Basketball is a Beautiful Game
Swen Nater

We move the basketball down the court to our scoring end. The play has been called and I am fully filled with glorious anticipation. The poor person that is guarding me has no idea what is about to happen to him. He is an oblivious sheep, set for the slaughter. Two of my teammates move toward the area close to the basket, on one side of the freethrow lane, and commence their convergence to form the double screen for me. I and my unsuspecting foe are on the other side of the lane.  

To ensure he will get caught in the web of the screen, I move momentarily away from it, deceptively distracting him into a false sense of misled security, designed to make him blithely believe that I don’t see it at all. He so takes the bait, that I almost feel guilty for my deceiving deed, but that feeling is quickly quenched. Then, suddenly, at the height of my trickery and the depth of his own casual and cavalier disposition, I reverse and race, leading him to the doom of his demise—the double screen. As I round the two-man barricading blockade with him failing in his folly, he is a Cougar in a cage, sadly seeing the trap door closing and knowing he has been fooled by the food.

I am by the baseline with about five feet of separation between him and me. The ball lands softly and safely in my hands. My eyes meet the basket while my legs coil and I tuck the ball tightly to my chest. I rocket up, release the shot, and the slow backward spin on that ascending and aspiring glorious globe of leather gave it a spirit of its own and an almost-human determination. The ball rises, lifting the spirits of my teammates with it. It’s an open shot, once architecturally born in a blueprint—now framed and formed and in its final stage of fulfilling its purpose on earth.

At its splendid summit, still spinning, the basketball begins its dive and descent, heading towards its home—the perfect circle of steel and the soft, woven, and waiting net. No metal does it meet. It passes perfectly through the rounded ring and snaps the bottom of the net so perfectly, the entire net bounces up and rises above the rim and then, after a quiver or two, returns to its original hanging position. 

My two teammates, who had set the screen, catch my eye and, in unison, we all cynically smile. My head turns to my defeated defender. He shamefully shrivels, tucks his tail between his legs, and hangs his head in humiliation, knowing he has been manipulated, deceived, and used.

Basketball is such a beautiful game, isn’t it?