Fast Break (Part 3)

It is now late in the third quarter and the Elks lead 72-37. They have not attempted a single three-point shot. They are still running and running. A clinic it's called. During one sequence, an Elks player grabs a rebound, rifles a two-hand outlet pass to a guard without hitting the floor. That guard then bullets a two-hand chest pass to a streaking wing down the floor and the wing scores a layup. The basketball never touched the floor. That the way the Blazers used to do it, thinks the writer, and he stands up and claps.

The opposition coach has no answer for the onslaught. His players just keep heaving up foolish three-point shots and missing. The Elks climb golden ladders to snare the rebounds and then thunder back the other way for an endless parade of finger rolls. No dunks. None of the Elks can even touch the rim!

None of the players who score ever gesture to the crowd. They just nod to their teammates.

The writer looks around the gym. He thinks about the misfits and miscreants camped down by the river. He thinks about the book he's trying to write. He wants to offer some solutions to the crisis and has invented, tried out, then discarded metaphors that might help illustrate how to go about better addressing the problem. One was barn raising. One was Mussolini. Another one was restoring damaged people like you might restore a damaged watershed.

The fast break! That's it! The metaphor is running liquid right in front of me! I hear sneakers squeak. I see layup after layup. I see teamwork. I see victory.

The writer starts whisking the metaphor in his mind like eggs in preparation for a peasant souffle. It goes something like this:

Suppose we consider a homeless person as a basketball that can't seem to find its way into the basket. The easiest way to score is a layup. But this ball is always shot from long range, really long range, and it practically never makes it through the hoop. It is always a clanging jumper, a thud off the backboard, or an outright air ball. These are very low percentage shots and always heavily defended by those forces who don't want everyone to score equally in American life. The rich score with uncontested dunks. The poor shoot from half court wearing blind folds.

Who or whatever is shooting the errant shots is important to consider in our metaphor, as is who comprises the opposing teams. We might consider these later, but the larger concern is the ball. It must find the basket. The ball remains the ball and needs to score. But what happens when it misses the mark and keeps missing it over and over? When that happens, the ball must be defensively rebounded and launched into an offense, a fast break offense patterned from Jack Ramsay's book. The center on the opposing starting five, a disciplined team drilled to death, rips the rebound out of the sky or wrestles it away from indifference, and fires the outlet pass to the point guard who is already streaking to center court, with two teammates, wings they're called, perfectly abreast on his left and right, sprinting at full speed yet under control. They are a beautiful and powerful trio of metered poetry in synchronized motion, as they bear down on a breakaway toward a lone defender or two or none at all. The point guard will dribble until he's stopped or he takes it the hoop to finish or draw the foul. Two points from the line is still the equivalent of a basket. Even if the point guard is somewhat blocked, he might use his pivot foot and maneuver around the defender, or split them if two are present, or come to a screeching jump stop and dish it left or dish it right to a wing cutting toward the key, passing with one hand or a two hands, or a mini lob. He might even go behind his back or through his legs and bring down the house. He might also look left and pass right or vice versa. The wings might even pull up for a short jumper (banking it in off the board!) Hell, the point guard might even feint and fake, and then swish it from the free throw line over the confused defenders. That homeless ball will score on the fast break and find a home in the twine. And if it doesn't on the first shot, then a trailer roaring up the court behind the first wave of attack will lay the ball in with an easy put back.

This team keeps running this fast break with this same ball until it produces a winning outcome. It might take an entire game or season. The team keeps running. They don't stop for end of periods or timeouts. It's the same starting five. No substitutions. The coach stands on the sidelines barking instructions, applauding, encouraging. He's there to call out a player who isn't performing his role to perfection. He's also there to tell the ball to do everything it can to get into the basket. It has to help itself, too. It can't go flat or take in dangerous air. It can't be left out in the rain to mold and rot.

The ball is always taken to the hoop. It is never launched as a three-point shot. Sure, there will be misses, bad passes, charging fouls and blocks. But the team keeps running the fast break with purpose and extreme urgency. This is the game of life for this homeless basketball. It's late in the game or late in the season and the ball is suffering through a terrible losing streak. The team knows their roles because they have a great coach and they've practiced and practiced. They know the clock is running. They know no one is really watching them perform. They know the only winning that matters is the winning back of a human being from the brink of annihilation. They don't tout individual statistics. Their theme song is, “I Want You Back” by the Jackson Five. The school band plays it all game long. It's the only song they play, outside of “Louie, Louie,” Oregon's unofficial state anthem.

The writer stops whisking the eggs. He isn't quite ready to add them to his souffle recipe yet, and certainly not start baking it.

Is this all insane? Is this all a ridiculous bad notion, this experimenting with a metaphor for action to help people dying on the streets and in the willows?

No. It is not insanity. It is fresh and unconventional movement of the mind, as opposed to stasis and sterile imagination. Whatever offenses the homeless advocates and political pros are using now is not working. Shit, those teams aren't even on the floor. As a result, various human basketballs have rolled out the gym and ended up by the dumpsters in the parking lot or down the muddy embankment to the river, stuck in the trees, marooned until the next high flow washes away them forever.

The buzzer sounds and the final score blinks red: Elks 102, Loggers 51.

Fans clap and cheer, and when the Elks run off the floor after the ceremonial handshakes with the nonchalant Loggers, the writer notices they all sneaky half salute the mural as they dash out of the gym and into their musty locker room. The coach does the same! He's probably a secret Fifth Columnist socialist and the fiery union rep for the teacher's union. The school board doesn't fire him because he keeps winning state titles and gives the dying town something to live for every winter and spring. The writer wonders: how in the hell did this guy ever end up in this town? Who is he? The writer desperately wants to know because he intuits that the answer might unlock deeper insights. If the writer decides to relocate to the town and write a non fiction book about the homeless or a fairy tale novel about the socialist coach and his fast break offense, he might discover there are more people like the coach living in rural Oregon than most people can ever imagine, and in the coming years, there might a lot more.

The writer stands up from the bleachers and his body shakes with pain. He'll have to walk a couple miles to loosen up. Oh well, it's a fine winter evening and he can meander around the downtown of four blocks, maybe get a beer at the reactionary dive bar, Turkey's, then take the bridge that crosses the river. He can stop on the bridge and listen to the Friday night shenanigans acted out by the residents of the homeless encampment. Is Friday night different for them? Is there such a concept of a weekend in their lives?

Maybe the writer's fast break metaphor will collapse or simply whither away. Or maybe, if he can promulgate it to the people, (by any means necessary) it could inspire one or several or a thousand people to run the offense in the pursuit of a solution for the homeless crisis. Perhaps not the ultimate state-wide solution, or even in the big city, but at least one in a given area, down by a river for example, where they're playing foos ball and darts and being turned into the steaming compost of 21st century star spangled banner capitalism.

The writer sure would love the coach to take up that responsibility. He's won enough state championships, trained enough closet socialists, and taught enough lessons about Walden. He may not know it, but he's ready for something bigger, much bigger, to execute the perfect fast breaks for people who need to start scoring easy but hard earned buckets, then get their ass back up the floor, defend. That's part of fast break basketball, too. Defense.