Fadeaways and parking lot waves

Today I was walking to my car through the parking lot after work, and I waved goodbye to my coworker Nick three aisles over. This is supremely uninteresting in and of itself, but now that I think about it, it wasn’t totally devoid of meaning.

Nick and I aren’t friends but we’re friendly. Our relationship is on the plus side of the coworker-tolerability spectrum. We haven’t exchanged phone numbers or anything, but we can carry a decent conversation over lunch. I don’t groan when I see him coming down the hallway. Maybe we’ll hang out one day, but if not, that’s OK. He’s a solid enough dude.

Most days, if I saw him across the parking lot after work, I might have kept my head down or pretended I was on my phone, as one does. But today I waved, and he waved back. It was a nice little thing.

This is not a commentary on any burgeoning friendship with a coworker but a commentary about basketball. I had just finished playing a game of 3-on-3 with other guys from work. There’s a court outside near the office, and there’s a decent crew who likes to play. It isn’t the highest-level game, but it’s perfect for a guy like me, who hasn’t played seriously in years but has smoked cigarettes within the past 24 hours.

I’ve gone out there maybe a dozen times over the past few weeks. It’s always worthwhile. Sometimes I just shoot around solo, but more often there are enough guys to get a game going. Most everyone works in some department that I don’t engage with, and thus I know maybe three of their names.

That doesn’t matter on a basketball court. You’re out there in your sneakers, you divvy up your teams, and you go. Within a few possessions, you have an idea of how everyone plays. The best players tend to reveal themselves early (as do the chuckers, who are as fun to play with as Michael Scott in improv class), and the game goes however it goes. In the course of events, some high fives are exchanged. “Good look” will follow the occasional assist. “My bad” might accompany a defensive breakdown. The shared language of basketball equalizes all parties.

This is all very duh stuff, but it’s stuff I’m familiar with. It’s basketball stuff, which tends to be stuff that makes me happy. And it’s that basketball-derived happiness, in a roundabout way, that led to me waving goodbye to Coworker Nick in the parking lot. I felt good,* and I was moved to engage with another person.

*It didn’t hurt that I had just scored the game-winner, a little 6-foot fadeaway off the glass. Two plays prior I tried to get my NBA Street on and airballed a runner after some bullshit between-the-legs move. Sports can be humbling.

In short, basketball added at least one nice human interaction to my day. I’m reasonably confident that I wouldn’t have waved to Nick were I not in that postgame glow. That’s a cool little thing, the sort that lies at the heart of why sports are intrinsically good.

The simple side of sports can be tough to remember, to appreciate. If you allow yourself to be irritated, as I too often do, by the myriad off-court matters that populate conversations shouted on TV and Twitter, you get to thinking that sports are as corrupt and fraught as everything else in the world. Sports serve as ideal fodder for discussions of labor relations and inequality and everything else, but—and here’s some more duh stuff—at their most elemental they’re about having fun.

And that’s what I’ve been doing out on the court lately. I’ve been having fun. I’ve been outside. I’ve met some people, sort of. I’ve gotten some overdue exercise. I’ve tapped back into the best part of my childhood. I’ve remembered how much I love this goddamn game, and how it has always provided me shelter for a least a few buckets’ worth of time.

I realized after playing today that I wasn’t thinking about anything while I was out there. Some wheels were turning, sure—should I shoot or pass, do I attack baseline or middle—but those are more reactions than thoughts. I betrayed no hesitation. I felt no anxiety. I wasn’t paralyzed by any inner monologue.

I was just playing. I was just being. I just was. I’d say that qualifies basketball as meditation.

Thanks to my buddy Brian, who has long supported my writing in this here space and who moved me to get back at it. Also, I’m so happy for everyone in Cleveland that the Browns are so fun right now.