I was a basketball star of rural Midwestern proportions in my youth. I was a flash of a big-ish deal in a small-town, no-big-deal way. But I never took a game-winning shot at the buzzer, not in an official game. The closest I came: two free throws with four seconds to go, good guys up by two.
My arms felt heavy as the standing-room crowd in our most rivalest rivals’ gym roared. As I released the first shot, I was certain it was a humiliation. But it ripped through the net. Slick and true. A shot that looked calm and precise from the outside, perhaps, and felt like fear on the inside, where a tug between nerves and the will to not fail my team roiled. Up three.
The second shot splashed the net like the first, and so came the instant relief of the spotlight removed. And the bow: I kept my arms extended, the follow-thru of my shooting hand, my right, posing. But only for a half-second, lest I seem too daringly out of character, a bad winner. An exhale with the leanest hint of attitude. Up four.
Our rivals inbounded the ball, death almost inevitable. “Don’t foul! Don’t foul!” The seconds ticked. A half-court fling, meaningless. The buzzer sounded.
And so the story was written. Not with the climax of a buzzer-defying prayer, or necessarily even by that pair of nerve-addled free throws.
Yeah, I never took a game-winning shot in my years of playing. But on that Friday night in a slice of Missouri nowhere, I made a basketball game almost unlosable.
The Free Throws is #TwentyTwo in the weekly memoir series, Among Other Things. What’s it about? Read Introducing ‘Among Other Things,’ A Weekly Memoir Series.
