Russia Week (Four): Did You Play in the NBA?

I didn't play a lot of sports in Russia. I didn't really have many male friends my age where I lived (in Yemar Bay, a beach/resort community outside Vladivostok), and for some reason the teenagers in my community didn't invite the 28-year old foreigner who couldn't speak their language to join them in their games. Besides, since the entire community consisted essentially of three apartment buildings, there weren't really that many opportunities to join teams or weekly get-togethers anyway. Leisure activities involving physical activity mainly involved hiking in the wonderful forest that surrounded us, or, in the warmer months, swimming in the ocean.

(And, yes, it got very warm in the summer, and swimming was wonderful).

After a hike, looking down at Yemar Bay
(my building is second from the left)
from Mt. Tempur in the summer of 1996.

But I do have two basketball-related memories that stand out.

The first involved the school basketball team, which I (strangely, now that I think about it) wasn't much involved with, but which one afternoon played a social game against the teachers at the school, with a lot of kids from the school coming to watch and cheer.

I was ... I was awesome. Perhaps that's not surprising, as I had been playing for 15 years to their ... 3, as the world I came from had basketball courts and goals littered all over neighborhoods and gyms that were common and accessible, while their world had neither, and so on. And, of course, I was older and bigger (though, honestly, not much -- these were 16-and-17 year olds, so more or less my size). Still, for whatever reason, I was able to slice through people for easy lay-ups, hit most of my pull-ups, pass to teammates for easy baskets, steal the ball occasionally on defense, and so on. I didn't overdo it, as I recognized obviously that this was supposed to be fun for the kids, but ... the kids and other teachers in the bleachers were cheering for me, happily — I think they had become so accustomed to me not speaking Russian or knowing my way around that they were delighted to see there was something I could do well — and I really did enjoy having the opportunity to play basketball after over a year of not. Even if it was against teenagers who hadn't really grown up playing basketball.

Anyway, when the game ended I fell to the floor, gassed. Some of the kids came up to me to congratulate me, and one asked if I had played in the NBA. I thought about suggesting that, yes, I had played six years in Boston before running out the string in Phoenix, but I settled for noting that in fact I hadn't been able to start for my intra-mural team at St. Louis University, so ... no. Still, that may have been the highlight of my basketball career!

School No. 72, in Yemar Bay.
The site of my first Russia-related basketball triumph

.

The second memory is fairly similar, actually. One day, around the same time, the gym teacher at the school pulled me aside and said that the next day there was going to be a city-wide basketball tournament for public school teachers (primarily gym teachers, unsurprisingly) in Vladivostok, and asked if I'd like to play. 

We ended up playing at least two games —maybe three — though at this point I only really remember one. It quickly became apparent that I was our team's ringer, and my colleagues from School No. 72 passed me the ball every opportunity, encouraging me to do whatever I could to score. (I think, reflecting on it now, basketball among older amateurs in the Russian Far East at the time was still very much a bounce-the-ball-up-and-down-until-you-are-able-to-chuck-up-a-jumper game, and they simply weren't very practiced at (or familiar with) driving for lay-ups). In that one game I remember, at least, my main memory is of all the players on the competing team, loudly, expressing alarm at me, demanding help from one another, and insisting repeatedly that they needed to double-team me.

I can't even remember if we won. (As I said, I'm creating some of these posts more to save what memories I can rather than out of any sense that the stories themselves are profound in any way). Still, what I took away from both of these events was a sense of relief that my friends there had gotten an opportunity to see me actually be good at something for once, and of course a little happiness that they had actually asked me to play, both times, and even expressed confidence and pride in me as one of "theirs."

I didn't play at all, again, in the last year I was there, and, once in law school back in the States, I quickly returned to the intra-mural-league-off-the-bench role to which I was accustomed. But for those brief shining moments ...

Moral of the Story: The best way to appear good at something is to perform it where it's not commonly done, ideally in competition against school-kids.

* Bonus Content (David's Dream Last Night): Well, less a dream than a persistent sense of frustration that I could not remember the name of the Mexican dish that comes wrapped in a corn husk. My mind must, somehow, have run up against that in a dream, and then gotten stuck, like an old record. I must have spent four hours (both asleep and, once or twice awake when I got up to use the bathroom) thinking, "Tostada! No, dammit! Enchilada! No, dammit! Tostada! No, dammit." I mean, hours. Of course, once I really did wake up, fully, it came to me quite quickly. But ... sigh. To have spent four hours obsessing over this in my sleep was quite frustrating.