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Issue Date: June 23, 2002
Which game owns America's heart? One writer's vote
By Touré
Once upon a time on a basketball court, I think it was in Brooklyn, an amazing thing happened. Falcon Malone, a cat who was just 6-foot-1, was running down the court on a fast break when an overanxious teammate flicked a wild no-look pass toward the basket, offering him an alley-oop. Malone was near the three-point line, maybe 25 feet from the basket, when he saw the ball go up. It was an impossible play. Of course he wouldn't make it. But Malone launched into the air with Peter Pan ease, glided past five or six men on his way to the rim and snatched the ball out of the air like a bird of prey grabbing a songbird. He pulled the ball over his head, then rammed it home with fury. Unbelievable.
And totally fictional. It's from a short story I wrote about a man with magic Air Jordans that let him fly. But it gets at the way basketball is an occasion to scratch the primal itch to see humans in flight.
Ballplayers jump to shoot, to rebound, but, most emphatically, to dunk. Sure, towering home runs and Hail Mary touchdowns are thrilling, but to me nothing compares to watching Jordan or Vince or Falcon from around-the-way soar into the stratosphere and give us a twist or a spin worthy of Rudolf Nureyev, then thunder the orange rock through the hole.
What makes b-ball the game of the 21st century is its video-game quickness.
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Flight is not what James Naismith had in mind when he invented basketball in the winter of 1891 in Springfield, Mass. Doug Stark of the Basketball Hall of Fame says the early game was very different from today's. There was no dribbling until the 1900s, and no jump shot until the '20s. "It looked a little more like football or rugby," Stark says. "People had assigned areas on the court, playing offense or defense, and you were confined to your area. Into the '20s there was often a wire-mesh cage around the court to separate the players from the fans, because fans often interfered, trying to bat the ball away with a broom. The cage sometimes wasn't out of bounds, so the ball would go off the cage and still be in play. That's why early ballplayers were called cagers."
In the years after the First World War, America was in love with Babe Ruth and baseball, a slow-paced sport that played well on the radio. In the late '60s, a sexy quarterback called Broadway Joe Namath guaranteed victory and delivered football onto the stage baseball had long enjoyed all to itself. Football, a war metaphor as a sport, which valued planning, armor, conformity and, above all, physical labor, worked well in the early days of TV. But in the '80s, as computers revolutionized the speed of life, basketball emerged as the game to watch. It was the rivalry between Bird and Magic, two of the NBA's great ambassadors with clashing styles, fundamental white countryball vs. flashy black streetball, that ignited the most sociologically charged moment in sports. In the '90s, Jordan elevated the game to new Nielsen ratings heights, his popularity trickling down to the rest of the league. Today, no other sport can match basketball in star power or endorsements by players who appeal to the coveted 18-to-35 demographic.
I came to the game as a boy of 5 or 6, partly because the goal seemed so tangible. I couldn't imagine throwing a 90-mile-an-hour curve or knocking somebody out, but I could shoot a ball through the hoop. As I got older, the game became a way to define oneself, a lingua franca by which boys on my block sorted themselves out. Kids of all ages constantly determine hierarchies, and who could win at one-on-one seemed as important as who could beat up whom or who could score with the prettiest girls.
What makes basketball the game of the 21st century is its video-game quickness. Where baseball and football can easily go half an hour between scores, in basketball scoring happens every few seconds, meaning constant gratification for the hip-hop generation. It's a team sport that fosters self-expression, the ball spending lots of time in each player's hands. It's a sport that can be played with a group of 10 or by a solitary shooter. Only basketball includes a tactile representation of rhythm, each bounce of the ball spelling out a bass line that gives structure to the melody of sneakers squeaking, nets swishing, hands clapping, all blending to create an improvised song heard from the concrete jungles of Detroit to the fertile farmlands of Kentucky.
I wonder what Naismith would say if he walked into the glitzy Staples Center in L.A. or Rucker Park in Harlem, the epicenter of streetball. Could he follow the lingo of "facials" and "breakin' ankles" and "posterizing people"? Can't you hear him whispering in your ear, "Pray tell, what do they mean by 'Do you want fries with that shake?' "
What would Naismith have thought if he'd been with me in Senegal when I encountered a dusty flock of boys in tattered shirts on a dirt road, dribbling a ball and passing some, but never shooting because they hadn't bothered to put up a hoop? I had fun with them for a while, but I never did figure out how they kept score.
It would blow Naismith's mind that his little sport is now played from Brazil to Beijing, its global appeal unrivaled by any sport save soccer. Great players today come from all over. This past season, the NBA had 52 foreign players from 31 countries. And next season's most closely watched rookie will be China's 7-foot-5 Yao Ming, a certain lottery pick at Wednesday's NBA draft.
At the draft, we'll all be looking to spy the next megastar. But we're probably looking in the wrong place. No one could be more beautiful in flight than Jordan, so he must reinvent the package. Or should I say, she -- that first woman with the strength and creativity to dunk with the flair of the great male dunkers. When she emerges, then we Air Force fans will fall in love all over again.
Touré, who last wrote about Wesley Snipes, has a new book of short stories in stores in July, "The Portable Promised Land".
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