“My bad,” Big Ed said.
Joey howled and spun circles.
Two weeks earlier, at their favorite pub, Ed had confided to Joey that he’d been working on his jump shot.
“How’s that?” Joey asked.
“No big changes,” Ed said. “I don’t need big changes. My shot — my form — is pretty good as it is. I just need to make some minor adjustments.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you need. Minor adjustments.”
“I’ve been studying Obama—”
“No, not that shit again. Obama can’t play ball—”
“Yes he can, he’s got a first quick step—”
“No he doesn’t. That’s all public relations bullshit.”
“Well, he’s got hops—”
“No, no, no, don’t bring up that damn photo again.”
Ed loved the New York Times front-page photograph of President Obama shooting a running jump over some short and skinny white dude who was probably a Vermont congressman and former ninth man on his high school basketball team.
“It’s photographic evidence,” Ed said. “It could be used in a courtroom—”
“Those aren’t hops. He’s got his legs tucked up and splayed out behind him, like a frog, so it looks like he’s high in the air. But it’s an optical illusion. He’s actually only three inches off the ground.”
“No, man, you can tell. Obama’s got style. He’s got so much style, I’m just going to call him the Big O—”
“You can’t call him O. Oscar Robertson is the Big O.”
“Oh, I forgot.”
“You can’t forget Oscar Robertson. He should be on the NBA logo instead of Jerry West.”
“I just know I want to play ball like Obama.”
“Come on, Ed. I like Obama. I voted for him. I’m a damn commie bastard. But you don’t want to play basketball like him.”
“Have you seen the videos? That one where he dribble-drives through a bunch of guys?”
“Those are Secret Service dudes he’s running with. They’d take a bullet for him. They’re not supposed to stop him; they’re trained to stop other people from getting to him.”
“You see him hit that scoop shot over that North Carolina dude—”
“God, it’s North Carolina, Ed. It’s Division I basketball. Do you have any idea how great those guys are? Shit, in a real game against real players like that, Obama wouldn’t score in ten thousand years.”
“Well, he’s scoring in that video.”
“That guy wasn’t guarding him. Obama is POTUS. He is mother-effing POTUS. And even if he wasn’t POTUS, Obama still had that ball hanging out so far that anybody could have blocked it. You could have blocked it, Ed. That shit was as weak as the public option in health care. If Obama pulled that on me, I’d block it like some racist-ass redneck senator from Alabama.”
Ed didn’t laugh. He was incapable of finding any humor in basketball — not in the game in general and certainly not in his game in particular. The thing is: Ed thought he was good. No, it was worse than that. Ed believed he was underrated.
“You know,” Ed often said. “I’m not great at any one thing, but I feel like I’m a positive force on the court. My teammates are better because of me, you know? I can feel it.”
Joey had always marveled at Ed’s basketball delusions. The guy might have been blind and deaf on the court but he still believed in his talent. No matter how poorly he played — and he always played poorly — he thought he’d been the all-star of the evening.
“No!” Joey screamed as Ed shot and missed another jumper.
“I’ll get the next one,” Ed said.
“No, you won’t get the next one,” Joey said. “You’ll never get the next one. There has never once been a next one for you.”
Ed smiled. Joey was furious. He wanted to punch Big Ed, but they’d been friends for twenty-seven years. They’d met on their first day of college. Big Ed had almost married Joey’s sister and had eventually married and divorced one of Joey’s cousins. Joey was godfather to Big Ed’s middle son. Joey and Big Ed loved each other with the kind of straight-boy-devotion that started wars, terror attacks, and video game companies.
“Why do you shoot that shit?” Joey asked. “You haven’t made a three-pointer in, like — wait, no, you’ve never made a three-pointer. Not ever.”
“I had a good look,” Big Ed said again. He smiled. He was always so damn handsome and genial, even though he was a basketball sociopath. Yep, Big Ed was the Ted Bundy of the Saturday afternoon basketball crowd and murdered the hopes and dreams of his teammates forty-seven times a day.
Of course, one might wonder why people kept throwing the ball to Big Ed. Well, Joey and his fellow hoopsters were good players, so they always threw the correct pass. The open man always got the ball. And since Big Ed’s true shooting percentage was in the single digits, he was always left open by his defender and thus, due to the immutable laws of teamwork, always got the ball. Big Ed didn’t need a cut or pick to get open. He didn’t need to move. He could stand in place — and often did stand in one place for entire possessions — and would still get touches. And after Big Ed missed some horrific bukakke jumper, the man who’d thrown him the ball would think, I had to give it to him because the basketball gods demand that I play with honor and trust.
“Come on, Ed!” Joey screamed at his friend — his best friend. “Move the ball!”
Moments later, Big Ed drove into the key and missed a finger roll — no, it wasn’t a roll; it was a week-old croissant.
Joey didn’t howl. He didn’t make a sound. He just shook his head, walked off the court, grabbed his bag, and began his twelve-block walk home. As he walked, he removed his shirt, shorts, and boxers and tossed them aside. He also removed his knee braces, magnetic back warmer, and mouth guard and threw them into the street. He was forty-five years old and he was walking mostly naked — he was still wearing his socks and shoes — through his Seattle neighborhood. Strangers gawked and giggled; two of his neighbors smiled and waved. Joey ignored all of them. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this. He knew somebody had done the same thing during a hockey movie, and soccer players were always tearing off their clothes. Joey only knew he was engaged in some kind of political protest — perhaps the most minor political protest in human history — but it felt important to him.
At his doorstep, Joey sat on his welcome mat — it was surprisingly comfortable on his bare ass — and removed his shoes and socks. Then, completely naked, Joey walked into his living room, slumped into his recliner, stared at his blank television, and pretended he was watching Stockton-and-Malone run the pick-and-roll on an endless highlight reel.
Twenty minutes later, his wife, Sharon, pulled into the driveway. She walked up to the front porch and stared at her husband’s socks and shoes. She cradled them in her arms, opened the door, and discovered her naked husband still daydreaming about high-percentage basketball.
She regarded him. She certainly knew all of the curves and angles, and the parallel and perpendicular lines, of his body, and she’d memorized his half-damned soul.
“Big Ed again?” she asked.
“He tried a finger roll,” Joey said. “Can you believe that? A finger roll.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s tragic.”
“The thing is, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I’m old. Truly. How many years of hoops do I have left? And I want it to be good ball, you know? I don’t want to tear my damn ACL or Achilles because I’m trying to chase down some shitty Big Ed jump shot.”