HISTORY
MICHAEL CHIN
I was an amateur historian and a romantic kid. So when John Stockton from the Utah Jazz picked off a pass, under a minute to go, game four of the '97 Finals and sent the ball sailing over eight men's heads to find Karl Malone ahead of the pack, I cried, "Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!" because I'd read that was the call for John Havlicek in an equally clutch play in 1965, and that was the only way I knew to express the same feeling.
Same when New York center Patrick Ewing broke his wrist early in the '97-'98 season. I was as shocked and heartbroken as any Knicks fan, as sure the season was over, but before the night was through, had daydreams from 1970, another time, same city, same building, same team, hell the same position when Willis Reed limped out to on a broken leg, shot full of numbing agent to knock down back-to-back jump shots and set the crowd on fire, destroy the Lakers' collective psyche, before riding the bench to watch his teammates coast to championship glory.
Surely, history could repeat itself.
So it was when Claudia told me we were through. The lights were out and I watched the Clippers trounce the Bucks in a largely inconsequential game, kernels of popcorn littering my t-shirt, butter and salt making my fingers glossy.
I thought she'd said these things before. Might say them again, but had never left for more than a couple nights at her mother's or the time she shelled out for a second hotel room at the Luxor.
History repeats itself. It's why we learn it. It's the safe gamble.
I let her go.
The Jazz never won a title in the end, Ewing came back but not to a dramatic success. The guy was never the same.
And Claudia--
Same when New York center Patrick Ewing broke his wrist early in the '97-'98 season. I was as shocked and heartbroken as any Knicks fan, as sure the season was over, but before the night was through, had daydreams from 1970, another time, same city, same building, same team, hell the same position when Willis Reed limped out to on a broken leg, shot full of numbing agent to knock down back-to-back jump shots and set the crowd on fire, destroy the Lakers' collective psyche, before riding the bench to watch his teammates coast to championship glory.
Surely, history could repeat itself.
So it was when Claudia told me we were through. The lights were out and I watched the Clippers trounce the Bucks in a largely inconsequential game, kernels of popcorn littering my t-shirt, butter and salt making my fingers glossy.
I thought she'd said these things before. Might say them again, but had never left for more than a couple nights at her mother's or the time she shelled out for a second hotel room at the Luxor.
History repeats itself. It's why we learn it. It's the safe gamble.
I let her go.
The Jazz never won a title in the end, Ewing came back but not to a dramatic success. The guy was never the same.
And Claudia--
HOME COURT
MICHAEL CHIN
Vinnie and I played at the park, not a ten-minute walk from home, on uneven blacktop that dipped and burgeoned, threatening to send any dribble off court, to twist ankles, to create puddles that splattered and that soaked the ball on each bounce their way.
We played at the park, where the backboards were big rectangles of plywood, one of them bigger than the other, each painted in careless, sweeping white strokes. One rim tilted thirty degrees to the side. A bad enough tilt visitors refused to play on it.
We played at the park where a polka band played some summer nights in the pavilion and where little leaguers had the run of the diamond on others. Adjacent to the tennis courts that hardly anyone used, steps from the jungle gym and teeter totters and steel slide that burned some kid every summer beneath the sun, so parents passed petitions or wrote letters to the local paper but it never changed.
We played basketball for hours after school, after lunch on the weekends, then bought twenty ounce bottles of Mountain Dew at the corner store, only to toss them on the street after. My father picked up those bottles on his meditative walks around the neighborhood. An extra five cents, ten, a quarter off the week's groceries.
We had our stories. The year we went undefeated against any pair that dared challenge us on our blacktop, our backboards, our rims, all tailor-fit to our games, the same way the old Parquet Floor was like a sixth man, always playing into the Celtics' hands. The day an arrogant prick we'd always hated and his friends challenged us to a game of every-man-for-himself Rock, and we worked in tandem, my rebounds, Vinnie's jump shot to ensure he won the day. The kid who lived in the rundown little house, a bounce pass from the court, who brought us Hi-C sometimes, who we cursed in front of to feel our age, our superiority, until his gap-toothed dad came out and told us we'd better be careful. That kids his age were impressive.
I invented a between-the-legs, underhand layup I labeled the KH, because those handful of times it worked it was a thing of beauty, so its initials ought to match the beautiful girl I crushed on in school. I shot fade-away jumpers, imagining them to be like Michael Jordan's; I didn't just catch rebounds but corralled the ball with one hand and slammed it against the other in a big clapping motion like I'd seen Dennis Rodman do on TV.
I learned home. That place where my game was most my own because often as not there wasn't anyone watching. Where I knew the lay of the land and entertained fantasies that some scout might be watching and might pluck me for some basketball future that even I knew better than to believe in. Where I grew to six-foot and higher. Where I caught net, then backboard, and imagined one day I'd get rim, then dunk—in those days before I could wrap my head around a future when I wouldn't make time for basketball.
We played at the park, where the backboards were big rectangles of plywood, one of them bigger than the other, each painted in careless, sweeping white strokes. One rim tilted thirty degrees to the side. A bad enough tilt visitors refused to play on it.
We played at the park where a polka band played some summer nights in the pavilion and where little leaguers had the run of the diamond on others. Adjacent to the tennis courts that hardly anyone used, steps from the jungle gym and teeter totters and steel slide that burned some kid every summer beneath the sun, so parents passed petitions or wrote letters to the local paper but it never changed.
We played basketball for hours after school, after lunch on the weekends, then bought twenty ounce bottles of Mountain Dew at the corner store, only to toss them on the street after. My father picked up those bottles on his meditative walks around the neighborhood. An extra five cents, ten, a quarter off the week's groceries.
We had our stories. The year we went undefeated against any pair that dared challenge us on our blacktop, our backboards, our rims, all tailor-fit to our games, the same way the old Parquet Floor was like a sixth man, always playing into the Celtics' hands. The day an arrogant prick we'd always hated and his friends challenged us to a game of every-man-for-himself Rock, and we worked in tandem, my rebounds, Vinnie's jump shot to ensure he won the day. The kid who lived in the rundown little house, a bounce pass from the court, who brought us Hi-C sometimes, who we cursed in front of to feel our age, our superiority, until his gap-toothed dad came out and told us we'd better be careful. That kids his age were impressive.
I invented a between-the-legs, underhand layup I labeled the KH, because those handful of times it worked it was a thing of beauty, so its initials ought to match the beautiful girl I crushed on in school. I shot fade-away jumpers, imagining them to be like Michael Jordan's; I didn't just catch rebounds but corralled the ball with one hand and slammed it against the other in a big clapping motion like I'd seen Dennis Rodman do on TV.
I learned home. That place where my game was most my own because often as not there wasn't anyone watching. Where I knew the lay of the land and entertained fantasies that some scout might be watching and might pluck me for some basketball future that even I knew better than to believe in. Where I grew to six-foot and higher. Where I caught net, then backboard, and imagined one day I'd get rim, then dunk—in those days before I could wrap my head around a future when I wouldn't make time for basketball.
MICHAEL CHIN was born and raised in Utica, New York and is an alum of Oregon State's MFA Program. He won Bayou Magazine's Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction and has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss. Find him online at miketchin.com or follow him on Twitter @miketchin.