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.

Fallen and he can't stand up

My grandfather Pop-Pop fell today and he could not stand up.

I speed-walked upstairs to help. Pop-Pop was inadvertently planking in his closet, breathing heavily after attempts to pull himself to his feet. He and my grandmother Kicki have lived in a second-floor apartment at my house for the last decade, and lately Pop-Pop has regressed. Cancer has invaded his face. A tumor the size of a softball eats at his left jaw. Most days, he cannot close or blink his left eye. It remains open instead, the color of a stop sign. His legs, once muscular, resemble toothpicks. His lifestyle, once self-sufficient, now relies on everyone else. He cannot read, his favorite hobby, without a powerful magnifying glass. He cannot walk to the car without someone to lean on. He cannot urinate without someone to help him balance.

I carried Pop-Pop to his feet and led him to his bed. He sat on the edge and held me in his hands.

“Thank you,” he said, panting from all the exertion it took to hold me while I lifted him. “What’s your name again?”

Then he cried and hugged me tighter than he ever has.

Eighteen years ago today, Reggie Lewis was 27 years old when he collapsed at Brandeis University and passed away two and a half hours later at Boston’s New England Baptist Hospital. He died doing what he presumably loved to do. He did not have any tumors growing from his face. He did not need someone to help him piss or someone to be his crutch whenever he walked to the car. He never forgot the names of his loved ones or looked into the mirror to see an eye the color of a Chicago Bulls away jersey staring right back at him.

Lewis missed all the good stuff.

Pop-Pop flew dozens of missions in World War II. He played in a golf league every Thursday night. He sold used cars in Springfield, MA, coached his only son’s CYO basketball team to a 44-1 record one season, read more books than any other person I have met, and once scored an own goal to lose a playoff game for his high school hockey team.

When my mom returned home after a night of partying, Pop-Pop would be sleeping, but his arm would hang over the edge of the couch to make her stop and say goodnight. No sneaking into his house.

When my uncle Kelly was young, he once slept over a friend’s house but told Pop-Pop he was attending a MacDuffie School dance. The next day, Pop-Pop picked Kelly up and asked how the dance had been.

“It was fun,” Kelly responded. But Pop-Pop knew.

“There was no dance,” he said. He had sold a car to MacDuffie’s headmaster earlier that day. When Pop-Pop asked, the headmaster knew nothing about his school’s alleged dance. No lying to Pop-Pop, either.

Now, my aunts and uncles take shifts to take care of Pop-Pop. They make him meals. They help change his clothes. They drive him to radiation. They chat with him, or, when he doesn’t feel well enough to chat, they sit and keep him company. Pop-Pop hasn’t been alone since the day he married Kicki.

“It’s Jay,” I told Pop-Pop.

He looked at me once more and said, ”I love you, Jay.”

I love you too, Pop-Pop. I love you too.