,” she said. “And you’re probably going to do something that will cause him to yell at you. Don’t take it too personally though. He does that to all of his players.”
“I’ll be fine Miss Grace,” I said. “I know that yelling is what coaches do.”
Mr. Patrick suggested that I join a summer league or some other kind of organized basketball entity, to which I politely refused. I knew that my dad would have balked at paying for me to play basketball and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable playing with the upper echelon of varsity players. My belief was still not where I needed it to be to compete with the best players in Colorado. I would spend my basketball off season improving my game while baking on the blacktop courts that populated the Denver and Aurora City Parks.
I would practice shooting, dunking, dribbling, boxing out, and rebounding on my own in the early afternoons of every day during the off-season. Other players would appear on the court in the early evening. They would warm up and watch me play from the other side of the court before motioning me over to join them for a few pick-up games of five on five.
Blacktop players were of varied ages, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, and temperaments. However, we all had one very important thing in common: we were competent basketball players. The majority of the players were either currently playing competitive basketball or had played previously. We weren’t playing for anything but pride and enjoyment, but the games were fiercely competitive. I felt myself getting stronger and better as the summer morphed into the beginning of fall. And then came the fateful day in late September of 1993.
I was engaged in a hotly contested game when I drove down the lane of the court—the lane is the twelve to sixteen foot area of the basketball court that extends from underneath the goal to a line fifteen feet in front of the backboard and that players may not enter during a free throw—until I was two long strides away from the hoop, and then jumped while raising the dusty orange ball towards the hoop with my right hand. A shirtless man who was shadowing each one of my steps jumped with me to contest my lay-up attempt. He slapped at the ball, but hit my right wrist instead with some force, knocking me off balance. I instinctively extended my right arm forward to regain my equilibrium as I descended toward the pavement, banged my right ring finger against the metal basketball pole, and heard a subtle crack. Right after my two sneakers hit the ground, I grabbed my right hand with my left and winced. My right ring finger was already beginning to swell to twice its normal size.
******
The first practices of the upcoming season began in mid-October, 1993. Some of the other boys urged me to eschew practice while my finger mended, but I wouldn’t heed their advice. Every time Coach Connolly instructed us to, “Get in line,” I took my place. Why? I was somewhat insecure about my standing with the team and I wanted to show both of my coaches that I was as dedicated to this basketball team as any other player. So I practiced everyday for two weeks with a heavy green cast weighing my down my right arm, and secured my spot on Mr. Patrick’s junior varsity squad.
Once again, the year started off with me getting reacquainted the bench since I was recovering from a near catastrophic injury, but with a year of literal growth and organized basketball underneath my belt, I caught on quickly. It wasn’t long before I earned a starting spot as a power forward and began to actually dominate stretches of games. My average points per game increased from the low single digits to nearly fifteen points per contest. I was good for about eight rebounds each game.
My confidence as an organized player reached its absolute apex in late January of 1994. We, the Minutemen, were matched against a group of adversaries in gold and black uniforms. Our opponents, the Spartans, were big, talented, experienced, and unafraid of us. With five minutes left in the fourth quarter of the game, I eyed some free space between two adversaries along the free-throw line as I stood below the basketball rim. I shuffled forward until I reached that space, shot my right hand into the air to announce my presence to the teammate with the ball in his hands. “Right here,” I whispered as I waved my hand. “Pass it to me. I’m open! I’m wide open.”
My teammate hurled the ball at my chest. I snatched the ball out of the air and quickly turned to my left, dribbled twice, and looked up at the basket. There lane was free from human roadblocks. My eyes widened, for this was my chance to do the thing that I’d been dreaming of doing since I was about eight years old. I took one more dribble, planted my right foot, and then took off with the ball in my right hand, determined. As I rose higher, as the amount inches became the amount of feet of space that existed between the parquet floor and the soles of my shoes, I caught sight of a prospective impediment to my ultimate goal. He was about six-feet five inches tall and was flying in my direction. I recognized him as an integral player with the opposing team’s varsity squad—it was common practice to play lesser varsity players (juniors, sophomores, and freshman) with the junior varsity team.
