I did something out of the ordinary the other day. Several times over the last month or so, I've seen this older and I'm guessing, Indian man shooting hoops on our little half court. I only say he's "shooting" because I assume he's trying to get the ball in the basket. He's basically doing a soccer throw-in, just hucking the ball towards the rim. The backboard is covered his dusty ball marks and he only ever makes one with a lucky bank-in. On the bright side, he does have about a thousand offensive rebounds. So when I saw him yesterday, I decided I was going to teach him how to shoot. Whether he liked it or not.
I threw on my sneakers and JV basketball practice jersey, grabbed my ball and headed to the court. We exchanged nods and smiles and he says, "You play too." Uh oh, possible language barrier. "Yep, I'm gonna shoot around a little bit." I replied. "I'm Scott." He didn't understand. Shit. Why am I doing this anyway? I put my hand on my chest and said repeated myself. That did it. "Emmanuel." he said. I put a few up and wondered if I was qualified to teach anyone how to shoot. I don't think he noticed though, since he dribbles with his head down. I'll cover ball handling with him next time.
Now Emmanuel is probably 60 and has a round, brown, beautiful gut hanging out of his t-shirt. Not a model of fitness like me. When one of his field goal attempts explodes off the glass or front-rim as 90% of them do, this poor guy has a 20-30 foot walk ahead of him which he covers with a slow, waddling gait. I wonder if those walks are sad for him or if he accepts them as the consequence of throwing up bricks. Or in his case, cinder blocks encased with lead. I must have thought he was sad, otherwise I wouldn't be there.
This was quickly justified (in my mind) by the smile I got the first time I got one of his rebounds and saved him that walk. He gave me a relieved "Thank you!" I'd won his heart. Now, for his mind. This was my chance. "I've got a better way for you to shoot. Want to see?" I don't know if he understood me fully, but I think I also mimicked his shooting motion at some point. He came over. We stood in the middle of the lane and I said, "Do like me." Now I was speaking his language. I held my ball straight out in front of me, shoulder high and he did the same. Then I bent my elbow to a 90 degree angle and rotated my wrist until I was in shooting position. He followed my motions relatively well. "Now put your left hand on the other side like this." I shot my ball (swish) and held my follow through, Ewing style, to show him how to finish by "reaching into cookie jar."
"So it's a one handed shot, and you use your left hand to guide it. Ok?" "Yes, yes." Well I forgot to tell him about using his legs and he completely took his left hand off the ball and as a result his shot fell about two feet short and left of the basket. I corrected both mistakes, but now he adopted more of a shot putting motion. He was still taking his left hand off the ball! This pissed me off a little bit. It's the simplest part! So I explained it one more time and went back to my own shoot around, hitting 3's, pull-up J's, the usual. He tried a couple more my way, but pretty soon he was back to looking like Rory Delap.
So maybe it wasn't a successful lesson. But I tried.
