The fans were in a frenzy. The other coach was screaming furiously “Get him! Get him!” as the ball was passed to our point guard. The guard went high in the air as three opposing players converged on him. One player went low while the other two went high. The point guard crashed to the gym floor, his right wrist bent and broken.
No foul. The ball was stolen and time called just long enough to get the injured player off the court.
The player was my son Jimmy; he was 12 years old at the time. I honestly can’t remember who won the game, but I vividly remember the hospital emergency room and his tears as the physician pushed his small bones back into alignment.
Jimmy is now a freshman and plays for his high-school basketball team. He’s broken his nose, sprained his ankles, strained his knees and received a variety of cuts, bruises and bumps. My wife and I wish he would stick to safer sports like track and baseball; we hold our breath every time he steals the basketball and heads down the court. Inevitably another player pushes him, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes viciously, as he lays the ball up.
Countless times, he has sunk the basket and been driven into the floor or back wall. When the foul is called, the fans cheer and his coaches shout approval. Oftentimes, Jim is slow to get up. We fear someday he won’t get up at all, his knee or ankle permanently damaged.
I wonder how the game I played as a boy degenerated from one defined by speed and skill to one defined by strength and intimidation. Even in grade school the game can be rough. As the kids get older and stronger, the level of violence ratchets up. By high school, basketball is often played with a frightening ferocity. It has become hockey on hardwood, as players wrestle for position like human bumper cars slamming into each other. And the violence takes its toll.
A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control found that the sports injuries most likely to send young people to the emergency room were from basketball, with an incredible 168,691 visits in a single year (30,000 more than the number of football injuries). This is not recreation.
It is not just the kids who play rough. A typical game features coaches at both ends of the court shouting “Deny! Deny!” at their players as the opposing team tries to pass the ball inbounds. A few years ago I questioned a well-known local coach about the brutal play of her high-school team. She told me that she teaches her players “to retaliate.”
The obvious question is why any kid would want to play such a rough sport. The answer lies in the widely held belief that any kid with a pair of sneakers has a chance at playing for a Division I college and maybe even the pros. Coaches, fans and school administrators feed the dream machine. It sells tickets and it sells schools.
Of course, the vast majority of these kids won’t make it to the college level, so many do whatever they can to keep the dream alive. They sign up for basketball camps and play in summer recreation leagues–always hoping to be seen by some big-time college coach. Most will end up with their spirits broken and, all too often, their bodies damaged by the constant pounding of the game.
So Jimmy plays. At his grade school’s sports night two years ago, his coach described him as the best grammar-school player in western New York. Heady stuff, although I’m pretty sure that dozens of other kids were introduced in much the same way at their sports banquets that spring. But Jim wouldn’t have known that.
And so he works to improve his game. If he doesn’t get enough playing time, he hustles that much harder. If he misses too many shots, he spends hours in the gym practicing. He runs, he lifts weights, he watches films. In the lingo of the game, my kid has heart. But as proud as I am of him, it all makes me a little sad.
Oh, he’s a good ballplayer. By the time he’s a senior he may have a shot at a basketball scholarship. I’m just not sure that’s a good thing. I worry that coaches and schools will take advantage of him until he is all used up. I tell him that there are thousands of former athletes sitting in bars all over the country, talking about the glory days–real or imagined–and about what was and what might have been.
I have faith in my boy. I trust he will come to realize that basketball is only a game, and a violent one at that. I often paraphrase Eugene McCarthy–that to be a great ballplayer you have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it is important. Jim’s not dumb. But he is 15.
