Be Like Mike

When I'm on that schoolyard asphalt, crossing over, playing that basketball like a yo-yo, I feel like I can do anything. I can take off from faded yellow free throw line and throw the rock down. I can take twenty five foot three pointers with a flick of the wrist. They sail through the air and go through the hoop, not touching the sides, rattling the chain net.

It doesn't matter who guards me because there is no defense for my offense, just as there is no offense for my defense. I pick their pockets, stealing the ball before they know they've lost it. I swat ill-advised shot attempts into adjacent ball courts as I let out primal screams. I grab boards like no one's business. Any free ball isn't free for long.

My passes are so precise they can thread needles. There is no defense I can't pick apart, throwing dimes behind my back, from my off-hand. I can break your ankles with a stutter move and toss up a no-look alley-oop from half court.

When the game is on the line, I wave away others because there is only one way it will end: in my hands, then in the hoop. I look calmly at the defender, staring him down, daring him to stop me. I dribble slowly, then change direction with a burst of speed and lose him only to be met by a double team. I spin away, fifteen feet away from the basket, and jump. Fading away in the air, I feel hands grabbing me wildly but no foul is called. It is playground ball after all. I'm in the air for what feels like an eternity. My hands feels the seams on the ball, so intimately as if we are one thing. When it comes away from my fingertips, I don't even need to look. It just feels right.

The game is over.