re: Your Best and Worst Basketball Stories

Whale Shoes.

I only have a worst. I always had speed and heart but didn't grow until college. 1st chair trumpet, however, wasn't getting me any chics. Though having no tangible skills at the sport I tried out for junior high basketball.

My folks, hard working and supportive, clearly saw this flawed plan through the kitchen window as I launched brick after sad brick at our neighbor's driveway hoop.

"I need some Air Jordans to try out" I begged. In reflection, what seemed cruel at the time was, in fact just great parenting, not to mention a prudent decision if they were to put food on our family's table. And so we went to Montomery Ward.

There, in what seemed like a brightly lit gulag were the only high tops that made any real sense, to them anyway. Either I can't remember the brand, or I've just buried it deep inside-but they were a perfectly good Nike knockoff. Right down to the swoosh...except to avoid copyright infringement, the desingers didn't include the hook...and it looked like a comatose f#%king whale on the side of my shoe.

To summise: not only did I have no shot, leap or useful height, I had the ocean's fattest mammal on my shoes, and swiftly... and unmercifully got the nickname "Whale Shoes".