There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Jalen Rose used to study his opponents, do real-time research on motherfuckers—in the no-internet early 1990s, no less. Just so he would have some shit to say to make sure a nigga was shook. And listen, ain’t that a kind of love? To say You are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you. Yes, do not waste language on our enemies, but an enemy, to me, implies a permanence.

Before the Fab Five knew this, Ali knew this. Even in the years before Ali knew this, black folks who couldn’t talk shit to their bosses or whoever presided over their lives knew this, because they’d run home and talk their shit to anyone who would listen. Shit talking is a right, a gift, a mercy with a lineage all its own.

That’s the miracle of hair. It allows us our mistakes and still returns to us, potentially ready to endure more.

And yes, laughter and crying both tumble out of the body’s orchestra at a similar tune, and so who is to say, really, when one became the other,

But still, on my block, the hoopers everyone thought were the realest either showed up with a brand-new ball or showed up with a ball that looked like it had been through hell.

I love a sport where even when I am alone, I am not alone.

And I am a little bit ashamed to say that I also love basketball for the violence of its sounds. The way a ball sounds when it ricochets off of a metal hoop that has been worn down by the seasons.

I propose that above all, you are a reflection of who loves you.

I didn’t grow up in the church but have spent enough time aligned with both religion and sports to know there is no gospel richer than the gospel of suffering, of living through large stretches devoid of pleasure for the sake of reaching some place beyond your current circumstances and feeling as though you have truly earned a right to be there. I have seen enough and I prefer the path of least resistance.