STEPPIN' RAZOR: PART II
(Silverback’s Note: As we celebrate the brand’s sixth birthday, we’re excited to add these pieces about winning and friendship to the Silverback narrative. For Steppin Razor: Part I click here. Please enjoy reading Steppin’ Razor: Part II)
Cardinal Hayes had mounted a furious comeback and they hit a three to go up one point with twelve seconds left in the fourth quarter of the city championship game.
“TIMEOUT!” Coach Mullen motioned to the referee.
We huddled up around the coach as he looked at the scoreboard and then back down to the white clipboard and immediately began marking Xs to put players in their positions on the board.
“They are going to press us full court, so Chris I want you to inbound the ball,” he began.
“Matt, I want you to set up on the right side and dribble up the floor,” as he drew a squiggly black line on the clipboard.
“Andy, I want you at halfcourt to flash the middle if Matt gets into trouble getting up the court.” he struck a straight line on the clipboard.
“If Matt beats his man off the dribble, Andy, I want you to slip behind your defender toward the basket.” he continued.
Matt and I exchanged a look of confidence and acknowledgment as we wiped the sweat from our faces. We had played for four years together and had known the steely focus that is required in these winning moments.
“Chris, you can run the baseline on the inbound.” The coach reminded us. “Fellas remember, you’ll have Chris trailing the play.” he dotted the clipboard with one last emphatic strike.
“BRING IT IN. TOGETHER, ON THREE!”
“TOGETHER!” we boomed in unison.
Cardinal Hayes came out of the timeout in a full-court press.
We set up in our spots on the floor just as the coach had diagrammed.
I noticed that they had decided to put a defender on Chris, the inbound passer, leaving no defender behind me at halfcourt.
Chris was having a great night shooting the ball and Hayes was looking to send two defenders to trap our guards in the corners.
The referee tooted his whistle and handed the ball to Chris. The audience was on their feet and uncertainty was in the atmosphere. It was one team’s time to win.
Matt broke free from his defender and Chris threw him a sharp pass into the frontcourt.
Matt faked a pass back to Chris which caused their eager defender to cheat in Chris’ direction.
Nine seconds left.
Noticing a small opening between the two defenders' trap, Matt crossed over from left to right and began dribbling up the right side near the sideline toward halfcourt.
As the play unfurled, the player that was guarding me shifted his weight away from me and took a few steps toward our guards as they stormed up the court.
I had slipped away from my defender and I was all alone in the backcourt.
Five seconds left.
Matt dribbled past halfcourt with his head up and had his eyes locked in on the rim as I filled the running lane on the left side drifting from the center circle.
He continued dribbling toward the three-point arc.
Four seconds left.
Matt elevated to pull up for the winning three-point jump shot with two defenders trailing him and I prepared myself to rebound.
Three seconds left.
Time seemed to slow down and the revolutions of the orange basketball were spinning in the air after the ball was released from Matt’s flickered hand.
Two seconds left.
At the last second, I realized that Matt had not shot the basketball but it was a lob pass instead, I leaped upward to meet the ball’s flight path.
One second left.
I was so focused on catching the pass midair that I could see the black rubber lines between the orange dimples rotating on the leather as the ball neared the rim.
Half-second left.
My hands met the ball midair and gently tipped the ball off the backboard flush into the white square box on the backboard as the final regulation buzzer sounded.
Pandemonium. The crowd, the team, and our coaching staff joyously spilled onto the gymnasium floor as the referee signaled that the field goal was good.
We were New York City basketball champions.
“Look at this big muthafucka’ and that shiny s-curl in his hair,” Barry clowned me at the lunchroom table.
“But he’s a winner and a city champion with that fuckin’ s-curl today, ladies and germs!” We all shared a hearty laugh as we ate lunch the following week in school.
We had brought the circular championship trophy to the cafeteria and perched it atop the table and draped it in the winning net.
“2003 C.H.S.A.A. CITY CHAMPIONS” read the golden plaque.
The seniors on the team had grown from young boys to young men and had become unified throughout the process but more importantly, fortified bonds of friendship and trust.
Our crew developed lasting memories and learned valuable life lessons in the effort that it takes a community to succeed at something when a group is committed to giving their all.
We learned that personal responsibility and care solidify the bonds of brotherhood through constant communication, both verbal and unspoken.
