Chapter 7 The Dunk

I once scored fifty points in a basketball game at the age of ten.  My Dad taped the game, and we watched it immediately when we got home.  I expected He would throw a party celebrating my amazing feat.  Instead, he pointed out all of my mistakes and then took my brother and me to the park to practice basketball for two hours in twenty-degree weather.  He must have heard me mutter, “I scored fifty points.” It’s the first time I heard him say, “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” How many times has he said it since?   He said it to me last week.  If someone could deposit a dime into my account for every time he said it, I would own Facebook.  Yet, I live by that principle every day, even when walking my dog (which I am the GOAT!).

My dad determined the competition was weak and took me out of my current league and put me in a tougher one where he would coach (racial overtones muted, but you know what I’m saying).  In this league, I did not score fifty points in a game.  I didn’t even lead my team in scoring.  The league celebrated the end of the season with an all-coaches game.  We finally would see the adults, yapping at kids all season, show the skills and fundamentals they taught us.  I think the league administrators thought the game would provide a comedic and entertaining event for the kids and parents.  This was not the case.  The dads took it seriously.  All of them wanted to win.  All of them wanted to star.  But, alas, all of them couldn’t.  There was only one star in that game.

Domination does not express the full nature of watching him embarrass all the other coaches and dads.  He hit long-distance jump shots like Larry Bird, midrange shots like Isaiah Thomas and drove like Dr.  J.  Then he did the shot he was always begging me to do.  He would nag me about this shot from nine years old until my last year playing college basketball.

Dad: I don’t know why you don’t do Kareem’s skyhook.

Me: Because it’s ugly.  

Dad: (With a whole lot of bass in his voice) I DON’T CARE IF IT’S UGLY, BOY!! NO ONE CAN BLOCK IT!!

I remember him hitting five of those skyhooks, and every time, looking at me as he ran back on defense.  He must have scored over forty points while the other coaches dribbled off their toes and air-balled their granny shots.  At some point, the whole gym started to cheer on my dad (including the other players' wives and children).  Every time he scored, the gym would erupt.  And then finally, came a small chant that grew louder.

Dunk it.  Dunk it.  Dunk it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a high school game where everyone in the gym knows a dunker plays for one of the teams, but when that player gets the ball, the whole crowd buzzes and stands in anticipation of what this player is about to do, before the player actually does it.  This often happened to me in high school. The first time I ever experienced seeing it, occurred with my dad in this game.  He stole the ball and dribbled up the court.  Either the other dads wanted to see him dunk, didn’t want to embarrass themselves further by becoming a poster with my dad’s legs straddling their foreheads (a hard image for a son or wife to get out of their heads on the way home), or just capitulated to their exhaustion; but my dad found himself all alone. Everyone in the gym stood with expectation.  Dad took a step from the dotted line, jumped off one foot, cocked the ball slightly away from his body, and with one hand, threw it down.  As he did, the whole crowd went “Woosh.” And they cheered like Michael Jordan did it.

Obviously, I kindled with pride as the other kids congratulated me and rolled their eyes at their own fathers.  I walked up to him, but my brain could not form any words to say.  He proved every basketball lesson he taught me by doing them.  I looked at him, put my hand on his shoulder, covered by his sweat drenched red t-shirt, and said, “Good game.” I will remember this look for the rest of my life.  He looked at me with huge vulnerable dark eyes and just nodded his head.  

My dad probably had not played a pickup game in fifteen years.  That was the last pickup game he ever played.  We still played one-on-one, and he still trained me.  But he hung up his full-court basketball shoes after that afternoon.  He came home that night and passed out.  I remember him hobbling for the next week. It is then, I knew he did all that for me, and for the first time, I realized that he cared how I felt about him. This huge powerful man who had always been larger than life, cared what I thought about him.  He broke his body because of his desire for me.  Why?  Because he is a father and a father’s heart cannot help but desire the heart of his children.    

I came to find out I feel the same way about my boys.  My favorite Thanksgiving ever, we went to Orlando to have Thanksgiving with my ex-wife’s twin sister and her husband.  We both had kids the same age.  I really loved my brother-in-law, Uncle Lance.  He is as great of human being God ever invented.  We went to college at the same school, married the opposite half of a set of twins, and had sons the same age.  He starred as a baseball pitcher while I played basketball.  We both were training our sons in our expertise and going through the amateur athletics circuit.  Both of us grew up with hard-knock coaches who derived their motivation regimen from their drill sergeants preparing them for the Vietnam War.  We found ourselves training our kids in an overcorrecting environment.  All encouragement.  Don’t keep score.  Self-esteem motivation instead of pressure.  Let them win.

For that Thanksgiving, we visited some of their friends in their gated community.  In the middle of the community, lights illuminated an outdoor basketball court, which made the kids crazy with excitement.  I don’t recall who said it, but somehow, we decided to play with the three adult men versus the four kids.  Jacob, my oldest, could already dunk and could run the forty under five seconds (I found that out the hard way by racing him).  My youngest, Seth, could comfortably hit shots beyond twenty-five feet.  Uncle Lance’s son, currently pitching for a college baseball team, was incredibly strong and a good athlete.  They rounded off the team with our nephew, who recently won his first professional MMA fight.  They laughed at the notion we could compete with them and thought they would destroy us with their Steph Curry dribbling skills and European side-steps.  After all, Uncle Lance and I were old and always let our kids win.

