My Airness

By Sam Dykstra

We were playing in the driveway in front of my house, but to me with my elementary-school imagination, it might as well have been the Boston Garden. The cold, black tar was my shiny parquet floor. The whipping of a cool New England breeze was my roar of the crowd. Of course, there was no actual crowd to watch me save for Em, my sister, who was too busy playing with Barbie in the grass to give a care about what I was doing. Heck, I didn’t even have a basketball hoop to shoot in, just the four-foot one I imagined (perfect size for dunking for a three-foot tall kindergartener). It was just me, a basketball and my opponent: coming out of Keene State College, standing at a towering five-foot-three, Mom. (Ask Mom to play basketball now, and she’d laugh until the cows come home. But back then, every time her response was a yes. Every time.) Then again, the two players weren’t really themselves either; I played as the first NBA player to come to mind, Shaquille O’Neal. I don’t remember whether it was my wish to be seven feet tall like Shaq or the fact that he was on the only NBA trading card I owned, but when I asked Mom who she would be, her answer was quick and decisive. “Michael Jordan.” After I persisted why she picked some player I had never heard of, the response was again simple.

“Because he’s the best.”

Well, now I knew my allegiances had to change. To me back then, to stick with Shaq as my on-the-court alter ego was like sticking with Cheerios because they were the first cereal I had when Froot Loops, the best cereal known to man, were out there as well. I had to find out more about this Jordan character. I watched Sportscenter every morning without fail (OK, there may have been one or two fails so Dad could watch the local news or Em could watch Pappyland on TLC) just to get a glimpse of what this guy could do with a basketball. I quickly got my answer, and that answer was everything.

Michael Jordan could shoot. He could defend. But most aesthetically pleasing were his dunks. The second that man left the ground I swore he sprouted wings. He would jump from 15 feet outside the basket with the ball in his right hand, switch hands with the ball to evade a midair defender and dunk with his left. It was utterly jaw dropping, especially for a kid who thought he had “ups” when he “dunked” on that imaginary four-foot hoop. At that time, what Michael Jordan could do with a basketball was more amazing than anything Mo Vaughn could do with a bat, Drew Bledsoe could do with a football or Wayne Gretzky could do with a hockey stick.

Yet what was most important to me about Number 23 was that he won, plain and simple. After I first became enamored with him, MJ won three consecutive NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. Of course, through my education in the ways of His Airness, I learned that he had in fact achieved this very same “three-peat” only a few years prior. Every time he appeared in the NBA Finals, I was finally able to watch his talents on live television thanks to a national broadcast. I pleaded with Mom and Dad to let me stay up and watch the Finals. When I won the standoff, I situated myself two feet in front of our TV so I could take in every little detail of the game in front of me. The crossover dribble. The perfect arc of the jump shot. The tickling of the twine. When I lost, I would tell Mom before I fell asleep, “I hope they brought red-and-white colored confetti to Utah because the Bulls are going to be celebrating tonight,” and I was usually right (about the celebrations, not the confetti).

By the time MJ retired, I had bought into his famous tagline (“I wanna be like Mike”) hook-line-and-sinker. Every Christmas brought a wish-list for Santa that included at least one pair of new Air Jordans because last year’s model took too much of a savage beating from Rec League basketball. If MJ graced a box of Wheaties, I made sure to pull Mom’s shirt in the cereal aisle just annoyingly enough so that she would buy a box. I believed my first bite would provide me too with the ability to dunk from the free throw line.

Then in middle school, the time came to prove just how similar to my idol I truly was. The experience at Converse Middle School, which much to my chagrin was named after some old white guy, not the sneaker company, was High School Lite. We were introduced to the groundbreaking idea of having more than one teacher, more than one classroom and even a fancy bell system that would signal when it was time to go to our lockers, where we were finally able to store more than just jackets and snow boots. Middle school also meant the introduction of Suburban Basketball, or the first travelling team any one of us ever had to try out for in order to play. This was my time to shine. No more playing with the minions of Rec League for me; I was moving up to The Big Show.