We understood what it entailed to trust in one another to win when we buy into shared knowledge to find a collective syncopated rhythm.
We discovered that the champion's blueprint is etched in supreme love — that is expressed through discovering joy in the joy of others and finding success in the success of others.
Jazz.
Having also won a championship with Matt and Barry during our sophomore year, we were the starting core for two city championship teams as graduating seniors. A first in the school's history.
Life was good as a seventeen-year-old college-bound teenager until two white classmates made racially charged comments to us in the cafeteria.
“Look at these niggers acting like bigshots because they won a stupid game,” Student Whiteness remarked toward our table.
“What the fuck did you just say to us, white boy?” Barry charged back. “We’ll see your bitch-ass after school if that’s how you feel.”
“WHADDA YEWS NIGGERS GONNA DO, AH?!” a few of the men yapped at our teammates and me.
What had begun as a verbal altercation between two teenagers in the cafeteria, had spilled over to a gang of ten young-adult white men who showed up to our school armed with bats prepared for a violent encounter.
The angry white mob encircled our team on the corner of the busy Brooklyn street when two more cars pulled up.
“YEAH, WHADDA YEW GUINEAS GONNA DO ABOUTIT?!” a few more chirped as their circle encased us more closely.
We were teenagers in a standoff with Goombah Whiteness and the hate-fueled language was increasing by the moment.
Tyrell had heard enough racial slurs and without saying a word, shattered a Snapple bottle on the goon’s head who was rattling a metal bat against the asphalt.
The clear jagged bottle was bloody and Tyrell was wildly swinging his arms to dissuade the stunned muggers from approaching any closer.
Gouts of blood flowed from the racist’s skin-shaven head as he dropped the bat to clutch his cranium.
Tyrell smeared the blood that was dripping from his hand onto his white unbuttoned shirt and then threw a sharp overhand punch that connected with one of the two men converging toward him.
A melee ensued as Barry put one of them in a one-armed headlock and was beating in his face with underhand right-hand punches, cutting his left eye.
Just as Tyrell was about to be toppled by our attackers, I saw a white fist coming toward my jawline from the corner of my eye drilling me in the face with a sucker punch.
I morphed into the silverback and shook my head from side to side to my assaulters' disbelief. He had hit me with everything that he had and I was still standing. His pupils widened as he saw the fury in my eyes.
Admittedly, I was no brawler then but a primal rage awoke inside of me. Getting hit in the face sucked but I was like a steppin’ razor and a rumble of rolling thunder.
After a few messy swings, I connected with a powerful right-hand punch to his chin that knocked him out unconscious as he dropped to the pavement.
Momentarily impressed by my own strength, I turned around and Tyrell was staggered and bleary, trying to regain his bearings, as another hoodlum was winding up to strike him with a punch.
Catching the man before he struck Tyrell, I tackled him into the side doors of a parked car, and the glass windows shattered from the force.
Passersby began to howl and shriek as the ruffians pounded into the back of my head and backside.
Pushing the man I rammed off me to create separation between us, I began to pepper him with blows until he doubled over in agony clutching his tenderized flesh.
More teammates jumped into the fight. Chris wrestled one of the assailants to the ground and the two men were rolling around in the sharded fragments of broken glass on the cement.
The adult man was straddled on top of Chris and was banging his teenage head against the concrete.
Chris was struggling to avoid the aggressive blows.
“FUCK OFF HIM!” Barry yelled as he drop-kicked the man off of Chris.
Chris scrambled to his feet from the ground position and Barry stomped on the man’s chest, leaving faint boot prints on his sleeveless a-shirt.
Chris joined Barry and together they were exchanging kicks to both sides of the gangster’s rib cage.
It was chaos and disorder when police sirens wailed and the school administration arrived running onto the scene.
The troublemakers that remained, unsteadily rose to their feet and stumbled then scattered in various directions back to their vehicles.
In the end, it was our squadron left standing in our bloody and disheveled Catholic school uniforms.
We put our arms up.
“ONE, TWO, THREE!” I roared.
“TOGETHER!” we exasperatedly muttered in unison.
Despite the euphoria of winning a city championship, we were transformed into survivors of an armed insurgency and involuntarily enlisted in the centuries-long brawl against white supremacy.