The memory of that September evening on the blacktop flashed before me: the opposing player’s swipe across my hand, the subtle crack of my finger bone as it bumped against the metal pole. Oh no you don’t. It’s not going to happen this time. I placed my left hand on the other side of the ball as I continued to rise higher into the air. The other player flew right past me, brushing my left elbow on his way down to the floor, but I kept ascending until I flushed the ball down the basket. I chose to hang on the rim a few seconds for emphasis. The referee, dressed in black and white pinstripes, had blown his whistle and was pointing in the direction of the young man who brushed my arm. “Foul,” said the referee.
As soon as my shoes touched the floor, I was overwhelmed by elated teammates. They gave me high fives and enfolded me with their arms. I looked to the stands, in the section where my alma mater’s students and parents had gathered. They were all standing, clapping, pointing and smiling down at me. No one had been expecting this.
Mr. Patrick’s voice cut through the noise. “Don’t forget to make the free-throw now, Eze.”
I swished the free-throw.
After the game had ended and most everyone had exited the gym, Coach Connolly, dressed in his signature blue jumpsuit and tennis shoes, was leaning against the door that I was walking toward. He stepped forward to speak. “You were good tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Very much.”
“Tomorrow, I want you to take Bobby’s uniform from him.”
I felt a bit queasy then. I knew Bobby. I liked Bobby, a lot. He had been promoted to the varsity team two months ago. He loved being a member of the varsity team, and I knew that taking the uniform from him would rip his heart into two pieces. How was I supposed to tell this dude to give me his uniform? Why couldn’t Coach Connolly demand that he hand over the uniform?
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
It took a week, and several face-to-face requests, for Bobby to finally agree to relinquish it. He would explain that he’d kept the uniform for the week because he wanted to give it to me after it’d been cleaned, but I didn’t believe him. The look on his face as he reluctantly deposited the uniform into my waiting hands told me everything that he’d be feeling during that entire week. His dreams had just been crushed. I cradled the shimmering white and green uniform in my arms after it had been given to me. I treated it as if it were of the most precious material on earth.
***********
We had a game against the Thunderbolts in early February of 1994. The Thunderbolts were a highly ranked (third in the state) rival school on the east side of town. There weren’t ranked as high as our team was, as we were ranked as one of the top twenty high school boys’ teams in the country. The Thunderbolts were definitely aware of our national ranking, and were very motivated to test their skill against the best team in the entire state.
The game was to be held at the Thunderbolts gym. I was the first to arrive, along with Mr. Patrick, the assistant coach for the varsity team, the coach who’d believed in my ability from the start. After I got dressed in my resplendent white and green uniform, he and I met in an area of the locker room.
“That green and white looks good on you, Eze,” he said, smiling. “How does it feel to wear it?”
I slid my hands down the length of the green warm-up jacket, exhaled and smiled, and then slid them upward. “It feels really great Mr. Patrick,” I said. “Sometimes when I think about where I started. Practicing by myself on the blacktop during the summer, and then breaking my finger before the season started.” I shook my head from side to side. “But here I am. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m wearing it sometimes.”
“I want you tell you something that I think you should hear,” said Mr. Patrick.
“What’s that Mr. Patrick?”
“At the beginning of the year during practice, Connolly walked up me and said that I should get rid of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He didn’t think you had what it takes. He didn’t want you.”
“I guessed that I proved him wrong then,” I said.
“I guess you did.
Lately though, I’d been reminding Coach Connolly of why he had been against me remaining on the team at the beginning. We’d traveled to Thomas Jefferson High School the previous week to compete against the varsity team there, and although I’d had little time to practice with the varsity squad, Connolly decided to put me into the game.
My eyes were like those of a fish out of water. I was lost out there on the court amongst the trees—varsity players were so much taller than the junior varsity players—and I needed direction. One of my teammates, seeing my confusion, pointed to where he thought I should go. I went there, and was summarily yanked from the game by Connolly during the next stoppage in play.
