The Outside Shot

  Phil Jackson, “The Zen Master,” winner of eleven NBA championships! Phil won by thinking outside the box. He took his personal philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and injected it into his game strategy—and into his players, both on and off the court. The result?… Phil Jackson has the highest win-loss percentage of any coach in NBA history.

  What is Zen basketball?

  Zen is all about being in the moment, getting unattached to what owns you. Can you separate who you are from what you have—or is your identity bound up in your belongings? Do you own those hundred-dollar sneakers—or do they own you? It’s a good idea not to confuse who you are with what you have—that reputation you and I have to defend, that iconic T-shirt that defines us, that personality we’re wedded to. All can move us ahead, or get in the way of our growing. Even the thoughts we have.

  How do you “stop thinking”?

  You have to stop the conversation in your head that is stopping you. Empty out your mind and be “in the moment”—critical on that fast break Walter describes—when the crowd is screaming at Lonnie and Lonnie’s got bloody threats from gamblers whipping through his mind.

  A key to winning basketball is detachment.

  Exactly. When you detach from all this stuff, you begin to see yourself not as one guy—you see yourself in other people. The other players on the court become extensions of yourself. You don’t throw the ball to where they are. You throw it to where they are not—where they are going to be.

  You’re reading their mind, their intentions.

  And to do that, you have to make their intentions your own. You’re not thinking it; you just know. You know them as they know you. As Lonnie says, “We played as if we were one person.”

  You become part of something bigger than yourself.

  Part of the team—and that’s how Jordan got to be a season MVP five times, an NBA finals MVP six times, and an All-Star fourteen times!

  What makes an MVP, like Michael Jordan, a most valuable player?

  Definitely not his stats. Jordan had just pulled off one of the best individual stats for one season in NBA history when Phil Jackson pulled him aside and told him, “Next year, Mike, you are going to take fewer shots.” Jordan made the promise and morphed from individual superstar to super team player, racking up six NBA championships for the Bulls.

  To win, is the team more important than any individual?

  Personally, I don’t believe that. What is a team if it’s not individuals? You just need individuals who can work seamlessly as a team. And that takes seeing yourself in others. For Lonnie, that takes giving it away, being generous. This is why Walter made Lonnie’s generosity to Eddie so central to the story. And why he had Colin and Lonnie show up a glory seeker like Hauser on the court.

  This touches on another major theme of the book—helping out.

  Yes. You can’t play ball by yourself. You have to have a purpose larger than yourself. There’s a host of hoop legends in the game today who have bighearted charities for kids like Lonnie: Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Nash, Ray Allen, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, LeBron James, to name just a few. They’re paying it forward to poor kids—kids like Colin and Ray—and it fills them with a purpose, lifts their entire game—just as it did with Lonnie when he took on Eddie.

  And it made Lonnie feel needed.

  When you put yourself out there, become a part of something that requires your presence, you are needed. You become valuable.

  You wrote books yourself for teens—with introductions from Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King, Mother Teresa, and the Gandhi Foundation.

  All my stories are about outsiders taking an outside shot. As an eighteen-year-old kid, I got inspired by Gandhi, who was a failure when he set out for South Africa. There, he reinvented himself and found a way to overcome the British, the largest military force on earth. He took his justification from another outsider, a loner who lived like a hermit—Henry David Thoreau—a white man and an American whose hatred of slavery drove him to disobey unjust laws, then write about it.

  Gandhi used that strategy of disobedience for nonviolent protest.

  But I found out for Gandhi, nonviolence was not just a political strategy; it was a spiritual belief—what he called “soul force.” And at the core of that nonviolence is our story’s central theme—an unlikely friendship between a nineteen-year-old black ballplayer and a nine-year-old white kid: that when you can see yourself in another, you will not hurt that person, because it would be like hurting yourself.

  This belief also holds true for your work with Dr. Martin Luther King?

  Yes, he trained us in this if we were attacked. Dr. King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela were outsiders, too. All rebels and, each in their own way, revolutionaries who had to reinvent themselves.

  The same could be said for Malcolm X.

  Malcolm had to give up everything he knew and reinvent himself several times over—from Malcolm Little, the jailed thief known as “Detroit Red”—to Malcolm X, the devout follower of black supremacist Elijah Muhammad—to someone who condemned Elijah Muhammad’s teachings and could embrace whites as brothers and sisters.

  How does a writer find a voice for characters who are from so many different walks of life?

  If you are a writer like Walter—or an actor, or a singer—your job requires you to step into someone else’s shoes. And the degree to which you can do this—that will be the measure of your success. Who are you really? Do you live just inside your head? Or can you see yourself in others, experience what life would be like if you were them? And if you are willing to explore that, to go outside yourself and into another person’s heart, you can become a writer, or actor, or singer worth listening to.

  What happens if you don’t?

  You can stagnate in your life, remain petrified as a rock.

  But you still have a choice.

