I was eleven years old and in the sixth grade when I tried out for my first organized basketball competition. At the time I didn’t know it would lead to a major turning point in my youth, an experience that would change me forever.
The tournament wasn’t held at my elementary school, but at Sands Junior High, the school I would attend the following year. Sands was less than a block north of P.S. 67 and a short walk from the Whitman Houses. You crossed the street under the elevated highway, swung left onto North Portland Avenue, and you were there.
No other kids my age went to the tryout. It was all older players at the school’s night center. But I wanted to take a crack at it. I’ll never forget getting on line in the gymnasium. The lines were at least ten deep and ten across, and each one had a coach-captain up front, usually a teacher or parent volunteer.
I don’t know how they worked out their pecking order. But a captain would choose a player from the front of the line, and then the next captain would take his turn picking from among the kids that were left. And so on, like a draft, until they filled their team rosters.
Anyway, I made the cut. Maybe it was my height—I’d shot up like a beanstalk over the last year of elementary school and stood around six feet two inches, towering over many of the teachers and coaches. Also, my brother Thomas was already a student at Sands and had a reputation for being an excellent player. His nickname was Spalding, like the basketball manufacturer, and the neighborhood kids had started calling me “Little Spal.” Maybe the captains were hoping I’d take after him on the court.
Believe it or not, our team was called the Knicks, and we were given orange T-shirts with that name emblazoned across the chest. I guess you could say that was the first time I wore a Knicks uniform, though it was slightly different than the one I’d wear at Madison Square Garden. Since I didn’t own a pair of sweat socks, I sported black dress socks with my shorts, tee, and sneakers. Quite a look… although, looking back today at the Michigan Fab Five and their black socks, I might have been ahead of my time.
Anyway, I was not very good compared to the seventh, eighth, and ninth graders. I won’t blame it on the socks.
In the NBA, the twelfth player on the team is kind of an extra man on the bench, the guy who comes in at the end of a blowout win—or loss—to let the regulars rest on the sidelines. The fans always cheer the guy because they’re excited for him. In college, it’s the same thing. In youth basketball, in the neighborhood, it’s also the same.
The night of the tournament, I was that player.
I’ll never forget being inserted into the game with something like ninety seconds left on the clock. My team had rolled over the competition, and our win was almost clinched.
As I set up for my shot, a tingling bundle of nerves, the crowd was cheering me on from the bleachers, chanting my name.
“Shoot the ball, Little Spal! Shoot the ball, Little Spal!”
Little Spal.
I wasn’t Blueberry Hill. Wasn’t a confused, naked boy under the broomstick and strap. Not that night, on that court. Never mind the dress socks.
“Shoot the ball, Little Spal, shoot, shoot, shoot…”
I took the shot. My first shot in organized competition. The basketball left my fingers, arced in the air, and sank in.
We won the tournament. There I was, the only elementary school player in the league and a member of a championship team. The Knicks!
I was proud and ecstatic. A champ. What a feeling. To top it off, each member of the team was given a trophy—a shiny gold-colored statue of a basketball player on a metal base.
A trophy.
It made my eyes light up. I could hardly wait to show it to my parents.
Carrying it from the schoolhouse, I hurried down the street toward Sarjay’s Candy Store on the corner of North Portland Avenue and Myrtle, right across from Fort Greene Park. Straight ahead, I saw the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument rising a hundred-fifty feet into the air. The entrance to the Whitman Houses was about a block to my right. I’d taken that route home a thousand times.
No sooner did I make the turn than I was punched in the eye. Hard. Stars exploded in my vision as I rocked back on my heels. Before I could recover, the trophy was torn from my hands. I didn’t know what hit me. I never saw the blow coming. But I realized at once that my trophy was gone. Stolen.
I was only a minute or two from home. Walking through the front entryway and taking the elevator up to my apartment was a blur. My heart was filled with sadness. By the time I reached the twelfth floor, my eye was swollen and pulsing, its white stained blood red at the corners.
My father was home when I walked in. As I came through the door, he took one look at me and asked what happened. His tone of voice was something new. Dad was always so apart from us, so uninvolved; the urgency of his question shocked me.
I told him without tears. The pain didn’t bother me. But someone had taken my trophy. That did.
“Show me where it happened, Bernard,” Dad said. “You take me there right now.”
I walked him to the corner where the trophy was stolen from me. There was no sign of it, of course. But Dad must have known the thief would be long gone. It struck me that his insistence in coming out there was his way of making me understand the seriousness of the attack. That it was an unspoken message: Don’t ever allow anyone to do this to you again.
