Lebron scores 61 against Charlotte
Sports Saturday
What a game Lebron James had last Monday, scoring a career-high 61 points on 22-33 shooting (including 8-10 from three-point range) against the Charlotte Bobcats. Unfortunately for Miami, it wore him out for the next two games, and the Heat lost to Houston and San Antonio. Nevertheless, it was spectacular basketball.
Here’s a Kent Cartwright poem about a basketball shot to celebrate the achievement. Note the many times that the poem’s format mirrors basketball moves. And how, in the final stanza, it captures the way that our attention leaves the player and focuses exclusively on a ball hanging on the rim:
Scoring
By Kent Cartright
The pass raps
from behind a back like a mad electron
blasting free,
crackles to his hand, then,
jabs away at the court,
high bounding and hard.
Possessed, pounding,
he fuses in circuit
to the weird ganglions of
bobbling rubber,
stutter-dribbles, hesi-
tates, head fakes,
and breaks,
slicing the stunned circle,
a dazzled filament,
a shard of crystal
splintering clean.
Driving the hoop, he launches,
leaping like energy sizzling
between hot copper points.
Arched for the lay-up,
sculptured in the detonation
of desire, a glazed arm above
into the stillness,
a touch as soft as fur,
he shoots,
sweeping the volt away,
breaching Zeno’s paradox,
crashes to the floor:
forgotten.
Saucy and coy, the ball
jolts a smudgy kiss
on the cold, clear glass,
hangs away on the lip,
moody, weighing the balance,
sighs through the net
like the whisper—
of love.
