My first basketball practice at High Point Community Center in West Seattle made me so nervous I sat on the toilet for thirty five minutes hoping my anxiety would somehow fall out of my bowels.
My aunt took me to practice, and being so uncomfortable with the thought of socializing with new kids, I asked her to wait in the gym with me while I adjusted to the new surroundings – the smell of stale sweat, the nauseating fluorescent lights and the hollow echo of six hundred basketballs making contact with the hardwood.
The baseline, in basketball, is the perimeter around the court that marks the out-of-bounds area, specifically beneath both hoops. Typically, when a coach intends on collecting their team in one location, they’ll call “Baseline!” and every player will flock to the baseline. I did not know this. It’s a scary thing to hear yelled at you with no context by a man whose very presence immediately filled the gym with the smell of cigarettes.
Still wearing the reflective vest and the Timberlands from his construction job, the man introduced himself as Coach Taylor. I quickly realized Baseline! was a command, not an observation. I hustled to the baseline, deeply intimidated by all the other ten year olds who already seemed to be well acquainted. I immediately proved my teammates’ hypothesis that I was incapable of playing basketball. I was short, I was slow. I spent most of my time at home learning how to make pasta from scratch and perfecting my Obama impression – not learning the intricacies of a 2/3 zone defense.
What happened in that practice was what I had imagined the military to be. For an hour straight, myself and my newfound gym buddies were yelled at as we sprinted the length of the court, down and back. Then down and back again, and again, and again. I always finished last. The running was a new sensation for me, as it usually is for a husky child; husky being the phrase I often found on the tags from my jeans, and the name of the Alaskan sled dog I assumed my waist size was named after.
At practice, I was introduced to a common basketball activity called “shirts and skins,” in which one team in a scrimmage gets to play shirtless. The other team gets to keep their dignity. If you’ve ever played shirts and skins, you’ll know every shirtless team has a minimum requirement of one insecure fat kid. I learned very quickly that I had to be confident in my jumpshot and the melting candle that was my stomach region.
When I got home, I never wanted to go again. But it was a commitment I had made, and maybe I was more anxious God would smite me for breaking the sacred covenant of a verbal agreement than what my teammates would think if I bailed. They also already gave me my secondhand Seattle Parks & Recreation jersey.
That season, I only put up two points. I feel bad for any parents whose kneecaps were broken by bookies based on my over/under. The points didn’t matter, though; my team won the city rec center championship. At 10 years old that may as well have been the Larry O’Brien Trophy. I assumed my name would be mentioned in The Seattle Times somewhere, but to this day I haven’t come across it.
Immediately after our end-of-season party, there were a couple decisions to be made. I considered retirement. That was the easiest option. Offer a farewell to the fans and leave the sport entirely with a championship. But on the other hand, I started to really enjoy this thing and care about it. What if I got good at basketball and did it forever? Of course, that obviously meant I would be playing basketball at the highest level against my heroes (Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant), and that sounded way cooler than never doing it at all. And think of how legendary my career was going to be, from playing under Coach K at Duke to getting drafted in the first round by my favorite team, the Golden State Warriors! I was going to sign a huge contract and buy my parents a house. Plus, I would probably be the best (Latino) basketball player in the history of the sport. That was enough to tell me this was going to be a lifelong commitment, something that would change my life. So, I made my decision at that team party: I would take next season off and then maybe start a year or two later, if I felt like it.
Eesaia Filbrun 
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