I took his message seriously. No one would ever steal what was mine again. From that point on, if somebody messed with me, he was going to get his ass kicked. I didn’t care who he was. Gang member, bully, it didn’t make a difference.
I wasn’t trying to be a tough guy. I wasn’t bothering anyone or looking for trouble. All I wanted to do was mind my business and play basketball. But if you came at me, I wouldn’t run. If you got tough with me, I’d show you I was tougher.
The Bernard that kids had taunted because of his haircut and awkward build was no more. Blueberry Hill was gone. Things had changed for good. I’d changed.
And that was it.
Period.
I HAD ANOTHER TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE later that year, one that was different but no less important than the theft of my basketball trophy. It hurt too, and in its own big way, though I suppose you could say this pain was self-inflicted.
The Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park—the one that was in sight when I was punched in my eye—is a high Doric column atop a hill, built to memorialize thousands of men and boys who died aboard British prison ships during the Revolutionary War. Ninety-nine large, broad granite stairs lead up to its base, and most people don’t realize they rise from a crypt housing the remains of some of those prisoners. No one knows exactly how many are entombed in the vault, but there’s a giant urn atop the column. Back when the monument was erected, the urn would light up at night.
That light was out all through my childhood. I hear it’s been restored to working order, and that’s good. People exercise around the monument nowadays, jogging up and down the steps, and skateboarding around the base. But it’s important that we be reminded why it was built. I always knew about the bodies entombed in the vault. Even when I played near the stairs, my awareness of them was sobering.
On summer afternoons, my mother would take me and my brothers on occasional outings in the park. It was right across the street from our housing complex, with plenty of shade trees to keep us cool. We couldn’t afford family trips outside the neighborhood, but Fort Greene Park was a nice place to go for inner-city kids; it exposed us to a natural setting and removed us from the sweltering apartment as we played under Mom’s watchful eye.
One day, after I’d graduated from P.S. 67, I fell while horsing around with my brothers and running rings around the monument. I landed awkwardly on my right arm, and though it hurt the rest of the afternoon, I thought it was just bruised and sore from hitting the monument’s concrete base.
Then came dinnertime. I’d said my prayers and was lifting my fork to my mouth when my arm locked up. I sat there unable to move it, not having taken a single bite of food. The arm was bent like a wishbone, stuck in an upraised position.
A puzzled look on her face, my mother got up and came around the table to look it over. Remember, she was from the Jim Crow South. Hospitals were a long distance from the farm, and if you could reach one and were black, you were segregated from white patients and treated under conditions that left much to be desired… assuming you were treated at all. Southern blacks understandably didn’t rush to the hospital back then, but instead remedied most of their illnesses and injuries themselves.
Having hung onto those memories, Mom had also retained many of her old ways.
The arm was up? She decided to try to push it down.
Not a good idea. I saw flashes of white light in front of my eyes.
My agonized expression quickly convinced Mom to hurry me across the street to Cumberland Hospital, where a round of X-rays revealed my arm was broken. The doctors told me it would be in a heavy plaster cast for a month.
It was the worst thing I could have heard. All I could think was, I’m not gonna be able to play basketball.
I’d finally played in a school tournament. I was competing with the older kids. And now… I couldn’t believe it. A whole month!
I went home feeling unhappy and dejected. I couldn’t imagine not going to the courts. But what else was I going to do? Stay in my room? I didn’t want that. It wasn’t my personality to hang around the apartment and sulk.
Before long, I had enough of it. Okay, fine, I told myself. I have a broken arm. I’m still able to shoot. I’ll just use my other hand. That arm works.
So I went out on the court and shot left-handed. I wasn’t very proficient at it. I couldn’t play in games. But I was able to shoot, and that’s what I did, every day, until my right arm finally healed.
I learned a lot about myself that summer. It was my first time dealing with an injury, my first real physical challenge. And any challenge that you face helps to fortify you for the next one in your life. It’s subconscious. It becomes part of the fabric of your being.
Years later, when I was unable to lift my leg off a hospital bed without help and had been told even walking normally again might be unattainable, some part of me would reference how I coped with the broken arm and motivate me not to give up.
But that perspective would only come in hindsight. On the courts, practicing lefty, I was just looking forward to my cast coming off.
Elementary school was behind me. In the fall, I would start my first year at Sands Junior High. The school had a basketball team, and my mind was set on joining it.