Blake Griffin of the Clippers
Sports Saturday
How many kids on asphalt basketball courts dream of playing in the NBA playoffs, which begin tonight? Here’s a Carl Lindner poem describing an adolescent hoops player and his first love. He imagines the ball sharing his hunger, and there’s something sexual about the transcendental moment when the ball clears the lip of the rim and falls through:
First Love
By Carl Lindner
Before sixteen
I was fast
enough to fake
my shadow out
and I could read
every crack and ripple
in that catch of asphalt.
I owned
the slanted rim
knew
the dead spot on the backboard.
Always the ball
came back.
Every day I loved
to sharpen
my shooting eye,
waiting
for the touch.
Set shot, jump shot,
layup, hook—
after a while
I could feel
the ball hunger-
ing to clear
the lip of the rim,
the two of us
falling through.