Uncle Lance and I did not huddle together or create any strategy.  We just looked at each other and knew.  We went old school basketball on them with fundamentals instituted in the LBJ administration.  Backdoors, drop steps, baby hooks, sealing the post, shot fakes, boxing out to prevent offensive rebounds, help side defense, forcing penetration to the baseline, close out block out on open shooters.  I don't think the other adult on our team touched the ball.  We didn’t even shoot beyond five feet.  I became Magic Johnson, and he became Kevin McHale.  Every time Lance went backdoor, and I passed to him for an easy lay-up, we would die laughing.  The kids did not know what hit them.  I even threw up a Kareem hook shot to honor my Dad.  We annihilated them.  They walked around with this bewildered look after the game as Uncle Lance and I celebrated our victory with joviality.  I played against NBA players and in front of thousands of people.  I dunked on players and hit game-winning shots.  Uncle Lance, with a career in baseball, also could conjure up highlights.  But I am sure, for both of us, we did not experience any more pleasure in victory or achievement than we did after beating the turkey stuffing out of our kids in a meaningless basketball game on Thanksgiving.   Why?  We are fathers and a father’s heart cannot help but desire the heart of his children.

The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and He was heartbroken.  So, the Lord said, “I will wipe off the land the human race that I’ve created: from human beings to livestock to the crawling things to the birds in the skies, because I regret I ever made them.” Genesis 6:6-7.

I love this verse.

It’s one of my favorites.  It makes me sick when people say we cannot affect God because He knows everything.  Obviously, from this verse, we can.  We can break his heart.  If we can make God that emotionally crazy that He floods the earth because of our wickedness, how much more emotionally crazy can we make Him from our love and adoration of Him?  The Bible lists over seven thousand promises from God to those who seek Him.  Avoiding drowning in the lake of fire seems like the promise anyone ever cares about.  Out of the 727,969 words in the NIV Bible, it references “hell” only fifteen times.

How is it possible that God can know everything and exist outside of time, and still feel emotion in the moment?  I don’t know.  How is it possible that our bodies know how to breathe?  I didn’t tell my body to breathe.  I didn’t tell my lungs to inhale and exhale and what orifice to do it from?  Somehow, God is able to live outside of time and inside of time, at the same time.  I am grateful that He can.  It allows me to know He actually feels something for me right now, celebrating every day of my sobriety, as if I won the Super Bowl.

When God told Moses to build the tabernacle, according to Paul (in Hebrews 8 and 9), the designs shadowed the actual throne room of God.  God would actually come down to earth and live in this replica of heaven amongst the Israelites while they marched to the promised land.

In Psalm 141, David equates his prayers with incense and in Revelation, John does the same thing.  In the tabernacle, in the inner court, God instructed the high priest (and no one else) to light incense morning and night so that the aroma would perpetually fill the place God resided, the Holy of Holies.  

The creator of the nose and of smells and of pleasure takes His children’s prayers and transforms them into something He can inhale into Himself that gives Him delectation.  After God flooded the earth, Noah made a sacrifice.

The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” Genesis 8:21.

Then God created the rainbow, the signature backdrop of the wall behind His throne in heaven.  All this from the pleasure of one man’s worship.  See.  Crazy. 

And what is prayer?  Just talking to Him.  The sound of our voice gives Him such ecstatic joy that He consumes it.  He ingests it.  He breathes it.  Because the incense burns perpetually, God grants our invocations an omniscience in His throne room.  That means every angel, when approaching God, must do so in the redolence of our psalms.  That means every time the enemy comes to God to accuse us, they must walk through the scent of our supplication.  That means every time Jesus intercedes, when God moves on our behalf, His nostrils are filled with the delight of our worship.

I can’t just call my Dad.  We have never had a five-minute conversation with each other in our entire lives.  I plan it out.  I time-block at least two hours.  He doesn’t want to get off the phone with me.  Lol.  And I love it.  I am beginning to do this with my son Jacob.  I have to text him before I call to see when he is available.  At times, our conversation will last all afternoon.  I cannot just call him on his lunch break.  I just got a golden retriever puppy, and she is brilliant.  Her name is Kanaan.  Kanaan, somehow, is able to smell the chemical reactions in my brain or empathically read my emotions.  She gets motivated when I get motivated.  She rests when I rest.  She hates the Alabama Crimson Tide and Jehovah Witnesses.  She protects my house.  She hasn’t bitten anyone yet, but if I don’t know you, then she doesn’t know you.  She will growl and bark until I let her know it’s okay.  My youngest son has a key.  When he comes over, if I am in the back room, she will hear the door open and run to attack.  As soon as I hear little paws jumping up and down, I know Seth is here.  She will get the “zoomies.”  That’s when a dog gets so deliriously happy and starts running and can’t stop.  She will do this for thirty minutes when Seth sits on the couch, jumping in his lap, kissing him, running down the hall, and then running back to his lap.  She will wear herself out, get some water, and then commence with the zoomies again.  When Seth comes over, Kanaan empathizes with my emotions to perfection.

As Thanksgiving approaches, and family members see each other for one of the very few precious times all year, before the drama begins, I hope everyone who reads this, basks in that first moment when you see your loved ones and allow that joy to overwhelm you.  Then, meditate on this fact: that’s how you affect your Father in heaven, not just one moment of one day of the year.  But every second of every day since He formed you in His imagination before He spoke creation into existence.  He is a Father.  And a Father cannot help but desire the heart of His children.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

 

The Lord your God is in your midst—a warrior bringing victory.
        He will create calm with his love;
        he will rejoice over you with singing.   Zephaniah 3:17