Airball

Chapter 4 - I Receive Excessive Peer Pressure

I arrived at the court an hour later to find all three of the friends I had invited standing around waiting for me. They were all bouncing a basketball back and forth, trying to kill time. Max noticed me first, and announced my presence to Can and Nathan. Both of them turned and Cam picked up the ball.

"Yo, Blake, we've been waiting here for like twenty minutes," Cam complained, walking over to clap me on the back.

I pulled out my phone to check the time, since I didn't own a watch. "I told you guys when I'd be here."

"So, what's the big news?" Nathan asked.

"Yeah, are we gonna go over a plan to beat out our competition at the tryouts or what?" Max contributed.

"No, nothing like that," I said.

"Yeah, you right," said Cam. "We don't need a plan. A'int no competition beating us out, we always stick together."

I groaned. I knew this was going to end up being harder than it had to be.

"Look you guys," I started. "You know how I haven't played any with y'all all summer?"

"Yeah, we were wondering about that," said Nathan. "We figured you wanted to practice on your own to do your own like, basketball rehab thing."

I nodded. "Yeah, I was. And I've been practicing and practicing and... well, it'll be easier if I just showed you. Pass me that ball, Cam."

Cam tossed the ball toward me and I turned toward the nearest hoop. A little beyond the three-point line, I thrust the ball up in the air halfheartedly and watched as the ball hit the backboard, spun around the rim, and then fell through the net.

Cam, Nathan, and Max all started yelling at once and hyping me up. I smiled. It had been a long time since someone had cheered at one of my shots. But then I was dragged back to reality and realized: wait, that wasn't supposed to happen. The ball had gone in. That was the first three-pointer I had made all summer. How was that even possible? I wasn't even trying to make it. If anything, I was trying to miss it, to show my teammates that I no longer had it in me. So what had gone wrong... or right?

"We knew you'd get it back!" Nathan exclaimed.

"Nice shot!" Max said.

Cam nodded approvingly. "I would have expected a swish at that distance from Blake Manson, but I'll cut you some slack, since you just got done recovering from a minor injury."

"Wait, no," I said. "That's not—I mean—that wasn't what..."

I took a deep breath. I had just seamlessly made a shot I'd been trying all summer to make. So what now? I couldn't very well tell them that I couldn't shoot threes anymore, which was my original plan. I was planning on just showing them that I played terribly, and then having a perfectly good reason to not try out. But that plan had just gone out the window. And so I was left with one option.

"Okay, let me just start from the beginning. I broke my thumb over the summer, right? A month or two or however long later, its fully healed. So I start back practicing basketball, but then I realize that I completely suck at it. I figure that it's probably from the months I spent not playing, so I put in a lot of time practicing and trying to get better. I improve slightly, but I still haven't gotten my stroke back. I can play basketball, but at the level of someone who plays basketball once every month for fun. I can't play like the South Miami Middle Wildcats MVP starting point guard."

"That's a mouthful," Cam muttered.

"What I'm saying is, I'm not good anymore. Not even close to where I was at last year. My accuracy percentages from everywhere on the court have dropped exponentially since last year, too. I'm not at my best, and so I'm not going to be trying out for the team this year," I finished, letting out a deep breath. Since I had told everyone, it no longer seemed like such a big burden on me.