Out Soon! Confessions of an Aspiring Basketball Player (part 2)

What could possibly go wrong?

What could go wrong was of course pretty much everything.  Balance isn’t helped by running after a stray ball and back to the charity stripe to shoot again without stopping. I say ‘running’; I mean hobbling.

The eye on the target is all very well if you understand which target it is you’re meant to have your eyes on.  The board?  The back of the hoop? The front of the hoop? The little logo halfway up the board? I was grateful just to be able to see the hoop, never mind its intricacies of back, front and logo.

Placing your elbows at right angles is all very well if you don’t expect to hold the ball in a particularly meaningful way. Follow through leads to a constant arc of optimism turning to disappointment as the ball repeats its trajectory of bounce bounce pause thwack bounce bounce missed again dammit.

After 10 minutes Yvette is clearly worried about whether she has an evening to look forward to.  I have managed somehow to throw four balls into the hoop over this time and managed at least ten times more ‘ah, nearly’ moments. 

It looks like we might both have to stay about another hour or two if I’m to achieve the deceptively bland target of 26 hoops before retiring gracefully with a gin and tonic to assess how long it took me to do it.

After 20 minutes the success rate isn’t much better.  A further 4 hoops and a slightly lower proportion of “ah, nearly”moments.  A much higher ratio of “WTF is going on?” moments although I couldn’t possibly have uttered such profanity in Yvette’s company. 

It’s at this point that I decide to follow all the best professional sporting advice and to decide to change the rules of the game.  Instead of timing how long it will take to throw 26 balls into the hoop, I’ll see how many I can throw in 26 minutes.  That way, we can see an end in sight and can thankfully retire to the comfort of a gin and tonic knowing that we shall live to confront another day of BEEF.

The following six minutes yielded no more moments of success other than a relief that we could both get back to having a life that evening: me in my room and Yvette on corridor duty.

(Extract from our forthcoming publication, Confessions of an Aspiring Basketball Player)