There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

I knew what it was like to keep something close, just in case there was some error in the universe. The people we love deserve to return to the places they left with the things they love intact.

it is true that none of us will live forever & the mere existence of that knowledge suggests we all have to pick a thing we might die for if the opportunity arose

I can tell you about guys who didn’t hoop to get away from the streets, or to get out of anywhere. Guys who hooped because they wanted to be respected on the streets they loved. They wanted to make themselves infamous in the place that held them, and that, too, is a type of making it.

And also, I admit, I believed that if I just lost enough—if I just kept losing and kept struggling in the face of an all-seeing and all-knowing divine entity—maybe I’d be broken off a slice of something sweet. At the end of my suffering, there might be a window, cracked just enough to gently lift the curtains like the bottom of a dress on a person you love, twirling to a song you didn’t know but will never forget.

With enough repetition, anything can become a religion. It doesn’t matter if it works or not, it simply matters if a person returns.

And isn’t it funny, also, to imagine that the only time God judges us is after we’ve died?