Basketball Brothers
Posted by Hasan H, March 2, 2008 - 8:56 pm
My brother and I have never been close, but today we are the closest we have ever been. And probably as close as we will ever get.
We have nothing in common even though we are only a couple of years apart in age. I am a corporate pencil pusher, he is the blue collar type. I am a Management Consultant. He is a scrappy diamond salesman. My lifestyle is pretentious. My brother doesn’t know what the word means. I like to dress up my thoughts with pretty words so I come off as educated. My brother, while just as educated, takes pride in being a straightshooting New Yorker. We don’t speak to each other much. Not lately at least.
The fondest memories of my relationship with my brother are of him and I screaming at the TV during the 90’s Knicks playoff debacles, then watching as the Unstoppable One soared through the Air to six championships. ’99 was when our decibel levels were especially high as our beloved Knicks made an improbable run to the Finals. Those were the days.
We would talk basketball for hours. Both he and I, die-hard Knicks homers, arguing all the way home from school with bandwagon jumping Bulls fans. Ridiculing them. Calling them traitors for rooting for the Bulls while living in New York. Words were easier to come by back then when we didn’t have many to pick from. And not much to lose either. Marveling over Shawn Kemp’s God-given abilities. Playing a whole plethora of NBA games on our PlayStation for hours. Arguing whether John Starks would ever be a Championship Guard. Rooting hard for Patrick Ewing because even when everybody criticized him, we knew that he tried hard. We knew that he cared. Knowing in our hearts that we could never beat Jordan, yet hoping to see exactly that every year. Rooting hard for the Mailman and his Jazz to beat the Bulls and avenge New York’s torment. In the early 2000’s, watching those epic battles between the Shaq-Kobe Lakers and the Kings and the Blazers. That, to us, was the golden era of basketball.
And it got taken away from us.
Kobe took that fateful vacation in Colorado. Shaq just got old. Duncan was too boring. KG was stuck in Minny with no supporting cast. The Nets fired Byron Scott who we all thought just went along for a ride with J-Kidd and which turned out to be untrue. Portland self-destructed. Vince turned out to be a pretender. T-Mac just couldn’t get on the court. And worst of all, Jimmy Dolan bought the Knicks. Somewhere while all this was happening, my brother and I stopped speaking.
We had personal reasons to blame for that too. But we have had those reasons all along. We just never let them get between us to a point where we didn’t want to talk to each other. We always had something to talk about. And more often than not, that something was the NBA. We didn’t like each other but we both knew we loved each other and talking to each other was a manifestation of that love which had to be held on to. And among all the vehicles we used to establish that, talking about the NBA seemed to be the most obvious and easiest choice.
That’s what made the past few years so hard. I love my kid brother yet I found myself at a loss for things to talk to him about.
This weekend I spoke to him with an open heart for the first time in years. And he responded. Yes, we talked about our lives. But we couldn’t wait to get that stuff out of the way so we could talk about what we really wanted to talk about.
We talked about Chris Paul. We talked about Kevin Durant. We talked about how amazing Al Horford will be. We talked about the stacked West. He told me he is jealous of LeBron just like he was of Jordan. I told him to soften up. I am his big brother after all. We laughed at the pathetic play of the Knicks. We laughed! My brother and I shared a laugh! And while neither of us said it out loud, what we were really telling each other was how much we missed each other and how much we love each other no matter what happens.
My brother is back in my life. Basketball is back in my life. And it is a damn good time to be an NBA fan.
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