  Yes. You see—Lonnie, Eddie, you, me—none of us have a choice of the body we’re born into. The family, the neighborhood, the life we’re born into. What you do have a choice over is what you do with that life.

  John Ballard graduated from Harvard College with honors. In addition to directing, writing, and producing films, John has coproduced record albums for Grammy Award–winning artists, flown food aid into war-torn Sudan, and written several books for teens, including Soul to Soul and Brothers and Sisters, with introductions by Coretta Scott King and Nelson Mandela.

  Excerpt copyright © 1981 by John Ballard. Published by Ember, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  I have a funny way of thinking—at least I think it’s funny because I don’t hear anybody else saying they think the way I do. What I do is to think things part of the way out, and then I put them aside and think them out some more later on. I had begun to think about what my father had said a long time ago about your days piling up on you, and as I sat in the window of the Grant, I began thinking about it again. It was beginning to make more sense to me.

  School was going to be out in another five or six weeks, and then I was going to have to figure out something to do with myself. Before, I’d spend the summer playing ball and waiting around until school started again, so that would take care of itself. But now that school was just about over for me, the days seemed different, and I had to figure out what I was going to do with them. I knew I didn’t want to work at the Grant all the time. I hated Jimmy Harrison, the manager, and the job was a chump job anyway—sweeping floors and changing beds and that kind of thing. The only thing that made it not so bad was me telling myself it was just until I finished school. I saw a lot of guys who had either finished school or had dropped out just hanging around the block, and I didn’t want to do that either. I wondered if my days were piling up on me, like my father said they might. They were changing, at least, or maybe I was changing. Or was supposed to be and wasn’t.

  I sat in the window for a long time, and then
I laid across the bed, just waiting for time to pass. I dozed off for a while, and when I woke, it was just about dark. I thought about going to a movie but decided to save my money so I could go the next day in case it rained. I got a basketball I kept at the Grant and wandered over to the playground. The lights were on, and I figured I’d shoot a few baskets. Playing ball, even shooting baskets by myself, always made me feel better. I figured to shoot until I got tired and then come back and get some sleep.

  I had my head so wrapped up in myself I didn’t see this guy laying on the court until I got right up on him.

  “Hey, man.” I nudged him with the toe of my sneaker. “Get off the court!”

  When he didn’t move, I thought he might be dead. I nudged him again.

  “Your feet too big …” That’s what he said, only he kind of sung it instead of talking.

  “Hey, man, get up!”

  “I really hate you ’cause your feet too big …”

  The cat is laying there singing some kind of weird song. I pushed him with my sneaker again, and he didn’t move. So I gave him a kick on the back of his leg and told him to move again. He rolled over and got up on his knees and hands like a boxer trying to beat the count. I thought he was getting right up, but he just stayed like that for a while. I reached down and grabbed him by the collar and started to drag him off the court, and then, all of a sudden, he’s up. Not only is he up, but he’s got this blade in my face!

  I dropped the ball and backed off. This guy smells like somebody done peed in bad wine and washed his teeth in it, but he’s got this knife, and he’s bigger than me.

  “Hey, why don’t you get off the court, man?” I said.

  “I really hates you ’cause your feets too big …” He starts in with this singing again, and I just watched him. I didn’t want to get too close to him ’cause I still didn’t know where he got the knife from and he was quick.

  He stops just before he gets off the court and turns back to me and just looks at me, and then he puts his knife away. Right away I feel like busting his jaw. I take a step toward him, and he just grins at me.

  “Get off the court, old man, before I hit you!”

  “Why don’t you put me off the court, youngblood?” he says, still grinning.

  I look at him for a minute, and he don’t look like much. But I’m six three and he’s maybe six four, and he’s heavier. I wasn’t scared of the cat, but I figured it wasn’t worth my while. I could hit him and he’d have a heart attack and die and I’d be up for manslaughter or something.

  I picked up the ball and shot it. He turned and walked off, still singing that stupid song about feet. I shot a few times, and then the ball came down on something—a broken bottle of wine. I started to push it off the court with my foot, but then I picked it up and threw it off as far as I could. I got the ball again and shot and shot until I was too tired to shoot anymore. Then I took the ball over to the track and ran laps until I could see the sky start turning gray between the buildings.

  The next morning Harrison had me cleaning rooms with him and listening to a lot of guff about how hard he had it when he was my age. He’d heard that I was the first to cop from the truck the day before and asked me where I was keeping my stash.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

  He gave me a look hard enough to curdle water and went on sweeping. After we finished cleaning the rooms, I split to Mary-Ann’s house.

  Mary-Ann is just about my woman. Just about, because I haven’t really done anything to make it official.

