“So, Dad: when will my black genes kick in concerning basketball?” My son, (whose mother is not black) was about 20 years old when he asked that question. He is a musician, a drummer who liked to drum on all surfaces; the question filtered its way through the sound of fingers drumming on a table top. I laughed, a short bark: “Chris, if you’re looking for some skill transfer from me, then, never. Never.”
When I was a green and growing young man in Pittsburgh, Pa., I succumbed to the siren call of the playground, with its pressures to play basketball. I would trudge up to the schoolyard hoop and merge into the ragged rope of boys strung along the edges of the blacktop and eye the bent iron rim with its disheveled net of abused strings. On the sideline, we huddled mass of boys brought varying degrees of hope and bravado. For me, my hope was slick with the shine of fear: the fear that I might get picked. Though it was rare that I was chosen to join a team — I could not, after all, hoop — the teams that did choose me were rewarded with that rarity in schoolyard hoops: someone who would pass the ball to another player. Passing was the only thing that I could do with any degree of confidence, so I did with a gusto unknown in the selfish world of schoolyard hoops.
All three of my children have played grade school basketball. I remember the day my eldest daughter, a fourth-grader, walked into the room where I was watching the Los Angeles Lakers play the Philadelphia 76ers and announced, “Dad: I’m on the basketball team.” I thought, Did I miss something? When did she become interested in basketball? Might have been my obsessive basketball watching, but I don’t think that she had ever seen me with an actual basketball in my hands. But she retired from the game long before she had siblings; my next two children both played grade school basketball, each one drawing from a shallow pool of skill but unlimited reserves of heart. Chris, my son, played for a longer period than did his sister, Lauren, and at a recent Sunday dinner with the two of them and their mother, I laughed with them as they told a story of love and dogged determination.
Sometime around the third or fourth grade, Chris was a member of his grade school basketball team (the competitive record of which is lost to history). “Chris’ coach really liked him,” said his mother, “and Chris had not scored a basket all year.” Apparently, a plan was concocted to design a scoring play for him for the last game. Chris had, earlier in the day, hilariously delivered a peek into the window of his skill-challenged basketball career. “Every time I’d get the ball, I’d like (looks around wildly) — boom — pass the ball!” I cackled and nodded briskly, knowingly, remembering my own inept cavorts on the court. His mother continued, “So, anyway, on the last game of the season, they pass the ball to Chris and he just flings it toward the basket and … IT GOES IN!” Everyone cheered and laughed and congratulated my son — perhaps, even the opposing team members — for his one shining moment.
My son asked me about the gene kick-in for basketball about 10 years after his glorious basket. We both know that there is no “black gene for basketball,” for we share genes; we both like music, and Chris is an accomplished drummer, but we can’t hoop.