The Moves Make the Man by Bruce Brooks

Author:Bruce Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1984-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

I WILL PLAY MY GAME BENEATH THE SPIN LIGHT.

LAST PART

23.

It took six weeks.

We started with dribbling. I could have started him on shooting or jumping or the rules or whatever else, almost so complicated once you think about it all and where to pick your point that nobody with a lick of sense would try to teach somebody basketball. The thing is, you can’t do it all at once, no more nor you can just sit down and write a book like this all at once either. You have to go day by day in pieces. So with hoops, which piece do you pick first?

I picked dribbling. I picked it because in basketball dribbling is like walking in any other sport except hockey where they skate. What I mean is, you cannot move in hoops when you got the ball unless you dribble. Now, no baseball coach would try to teach a kid how to drag bunt unless the kid could walk first. So what good of me to tell Bix about jump shots until he could move to the place he wanted to shoot from at all?

Bix truly did not know anything about basketball. His bounceball game also did nothing to get him doing anything with the ball the right way. He bounced wrong, threw it at the hoop wrong, rebounded it wrong, did not know how this ball moved at all because he never saw it in bounceball, only in the dark.

That first night, the one after I found him, he showed up, wearing desert boots and khaki long pants and the old turtleneck sweater. I asked could he do this or that thing, and he just shrugged. I was worried at first he was not really interested but I knew it might just be a state he had to get sparked out of. So I asked him to show me how he dribbled. He said No, why bother? Just show him and he would do it right, why waste time doing it wrong. So I did.

I went through it all pretty quick but detailed. I explained about how you only touch the ball with the fingertips and you dribble from the wrist, not the elbow. I told him how you are supposed to feel like the ball is not really ever out of your hand control, like when it is bouncing on the floor you still have a hold on it, but very light indeed at all times.

He nodded and took the ball and held it in his hands several different ways. He looked at his fingers, how they splayed out, then tightening them up so his palm was not touching the ball anymore. Then he held the ball under one arm and stood there bending his other wrist back and forth and looking at it. All this before putting the ball on the court.

But when he finally did put it down he knew what he was doing. That ball snapped down and back on a string.

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