Hoop Dreams
Schilling, Timothy P.
HOOP DREAMS Timothy P. Schilling red metal hoop presents a pretty clear target to a boy dribbling a ball on a driveway. The metal ring repeatedly answers his questions. No matter what...
...But I wanted to be other things, too: a leader in politics, perhaps...
...You remind yourself that the hoop is twice the size of the ball...
...We seem to live our lives in stages (childhood, high school, college, etc...
...But later, in the early evening, the light and heat diminish...
...I guess this is what we call getting older and wiser...
...It's too bright and hot and humid...
...Sure, I wanted to become a great ballplayer...
...Wasn't that something...
...I took pleasure in knowing that Oscar R o b e r t s o n , who grew up in I n d i - anapolis, used to wash his basketball before going out to play...
...don't think so (or sometimes, I do think so, you lucky boy...
...Hook shots become elegant proposals...
...Body, spirit, and purpose were all held together in fine clarity...
...So yes, I wanted to be a great ballplayer...
...the husband of a gorgeous woman...
...For one thing, I never became a great ballplayer...
...All things converged on the court in those days, with reassuring swishes, thumps, and clangs serving as the aural signals of an orderly universe...
...It wasn't that I ever saw myself devoting my entire life to basketball...
...She's so beautiful...
...Mostly this is a matter-of-fact yes or no, but there are variations: yes, definitely, 0 graced one...
...I knew the story of the giant-killer high school team from Milan, Indiana long before the movie Hoosiers was made...
...Sweat runs in your eyes...
...Sometimes it's hard, though, not to give in to the sentimentality of longing for a time when a jump shot and a swish meant everything...
...It was all open and out there...
...Lyrical as some of those moments were, I don't long to relive the trials that accompanied my early adolescent dreaming...
...These are representative acts, demonstrations of larger commitments: collecting one's breath at the free-throw line...
...I still like to shoot baskets, and I still daydream while doing so...
...I did that, too...
...Timothy P. Schilling lives in Seattle, Washington...
...But it's different now...
...The sky is inviting again and the mind goes over to speculations...
...No matter what goes into the attempt, a straight answer comes back, yes or no...
...Many of the dreams t h a t I f i r s t dreamed while shooting baskets in Battle Ground, Indiana, I now know I will never realize...
...In the assortment of physical acts, personal aspirations take on worldly shape for the first time...
...Shots become essays, conjectures...
...For a Midwestern boy, I suppose my dreams could not have been more conventional, but they were many, and most importantly, they were still in the process of being formulated...
...In Indiana you are surrounded by stories of basketball heroism...
...The game loses its literalness...
...Most of all, I identified with Rick Mount, the countryish shooting legend who led his high school team to the state title, and Purdue University all the way to the NCAA finals before losing to Lew Alcindor and the UCLA Bruins...
...I ' d read about how John Wooden had won a high school game by sinking the final shot sitting down, after being knocked to the floor on a drive to the basket...
...and each stage has its own imaginative field and fruits thereof...
...And that lovely greeneyed girl from y o u r s c h o o l - - s h e ' s watching you out there somewhere...
...sighting the target...
...I used to be able to sum up my whole imaginative life in those solitary practice sessions...
...The sky was full of opportunity, and in level-earth, amber-waves Indiana, you've got a lot of sky to work with...
...Commonweal 3 | June 5,1998...
...following through...
...Rather, playing the game, and perhaps most especially practicing by myself, gave physical expression to the whole business of becoming in my life...
...It's immense...
...hmmm, possibly, I...I...I...
...someone who was financially secure...
...Playing then is mostly about the game itself...
...Midday in July on an outdoor court in the Hoosier state is not a time for dreaming...
...When Rick Mount was in eighth grade people used to come by the hundreds to watch him play in a summer league...
...no, are you crazy...
...Tomorrow you will ride your bike past her house...
...visualizing the ball dropping through the hoop...
...Still, in my muscles and bones I can recall a rare unity that once was there when I had a basketball in my hands...
...All of my dreams were able to meet in this one place...
...I miss the shapeliness and directedness of the basketball dreaming of my youth...
...I wasn't religious in those days (maybe a little), but I do see that period as a time of grace, a time of instruction in possibilities...
...That sense of completeness--or at least the possibility of completeness-has been replaced by an odd joy of dispersal, in which I now take pleasure and discomfort in not having all options before me, and often not knowing at all what the best option is...
...And politics probably isn't in the cards for me either...
...Art, religion, and ambiguity were among the richest findings of my young adulthood away from the basketball court...
Vol. 125 • June 1998 • No. 11