As I approached our team’s bench, a clearly steamed Conolly stopped me in my tracks. “When you were playing offense with the junior varsity team, did you move to the top of the key?”
Yes.
“No,” I said.
“Al right then,” said Connolly. “Don’t move to that spot when you playing offense ever again.”
The Thunderbolts proved to be no match for us. When the game clock struck one minute before the beginning of half-time, I looked to the scoreboard. Our boys’ team was comfortably ahead by twenty-three points and our hosts’ partisan crowd was sitting on their hands, the wind seemingly knocked out of their collective lungs. But Connolly was coaching like we were three points behind. He paced up and down the sideline, he gesticulated wildly with his hands, he argued with the referees for foul calls. And when one of his players committed a mistake, Coach Connelly turned toward the line of players who were sitting the bench and pointed at me.
“Get in there!” he said, growling.
I swallowed down a glop of saliva, my mouth became dry. I hadn’t been expecting to see any time in such an important game; and especially with one minute left to go before the half ended. But I immediately stood up, pulled my warm-up jacket over my head and threw it behind me, ran the scorer’s table and waited for the next stoppage in play. There I stood for the whole crowd to see, bald head gleaming, dressed in white and green shorts that signified that I was one of the best high school basketball players in the entire state of Colorado. My dream had come true. So why was my stomach churning as if was turning whole milk into butter?
A shooting foul was called on one of my teammates, causing the halt in play. The man at scorer’s table rang the buzzer, announcing the entrance of a substitute for the player whose actions had incensed Coach Connolly. I checked in by pointing to the teammate that I was to replace, and ran to the designated spot a few feet to the left of the basket. The Thunderbolt player standing behind me was a muscle-bound boy who was three inches taller and about thirty-pounds heavier than I was. It would be my job to stop that boy from getting the rebound if his teammate missed the second of two free throws.
The shooter swished the ball into the basket. The referee retrieved the orange ball and bounced it back into the hands of shooter. And as the shooter dribbled the ball in preparation for the next shot, the six players who were lined up along the sides of the key got ready to pursue. When the ball caromed and fell from the rim, my assignment stepped in front of me before I could move and jumped into air. I was in the air about a quarter of a second later and frantically fought him for the ball, but it was too late. My assignment snatched the ball out of the air and passed it to a teammate.
“Eze!” screamed a disbelieving Connolly. Like a sharp knife, his voice cut through every other noise that was being made, and pierced my heart.
At the time of this particular basketball game, there were three other consistent men in my life besides Coach Connolly. They were my father, Mr. Patrick, and Mr. Christenson, a football coach and my boss during the summer. I’d been on the receiving end of an intense tirade from each one of these three men. Of course, as a seventeen-year-old boy, I didn’t enjoy being yelled at by older men. But at the same time, I knew that their upset was probably justified by the way I’d behaved. Mr. Christenson knew that I could work harder at digging those ditches, my dad knew that I was smart enough to get better grades in school, and Mr. Patrick knew that I could be a better ball player if I developed more confidence. So I was always able to forgive them for yelling because I knew that they would forgive me after I lived up to their expectations when given another chance.
I was anticipating a tirade from Coach Connolly, but was in no way prepared for the verbal upbraiding that I was about to receive. When the buzzer sounded, signifying a break in the basketball game, we entered the visitor’s locker room, gathered around Coach Connolly as we took our seats on wooden benches. Hitherto, I had never seen a black man’s face flush beat red due to extreme anger. Nevertheless, there was Coach Connolly, steam pouring out of his ears as he paced back and forth before us. When he abruptly stopped and wheeled his body around until he was staring directly at me, I girded myself for what was to come.
His fists were clenched as he screamed at me. Never in my life had I endured such an explosion of anger from one human being. Whether real or imagined, I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I wanted to shrink down in size so that no one in that locker room could see me.
“How the hell do you not remember to box out!” he screamed. “It’s the thing that we practice every god damn day!”