  I’ve known Mary-Ann and her brother Paul just about all my life. For a long time I treated her like a younger sister. Paul and I were close, too. If I had to call somebody my main man, he’d be it. We were just about the same age and had been going to school together, eating at each other’s house and stuff like that for as long as I can remember. Lately Paul had been hanging around with some of the cats at school who thought they were better than the rest of us. This was a new thing with him, and I couldn’t figure it, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  Mary-Ann was something else. She had been Paul’s kid sister and I had liked her, and then one day she just wasn’t a kid anymore. I don’t know if she just changed or if both of us did. I remember being at Paul’s house one day, waiting for him to finish his shower, and Mary-Ann and I were playing checkers. I used to always let her beat me, and then I’d sneak a checker off the table and we’d wrestle around for it. Only this time, when she tried to wrestle me to the floor to get the checker out of my hand, I was suddenly aware that she was a woman. I opened my hand real quick, and she asked me what was wrong, was I getting weak? I just looked at her and she looked at me and we both knew things had changed between us.

  I found myself liking her more and more, but I tried to keep it cool. I wasn’t really ready for no big love thing, but I liked the way I felt around her, and she knew it, even though I never said it in so many words.

  When I got over to Paul’s house, he wasn’t home. Mary-Ann and her mother were there, mouthing off at each other like they always did.

  About six months before, they had been arguing about the fact that Mary-Ann didn’t get a new coat for Christmas. Her mother came back with how bad things were and how much this cost and how much that cost and the usual noise people be handing out when they come up short. Then she starts saying that since Mary-Ann had just turned sixteen, she could go out and get her a part-time job or something and help get her own stuff. I guess she figured that Mary-Ann would work in the supermarket or something like that. But there’s an after-hours joint across from where Paul lives, and Mary-Ann gets a job there instead.

  Mary-Ann’s job was to keep track of the liquor and stuff so that the bartenders wouldn’t rip off the money from the sales. She ordered stuff like peanuts, and potato chips, too. But her mother kept running down about how Mary-Ann was going to be a tramp because she worked in the after-hours joint, especially when the dude that ran it gave Mary-Ann her own room. Mary-Ann told her mama that the guy wanted her to stay there some of the time so in case he wanted to check things out, she could tell him what was what. Her mama didn’t want to hear a thing, so she just kept running the same old lines. Mary-Ann was making about three times as much as she could in the supermarket and she dug the responsibility, so she wasn’t about to give up the gig.

  After she and her mother had finished putting each other down, we went down and sat on the stoop.

  “She just stays on my case,” Mary-Ann said. Her eyes were red, and I figured she was ready to cry.

  “You know what she’s going to say,” I said, “so just get used to it.”

  “I don’t dig her always accusing me of ‘getting ready to do some dirt,’ ” Mary-Ann said. “If her stuff wasn’t so raggedy, she wouldn’t have the dirt on her mind.”

  “Why I got to hear this?” I asked. “I’ve heard it a hundred times, and it don’t change none.”

  “Who else I got to say it to?”

  “Ease up, mama,” I said. “I didn’t come to start nothing. I just came over to see what Paul was doing, that’s all. Look, you want to catch a flick this afternoon?”

  “I got to work,” she said. “She always waits until I’m just about out the door before she starts running her mouth.”

  “All that means I got to go to the flick by myself?”

  “You want to see me when I get off work?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Jive turkey!” She got up and gave me a smile that made me glad that Paul hadn’t been home. I watched her cross the street and head down the block towards the after-hours joint, knowing that she would turn around before she went in. She got all the way to the door and then turned and threw me a kiss. I threw one back underhanded, and she disappeared into the doorway.

  I went back over to the Grant to get my sneakers. I had heard that they were looking for some ballplayers for some kind of tournament or something. At the Grant there’s Harrison sitting behind t
he desk, writing up a card for some dude and a white chick. The chick wasn’t bad. I’m just going to walk on by the desk when I see a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, half gone, sitting against the wall. So I wait until this cat and his white chick go on upstairs, and I sound on Harrison. I know that better not be my stuff or I’m going to waste him right then and there.

  “Hey, man, you drinking top shelf,” I said, pointing to the Johnnie Walker.

  “I don’t like nothing cheap,” he said.

  “Well, that ain’t cheap,” I said. “Wherever you get it from it’s going to cost you.”

  “That right?”

  The way he said that I just knew it was my stuff he was drinking. I just knew it.

  “Look, man, you going to be here long?” I asked. “Because I’m going to go upstairs and check something out, and then I’ll be right back down if everything isn’t everything.”

  “Your mama was by here a few minutes ago,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  “I said that your mama was by here a few minutes ago. She said she was sorry to bother you again, but the landlord came and said that she either had to pay the rent or leave the place. I figured since it wasn’t that much, I could lend her the money.”

  I just looked at him and he looked at me. Then he reached over and poured himself another drink. I didn’t say anything else. I went on upstairs and looked under the bed and pulled out the box. There were two bottles of Scotch left. When I came down again, I asked him how much he had lent my mama.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “you’ll pay it back.”

  “Hey, look, can I ask you a question?”

  “Free country.”

  “Do you practice being stupid, or is it just natural?”

  Excerpt copyright © 2000 by Walter Dean Myers. Published by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.