The White Pickup Basketball Player

He's 20 years old, built like a steak knife, angular but strong, with high cheek bones and a military buzz cut, and he's shooting hoops in Baltimore, Maryland, at an indoor gym where he knows nobody and nobody knows him.

He plays college basketball. Division III, but still. He can play. His shots mostly swish. He practices moves with precision. Jab step right, sweep through left, finger roll at the rim. One dribble left, spin move right, pull-up jumper from the free throw line. In and out to the right, behind the back to the left, use the bucket to shield an imaginary defender, lay it in high off the glass with a little English.

He is 6'1, 195 lbs, with 7% body fat. He's not an All-American and he can't quite dunk, but wearing a cut-off T-shirt that says "Five Star Camp All-Star team" and reveals arms familiar with the weight room, he looks the part of a player. Except that he's white, and he's not particularly tall.

Other players come in. They are all black. He watches them play. They are young, or old, or bad, or out of shape, or some combination of the previous characteristics. None of them could play college basketball, he knows, as he watches shaky handles and suspect jump shots and guts protruding from shirts. But they are black, he is white, and this is pickup basketball.

They ask him to play. He says yes. Two of the better players, he suspects, are selected as captains. Two youngsters get chosen. Then a couple old guys. Then three players who couldn't hit a layup if the hoop was the size of Glen Davis's appetite. Finally, the last pick is made. You can guess who.

At first, nobody will pass him the ball. He rebounds an opponent's miss, dribbles upcourt, pulls up for three. Swish. A murmur comes from both teams. Maybe this white boy can play. He steals an opponent's pass, leads a two-on-one fast break, makes a bounce pass to his teammate for an easy layup.

His teammates start to look for him. He keeps making his shots. Not all of them, but enough for his opponents to get mad.

"Get a fucking hand up."

"I've got him."

"Got him, my ass. He just hit three fucking shots in a row."

He hits three more shots, too. And a few more. The game is to 21, and he scores 12 points, dishes out a few assists. His opponents switch his defender twice, the ultimate sign of respect. He would be proud, but these players are not good. He knows that. He just wants to get a workout in, practice some moves against defenders, and maybe, just maybe, prove that he should not have been the last pick.

The game ends after he hits a runner in the lane. He walks to the wall and sits down, grabs his bottle of water.

"You play like Steve Nash, man," one of the youngsters tells him. Always Steve Nash, or Peja Stojakovic, or J.J. Redick, or some other NBA player capable of getting a sunburn. "Do you play somewhere?"

"I play a little college ball. Nowhere you'll see on ESPN."

The two teams run the game back. This time he's the centerpiece from play one. The other team double-teams him. His own team lets him run the show. Last pick, huh? Against these guys?

Soon he will be at a new gym, in a new city, and a new group of players will ask him if he wants to play. He'll say yes, he'll get chosen later than he should, and then he'll get to proving himself, and if he does a good enough job somebody will compare him to an NBA player, and the player will always be white.