Heaven Is a Playground by Rick Telander

Author:Rick Telander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

At Mario, Craig Martin, Teddy Wallendorf, Lloyd Hill, Possum, and two other players together and leads them off to a game he has arranged in Englewood, New Jersey, with the highly ranked Dwight Morrow High School team. The game is a clandestine affair, played behind locked gymnasium doors. The high school coach and several college scouts are present.

Rodney hopes a few of his players will be noticed, but the reason the scouts have come is to see Englewood’s seventeen-year-old William “Poodle” Willoughby, an unstoppable 6'7" forward. Within a year Poodle will become one of the few basketball players in history to be drafted straight out of high school into the pros.

Before the game Lloyd Hill looks worried. He sees the white men with their clipboards and whistles sitting and chatting in the bleachers and he knows that this is important, that some of them will be watching. Though loud and brash at Foster Park, anywhere outside Lloyd becomes humble and wide-eyed.

When Rodney announces his staring line-up, Lloyd is placed at forward because Mario, Craig, and Possum are more natural guards. Lloyd goes out and takes a couple of dunks to show the men he can jump. But his natural confidence seems to have disappeared with the mysterious feel of hardwood under his feet. He tiptoes over the polished floor as though afraid of scuffing it with his ragged sneakers.

In the game the scouts ooh and ah over Poodle’s shooting and ball handling abilities. When he chases a loose ball, sliding out of bounds with the force, the men dive to their reports to write about his excellent aggressiveness and hustle. When he passes up an easy ten-foot jumper to hit a man open for a layup, they scribble about his selflessness and team play. They take little notice of Rodney’s boys other than to admire Mario’s fine long range shooting and to comment on a strange, somewhat bewildered-looking player wearing a T-shirt with a large red tongue on it.

“You know that guy?” one scout asks me.

“Yeah, he’s from the park. His name’s Lloyd.”

“What is he, on drugs or something?”

Down on the floor Lloyd is meandering about like a lost dog. His “standing jump shot” looks foolish next to the disciplined shooting around him. Several times when he goes up for one-handed rebounds opponents snatch the ball away before he can pull it in. On defense his pushing and hacking earns him foul after foul. He looks toward the bench for help, something to give him balance in these surroundings.

His moves that are so devastating on the rough asphalt of Foster Park seem to lack purpose in this gleaming gym; his fakes against Poodle seem as ludicrous as poker bluffs on a croupier.

“He can play,” I tell the men, wanting them to understand.

“He doesn’t seem to have a real good ‘feel’ for the game, does he?” says a scout, after a time.

“And he looks awful old,” adds another.

They watch the game, forgetting Lloyd for the present.

“Makes you wonder if he could play organized ball,” says one of the scouts finally, seemingly done with the topic.

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