There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

And forgive me, but I love the pure spectacle of a people newly in pain or newly feeling rejection. How hurt flows into rage, one body of water tumbling into another, larger body of water. The irrational nature of it all.

someone on the floor, someone in the stands shouts Ball don’t lie! Which is to say That’s what you get for that bullshit. Which is to say You ain’t slick.

You win for a quarter, maybe even a half, but the game is the game.

The history of an underdog can be distilled down to their brightest moment and then held on to forever.

have felt like a champion before, even having won nothing but the desire to be alive in a day I woke up not wanting to be alive in. I deserve something for that, even if it is a parade of my own making. An invention, which is all the spoils of winning are anyway. Breathtaking inventions, to be sure. But inventions, nonetheless.