Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

The next night he started, and scored 43 points, in a game we won easily. He was a starter after that. McFront was benched, which broke the heart of his fan club, but the sports pages agreed that Elwood belonged on the floor, and most of them thought we were the team to beat. We should have been.

The trouble started one night when we were beating — no, make that thrashing — the Disney Heat, 65 to 44 at the start of the third quarter. I was in, actually. I guess Gorman had been working overtime with the programming guys, and he hauled out a slamdunk move all of a sudden, one where he floated up over three of the Disney players, switched the ball from his right to his left hand, and flipped it in as he fell away. It was a nice move — make that an astonishing move — but it wasn’t strictly necessary, given the situation.

No big deal. But a minute later he did it again. Actually this time he soared under the basket and dropped it in backwards. As we jogged back on defense I heard Elwood muttering to himself. The Disney player tossed up a brick and I came up with the rebound, and when I looked upcourt there was Gorman again, all alone, signaling for the pass.

I ignored him — we were up more than twenty points — and fed it in slow to Otis. Otis dribbled up a few feet, let the Disney defender catch up with Gorman, and we put a different play together.

Next time the ball got into Gornan’s hands he broke loose with it, and went up to dunk. The crowd there in Miami, having nothing better to do, started cheering for us to pass it to him. Elwood’s mood darkened. He began trying to run the team in Otis’s place, trying to set up plays that locked Gorman out of the action. I could feel the resistance — like being part of a machine where the gears suddenly start grinding.

Coach Van pulled me out of the game. From the bench I had a clearer sense of how much Gorman was milking this crowd, and of how much they were begging to be milked. He was giving them Michael Jordan, the legend they’d never seen themselves, the instant replay man, the one who stood out even in a field of stars. And the awful thing about Gornan’s theatrics was that they worked, as basketball. We were up almost thirty points now. He’d reduced the Disney team to spectators.

A minute later Elwood joined me on the bench, and McFront went in. Elwood put a towel over his head and then lowered his head almost below his big knees. The bench got real quiet, which meant the noise from the crowd stood out even better.

Elwood toweled off his head and stood up suddenly, like he was putting himself back in. He turned and looked at me and over at Coach Van. Then he spat, just over the line and onto the court, and turned and walked towards the locker room.

Coach Van jerked his thumb at me, meaning I should go play therapist. Needless to say my contribution wasn’t sorely needed on the court. Sometimes I wondered if they kept me around because I knew how to talk to Elwood.

I found him dressing in his street clothes, without having showered. When he looked up at me I almost turned and ran back to the bench. I held up my hands, pleading not guilty. But of course the skin on those hands was white.

“You see that shit out there,” he said. It was a command that I nod, not a question. “That’s poor taste, man.”

“Poor taste?”

“That dunk is from the third game of the ’91 finals, Lassner. That’s sacrilege, hauling it out for no reason, against these Disney chumps.”

“You recognize the dunk?”

“’Course I recognize the dunk. You never watch any Jordan tapes, man? That dunk is a prayer. He can’t just—”

“Whoa, Elwood. Hold on a minute. You’re sampling, I’m sampling. This isn’t some purist thing here, man. Get some perspective.”

“Michael Jordan, Lassner. You ever see the tape of Michael crying after winning in ’91?”

“At least he’s on our team. Jeez, what would happen if you had to play against the almighty Jordan, or somebody with his skills — you’d probably fold up completely!”

“It’s not just the dunks, Lassner. He won’t play defense. He’s always up the court cherry-picking, waiting for the easy pass. Michael was a great defensive player!”

“C’mon, Elwood. This is a showtime league and you know it. You’re one of about five guys playing serious defense. Everybody goes for the fancy moves. That’s what the sampling is all about. He’s just better than most, because he’s got the hot skills package. Somebody had to get the Jordan skills.”

“It didn’t have to be some little white jerk.”

Once it was out it was kind of a relief. Black and white was the issue. Of course. As much as that was supposed to be a thing of the past. I’d known all along, but in some stupid way I guess I’d thought not saying anything might make it better.

“I’m a white guy with a black guy’s skills,” I pointed out.

He waved it aside. “Not important. It’s not Jordan. You play white, anyway.”

What was it about basketball that made it all seem so stark? As though it were designed as a metaphor — the white style of play so plodding and corporate and reliable, the black style so individual and expressive and so often self-destructive, so me-against-the-world. When a black guy couldn’t jump they said he had “white legs,” or if he was slow it was “white man’s disease.” Basketball was a white sport that blacks had taken over and yet the audience was still pretty much white. And that white audience adored the black players for their brilliant moves — thanks to sampling, that adoration would probably kill the sport — and yet was still thought to require the token white face, for purposes of “identification.”

Solve basketball, I sometimes thought, and you’d solve everything.

“Okay,” I said. “He’s a jerk. But white shouldn’t matter. Jordan wasn’t a black separatist, as I remember. I mean, call me naive, but scrambling the racial stuff up was supposed to be one of the few good things about this sampling deal, right?”

“Michael’s career meant something,” Elwood mumbled. “Should be treated with respect.”

“Look who turns out to be Mr. Historical,” I said. “You have to get hip, Elwood. Basketball is postmodern now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means Michael’s career might have meant something, but yours doesn’t, and neither does Vanilla Dunk’s — so relax.”

Once Gornan started hauling out the realtime poster shots the media wouldn’t let it go. He was all over the sports channels, dunking in slow-mo, grinning and pumping his fists. He made the cover of Rolling Stone , diamond earring flashing, spinning a basketball with one hand, groping a babe with the other. Then his agent started connecting with the endorsement people, and you couldn’t turn on the tube without seeing Vanilla Dunk downing vitaburgers at McDonald’s, Vanilla Dunk slurping on a Pepsi or a Fazz, Vanilla Dunk checking out the synthetic upholstery inside a new Chrysler SunFrame.

With Gorman playing the exuberant Michael Jordan game and Elwood playing angry we kept on winning. In fact we opened up a sizeable lead over the Celtics in the division, and it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Being too far ahead was almost as bad as floundering in the basement of the division. Without the tension of a tight race to bind us together as a team all the egos came rushing to the forefront. Otis was struggling with accepting his fading powers and diminished role, and we all missed the way his easy confidence had been at the heart of the team. McFront was sulking on the bench. Pharaoh was playing hard, trying to make the new team work, trying to show by force that Gornan fit in. Meanwhile Gorman’s theatrics got more and more outrageous, and every slam dunk was another blow to the dam holding back Elwood’s rage.