My day as a Harlem Globetrotter

I’ve really been blanking on blog ideas, so today I went back at old posts and looked at where I had written “(idea for a separate post)” somewhere in the post itself. I found this in the Lame Claim To Fame post.

When I was 10 years old, my friend Clifton’s dad got three baseline floor tickets to see the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals in Rupp Arena, and he decided to take me and Clifton. We had both seen the Globetrotters on TV, so we were both thrilled at the prospect of seeing them live and so close.

The first half went by as a typical Globetrotters game — ball on the string, bucket of confetti, Sweet Georgia Brown — and we were eating up. Just loving it. Then the weird Globetrotter phenomenon kicked in with a ridiculously boring fourth quarter. I mean, these guys were the greatest at their craft, but for some inexplicable reason, they decide to play real basketball in the third quarter. I don’t know if it’s so they can get a manageable lead on the Generals so they can goof off again or what. Listen, we’re from Kentucky — you’re playing a game at Rupp Arena — we’ve got our fair share of real basketball. Whatever the reason, this was a prime opportunity for us to pig out on some popcorn and nachos until things got fun again.

Toward the end of the third quarter, Paul “Showtime” Gaffney was fouled hard underneath our basket. He looked at me with this wide-eyed “He almost took my head off!” look that I returned in kind. He came over to me, took my arm and yanked me up onto the Rupp Arena floor.

As a blue-bred, unabashed University of Kentucky fan since I was old enough to speak (one of my earliest memories is staying at my grandmother’s trailer for the UK-Athletes In Action game because she would let me stay up late enough to watch the tape delayed exhibitions), I would like to say that my reaction was to be awestruck at the fact that I was actually standing on the floor of Rupp Arena. I would wave at the screaming fans, and for just one moment I would be just as beloved as Mashburn and Delk and Ford and my other favorite players that had stood in the same spot.

Instead, my only thought was “I can’t believe 25,000 people are all staring at me at the same time.” I was a fifth-grade kid who had just realized in the past year that I was chunky and didn’t know how to match a shirt and pants. I was terrified.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized that’s exactly why they picked me. College basketball is for the elite players and the best athletes. Professional basketball is for the freakish who go beyond “athletic” and “skilled” and transcend normal human capability. The Globetrotters on the other hand? They are for the chunky and the young and the awkward. They take the sport and use it to entertain, not compete to be the best. They exist for me in my red shirt, orange shorts and old-style Nike shoes.

It turns out Showtime was fouled too hard and needed me to shoot his free throws while he cleared his obviously shaken head. He needed me to take those shots because he couldn’t do it on his own. I stood at the free throw line, saw through the glass backboard to the dark arena where I could just barely make out thousands of people. I bounced the ball a couple of times, took a breath, and launched up a two-handed prayer for all it was worth. And missed. Missed bad. It’s one thing to be challenged in front of 25,000 people. It’s another thing to fail in front of them.

The ref handed me the ball back — thanks, I would definitely like to go through this again — and I dribbled, breathed, launched up a two-handed prayer, and drained it. The crowd exploded, the Globetrotters threw their hands up, and the scoreboard ticked off one more point for Harlem. It was such a sense of relief that I hadn’t missed again. I wasn’t even able to be proud of myself yet. One of the players dragged me (lots of dragging, guess they were on a time constraint) to center court where they were going to present me with my T-shirt jersey to commemorate my achievement. Instead of just giving it to me, though, they wanted me to put it on. Remember — I’m chunky and way more self-conscious than a 10-year-old should be. So they all gathered around the blue Rupp Arena circle at center court so I could change without anybody seeing me. They shuffled my shirt off (I just realized you probably couldn’t do this today) and all bolted with both my shirts in hand, leaving me to stew at center court shirtless and humiliated.

They had a great time with it, making me earn the shirt back. They had me strut around the court and flex for the fans, who were laughing hysterically at my misfortune. Finally, after what seemed like roughly a week, they let me put my shirt back on and go sit down.

It took probably the rest of the game, but finally the elation over my free throw overtook my embarrassment over being exploited and the reality sunk in about what happened. The next morning I ran to the Herald-Leader to read the box score of the game , which for some reason I thought would exist, but apparently it doesn’t. But I knew what I would have read if it had been in the paper — mixed in with Showtime Gaffney and Super Mario Greene and Sweet Lou Dunbar and Curly “Boo” Johnson and Silky Perkins would by Tyler Young with one point to beat the Generals.