It was true that we did practice boxing out every single day. And yet, sometimes circumstances can prevent you from doing the thing that you’ve be trained to do. In this case, I wasn’t prepared, hadn’t been told to be prepared to enter the game. Conversely, I knew that I’d failed in my responsibility and deserved to be reprimanded for my failure, though in my heart I knew that Coach Connolly’s upset exceeded what was necessary. As I’ve said earlier, my own father, the man who’d known me for seventeen years, had never yelled at me in this way.
*******
In each of the next three basketball games, I was ready for the third time that Coach Connolly called my number to be the charm. Instead he chose to call everyone else’s number on the team except mine. The varsity teams that we played against were not the most competitive in the state. If I’d been allowed to enter these games I could have gotten the reps I needed and built my confidence. Coach Connolly thought he would teach me a lesson by keeping me buried on the bench, which was infinitely worse than having to endure the tirade from a few games ago. He had deliberately overlooked me, which made me feel a deep sense of embarrassment, depression, isolation, exclusion, like I was the imposter of the group.
It wasn’t long before I lost my temper too. Not in the same way that Coach Connolly had lost his, but equally as volcanic. Coach Connolly routinely exploded while I’m more apt to implode after repeated slights. During the next week after I was completely ignored by Coach Connolly, I was overwhelmed emotionally, stuck in between two options that we’re squeezing my conscience like a vice: should I stick it out with Coach Connolly’s team or commit the fatal act of quitting my dream.
I woke up one morning having decided that I wanted the freedom that came with giving up on a dream that was quickly becoming a burden for me.
I wanted to quit in a flashy way, walk right up to Coach Connolly one day, and then throw my uniform right in his face. He had no right to treat me in this way, I thought. That single thought was looping around the inside of brain for the entire week. But after discussing my options with a wide variety of students, I decided that I would quit in a more subdued and cowardly way. Before practice I snuck into the school gym and placed my uniform against the door of gym teacher’s office before scurrying away. I didn’t want to give Mr. Patrick any room to try to dissuade me from my decision, and I didn’t want to give Coach Connolly the satisfaction of watching me give in.
*******
At the beginning of the next school year Mr. Patrick walked into my Spanish class, which prompted the acceleration of my pulse rate, for I immediately knew why he’d come. I wanted to shrink again, and responded to this urge by crouching down in my seat. I wasn’t able to escape Mr. Patrick’s glare though. He pointed, and then waved me over in his direction. I sighed, stood up from my chair, and followed him into the hallway corridor.
I stood eye to eye with Mr. Patrick when he asked the question. “Do you want to come back?
Do I want to come back?
“We got a spot for waiting for you if you want it.”
I took a small step back, bowed my head, and rested my hands on my hips so that I could process all of this. I’d thought that I’d burned the bridge to the ground last spring. Apparently, I was very wrong. I was being given another chance. Or perhaps it was Coach Connolly who was asking for another chance with me. I was tempted to take a step across that bridge, but was stopped in my tracks by the memories that had been etched into my mind. I was afraid that if I were to rejoin the team, and then made another mistake, I would put myself into position to suffer more tirades and psychological warfare that I would not be able to walk away from.
I raised my head. “I don’t think so Mr. Patrick,” I said. “I am pretty sure that I don’t want to play organized basketball anymore.”
“Are you sure? There’ll be a lot of opportunities for you to play this year.”
“Yeah, Mr. Patrick. I’m sure. I’m running track now and that seems to be going well. So, I’m good.”
Mr. Patrick’s raised an eyebrow. “Track. We’ll that’s good. That’s real good. I guess you’ve got your mind made up.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Ok. I’m going to see you around the school then?”
“Yes,” I said, extending a hand to Patrick. “Yes you will.”
Mr. Patrick reached out and grabbed my hand. “You take care of yourself Eze.”
I loved basketball too much to stop playing the game altogether. During the next eight years of my life I joined a game wherever I could. The blacktop. The YMCA. The local gym. I even played in some competitive three-on-three tournaments underneath the blazing sun and eventually evened my complexion. I proved that I belonged each time while playing without any kind of regrets.
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