Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball

My Two Obsessions: Basketball and Poetry

151 My Two Obsessions Basketball and Poetry MARIAN HADDAD January 16, 2007. I woke up early and, out of habit, sat at my computer—entered nba.com into my search engine to check the news for the day, to ascertain which games were to be played between which teams and when. Then I slid into espn.com, yahoosports.com, foxsports.com, si.com, and a number of other sports sites. All the while, ESPN played on my TV as I worked at my desk: SportsCenter, Cold Pizza/First Take, Skip Bayless, Mike and Mike, the gods of basketball-mania spending the day arguing about players and stats and fact and possibility. And then the subscription to NBATV. Sometimes I’d keep the sound off, but to this day, I maintain easy access: peripheral vision often wakes me out of a work stupor— Duncan—or the Spurs—or Garnett being interviewed—replays flashing across a screen. Multiple media outlets keep me plugged in. Sheer love for the game. I read on nba.com, on my first cyber-stop for that morning, on this same Marian Haddad 152 date in 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored the most points ever in an All Star game, 42—took 24 rebounds. I then slid into my modus operandi: stream of consciousness: a path to a poem. 1962, my birth year. Born on the twenty-fourth of a particular month. I continued making the random connections. Before I knew it, I was typing, nonstop, a flurry of thoughts that had to do with and stemmed from basketball and race and internationalism, all based on NBA teams, players , stats. None of it possible without the 1966 NCAA championship team (Don Haskins’ Texas Western Miners) and their improbable win over Adolf Rupp’s heavily favored Kentucky Wildcats. After the release of the movie Glory Road, which depicts the rise of that team, Haskins reiterated almost constantly that he played seven black players for no political or social reason, though everything we do or don’t do is political, even without our intending it. How proud it makes so many of us to know Haskins was inherently color blind only a short time after the Civil Rights Act. He never took credit for playing five black men and two black substitutes. He said he played the best of the best. “I wanted to win.” And “The Bear” did just that. So this is the story of the poem that found me that day, the way it felt as it simply spilled out of me. Me just a vessel to catch it all. But I know better than that. Part of the reason the poem came to me on this day is—the vessel was filled up. The first draft found the poem, caught it; the piece was ready to come to fruition. Ten minutes went by quickly. I typed, without restraint, pulling from a store of saved-up, learned or lived facts. This unexpected flurry spread itself across seven pages. The title came last: “In Celebration of the Athlete We Call Beautiful: for James Naismith, Canada.” It reminded me of a story I once heard from my sister, whose second child was born after only fifteen minutes of hard labor. The birth of this poem felt that quick. The gestation period, however, began in the spring of 2001, and Wilt Chamberlain and his stats which flashed that morning on nba.com simply My Two Obsessions 153 triggered the labor. As soon as I willingly entered that cyber-world, carrying the names and numbers which make up the poem, the poem spread itself out among generations of players from both conferences, including numerous players from varied countries who now played in America. This kind of love for and knowledge of a subject is bound to leap out of a poet. It surprises the poet, and yet the poet can see the expectedness of such a thing, due to living the subject somehow. I had done some significant time loving and learning the game. I’m not being hyperbolic when I said I fell “headlong” into it. For years, I had lived basketball daily, searched the basketball news of each day and the players who moved me. That morning, the poem simply— decided it was time. When people asked how long it took, I’d answer, “Ten minutes?” That sounded ridiculous, even to me. They seemed stunned. “How could you...