#09: Ball ain't life

Weekly Wesdom

Nov 26, 2025

This past spring, basketball betrayed me.

On the last play of an inconsequential pickup game, my knee couldn’t handle the acute stress at the edges of the bowed legs connected to it. I stopped to swipe at a defender, then I was left prone under the basket. No pop, but I was hobbling with a pain that makes you worry instead of scream.

All I wanted was to make some new friends. NYC can feel lonely, because you know how much potential there is to meet people. The court could provide. Four of my best friends today composed a solid starting five back in the 2010s. We wouldn’t run Rucker Park or anything, but we made a solid combination:

The gentle bruiser,

The squirrely ball handler,

The reliable mid-range shooter,

The pure athlete,

and me, the skinny guy who defended tall people by default, because he could jump high enough to grab the rim.

We hogged courts by beating groups of 35-year-old strangers. Weekends were corporate PowerPoints, ball, and dim sum in the Lower East Side.

Our starting five has since dissolved, gone on to stellar careers, started families, and some even discovered life’s secrets to inner peace. To the contrary, attempting to reignite the spark, I once punched a wall at a basketball court because I couldn’t contain my anger after a foul. The metal rod replacing my metacarpal still chirps that some things aren’t that serious.

Ball just ain’t life for me. It’s a thief.

Although solitary, running is my true meditation. Not a place to process my thoughts, but a systemic overload of lactic acid and fresh air to block them all out. Add the right musical metronome and the replenishing targets of other runners in Central Park, and you have the recipe for sustained focus. A cure for digitally induced hypnosis. Just leave the apartment.

Meditation has an on-again-off-again relationship with me, but she always take me back, every time, proving I should have never left.

Being out of shape sucks.

New Year’s to Memorial Day, no race to prepare for, no coach in my ear, just me and the feel of my feet against the pavement, I built a foundation. I came within seconds of cresting that 19:00 5K mark. I flirted with a five-minute mile. Cruising, I could toss miles over my shoulder into my back pocket.

Then the errant step in search of some former basketball glory, driven by a need to prove myself, stole my stride. Two weeks in a cane. A month of assuming it would heel. Three months of therapy. I feared a forced retirement from my identity as a runner, an identity which I didn’t realize gave me so much freedom until I couldn’t do it anymore.

But now, the cold air’s been shredding my lungs again, inducing snot in my esophagus, and pumping endorphins to my brain. Worn out hammies and tight hips keep yelling at me to stop sitting so much. I’m listening. We ain’t perfect, but we feeling free. Catch me outside.

Few things feel as alive as passing people in Central Park.

✨ Shiny Things

📚 Novel: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

A lovely friend gifted it to me for my birthday and I blazed through this hilarious book in a few hours. It’s a philosophical doctrine disguised as a sci-fi novel.

🎧 Song: Appetite by Chris Lorenzo