I got my first shot in fifth grade and was quickly force-fed a healthy dose of reality. The Big Show also contained sixth-graders, which meant that half of my competition was a year older than me and therefore a year farther along in puberty (I swore one kid had the beginnings of a beard). Nevertheless, in the hopes of taking one of those highly coveted roster spots, I did everything the coaches asked of me. I dribbled when they said so, passed when I had to, shot the ball when I was open, even threw my elbows with the older kids to get my way in the paint.

Alas, it was all for naught. The names were read, and mine was absent. On the ride home, Dad, seeing my disappointed gaze directed out the window, told me not to read much into it. Next year would provide a better opportunity. I thought to myself, “Yeah, I’ll be the one with the deep voice and facial hair. We’ll see them cut me then.”

Turns out I went one-for-three in that prediction. My voice didn’t really get any deeper. Any mention of facial hair was a joke (I would not be graced with facial hair until well into my high school years, never mind sixth grade). They did however cut me. Again. Seventh grade. Eighth grade. Same story. From that year on, I was pulled aside by the coaches and told that I was in the very, very last round of cuts. If I came back next year after yet another season at the Rec level (I think I hold the unofficial record for Rec games in the town of Palmer, Mass.), I could easily make the team. After eighth grade, I ran out of next years. I came to grips that I would never taste the rarified air that was Suburban Basketball. I was pretty sure that if I was actually like Mike, this would never have happened.

There was only hope left, and it was the highest and final level of basketball any kid could reach in Palmer. If you couldn’t make it here, pack your bags. Hang up the Nikes. Return your jersey. Enjoy the rest of your life without basketball. I had but one option left: make the high school junior varsity team.

I threw all the effort that anyone would in a do-or-die situation, like a player whose team is down by one point with five seconds left. This effort culminated on one brisk November afternoon, just hours before that fateful tryout. I stepped out onto that same cold, black driveway on which I had once been Shaquille O’Neal and later Michael Jordan. But at that moment, I was just Sam Dykstra. No longer was I dreaming of bearing the names of big cities on my chest. Right then, simply “Palmer” would suffice. The howling wind that was once my adoring fans was now screaming in my face for me to go inside where I belonged. The hoop, once four-feet tall and imaginary, was ten-feet and very real, a reminder of the daunting task ahead of me. Every dribble, a meeting of a rock-hard ball with frozen, raw flesh, served as a much more physical reminder. Yet for two hours straight in my faded grey sweatshirt and weathered New Balances, I worked on my left-handed layups, practiced my 15-foot jump shots, refined my defensive stance--anything that I believed was a possible reason for my previous failures. I did all of that two or three times over, at least until Mom and her maternal fears of the common cold forced me to go inside.

Then, it was time. As I stepped onto the floor of the Palmer High School gym, I knew this could very well be the end of the line. My last night of basketball ever, and boy if I didn’t play like it. Left-handed layups hit the glass and fell through the hoop with ease. My hook shots, a maneuver that could be at times either hot or extremely cold, were scorching the hoop. I was playing so well that I felt I could take on the most physical player at tryouts, who coincidentally was my best friend there. Brian Burke went on to become one of those quintessential three-sport stars at Palmer High. The best wide receiver on the football team. The quickest runner on the track team. The best defender on the basketball team. (Yes, he made the team.) And yet it was him and me, battling for position five feet from the hoop. I elbowed him in the chest. He shoved me right back. That spot on the floor might as well have been the last piece of earth in the world. When the ball was finally secured in my hands, I turned and released a shot over his outstretched fingers. Swish.

I had played so well that while the coaches were deliberating, other players, including Brian, were congratulating me and telling me I’d finally made it. Even then, I knew they were right. The kid who had tried out that night was me and me alone, not me as some distant superstar I had never met.

Then, the moment I had waited five years for and the two words I had realized I had actually most wanted to hear came.

“Sam Dykstra.”