Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Blog Part 1. - Stealing a Ideas from the A.V. Club

I love The Onion A.V. Club (link here)! It's the best place to go to steal ideas for your personal 'blog.

I too will present a live, chapter-by-chapter progress report as I attempt to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, non-stop, starting as soon as I pick up my pre-ordered copy from Chapters.

I will try not to spoil any major revelations, and chances are that my posts will be fraught with spelling mistakes, especially the 3:00 AM blog.

Here are my predictions (based on no prior knowledge or leaked info) for the final installment of the Harry Potter series:

1) Harry's gonna croak. It will be heroic, but he'll be dead just the same.

2) Voldemort's gonna croak too.

3) Snape is not really on Voldemort's side, and will in some part assist in the Dark Lord's downfall, but in the eyes of the wizarding world, he will be forever considered a traitor.

4) Ginny's gonna get kidnapped.

5) Ron and Hermione will live and marry, and raise a bunch of kids (not so much a prediction as a feverant hope).

6) The last chapter will be titled "The Boy Who Died" or something of that nature.

7) Neville still has a major part to play in the tale, and will die in an attempt to destroy Voldemort.

8) Harry's scar is a horcrux.

9) Ron will punch Malfoy in the face! (again, a feverant hope)

10) Remus Lupin is gonna die too.

See you again after midnight.

Sia

The clearest memory I have of my sister, Sia, is that time when she dumped a plate of food on my head for no reason.

I remember I must have been about eleven, which would make her 13 at the time. I remember the meal. It was ackee and saltfish and rice. When my mom makes ackee and saltfish, she sautee's it with bits of tomato, onion and pepper, and I clearly remember each one of these bits dripping off my ears onto my shoulders while my sister smiled. I clearly remember that smile too. It wasn't as much evil, as it was... interested, curious and maybe a touch satisfied. It's the same look I imagine a first time bungee-jumper has after his or her first leap from the precipice.

If you can infer a line of thinking from a smile, it seems to me the first-time bungee jumper is thinking: Wow! I've crossed a major boundary. And you know what? That wasn't so bad. If possible I could do that again, and again.... and again...

I remember the feeling I had at the time too, which is a perfect summary of what it's like to live with my sister. I was embarrassed but I was also angry, not so much because of what Sia did, but because from that moment on I knew that with my sister, anything was possible. There were no more limits, no zone of safety where you could say to yourself: "If I act in this manner, its pretty much guaranteed that I won't get a plate of foot tossed onto my head." Thus I was rendered helpless because I could not retaliate, for fear of even more strange, painful and unguessable consequences.

For me and my younger brother, living with Sia was living with Mary Poppins crossed with a pit bull. As the oldest sibling, she was loving, protective and stern which was alright, but you never ever knew when she was going to turn around and bite you on your ass.

* * *

I get the impression that Sia might often have been dissapointed with being saddled with two brother's like myself and N'gai. For the most part we were totally unremarkable. Our only interests were food, comic books, and spending vast amounts of time away from our sister. Sia always was trying to make us more interesting that we really were, just so she could brag about it to her friends. Invariably, it backfired.

I remember once, around the same time Thriller came out, so I might have been 8 or 9, Sia bragged to all her friends that N'gai and I could do the moonwalk. Since the Thriller album was not released in comic book format, we really didn't know what a moonwalk was. But since Sia had such apparent faith in us, especially in front of an audience of all her friends, we decided to give it a game try. N'gai and I ended up performing what I thought was a fairly faithful adaption of a moon walk, a la Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's low-gravity, un-rhythmic duck-walk across the surface of earth's natural satellite. Neither Sia or her friends were impressed. Sia, N'gai and I were embarrassed, but only Sia was aware of it at the time, because we were still engrossed with jumping around like ant-bitten asses. I'm sure that was the first of many incidents leading to the "dumping-food-on-my-head" incident...

* * *

When Sia's first child was born (let's call him "Jay"), he was really... really... pre-mature. He was very small (I could have cradled him in one palm), and very, very red. It was a painful and difficult birth, and when I visited Sia, she looked very tired, but she was happy to see me. By this time, I could sense that she was tired of awkward, stilting conversations with people trying to either prepare her for, or keep her away from bad news. So we talked very plainly, she and I, and we laughed a lot. My siblings and I share a very dark sense of humor, and tend to prefer laughing, rather than crying in the face of tough life situations. She cracked me up with the story of how Jay would often get so pissed off at the constant ministrations of the nurses that he would often pull out his own oxygen tube, as if to say: "For god's sake, ladies! Leave me the hell alone for five minutes!" It was then I knew that Jay was going to be more or less okay. He was a survivor. Not only did he have the intestinal fortitude and physical strength to pull out his own oxygen tube, he had Sia's sense of spite, and with that, how could you not be a survivor?

* * *

Sia has two kids now. Jay is about six years old, and a girl whom we shall call "Kay" is three. Kay looks a lot like Sia, right down to the "don't-mess-with-me" glint in her eyes. I enjoy calling their house phone, because with two energetic kids, Sia doesn't greet you with a mere "hello" like normal people. Often she'll pick up the phone in mid-rant, so before she even speaks into the receiver you'll hear her yelling at the top of her lungs something like:

"I told you to stop jumping off the television set! Aaaarghhh, you kids are going to drive me crazy!"

Then she'll speak into the phone with an "Hello? Who's this?", and the tone of her voice is so tired, angry, exasperated and pleading for respite that I begin to smile a very evil smile. You see, the very night she dumped that plate of food on my head, I prayed to God and asked him to give her children exactly like herself.

And you see folks: prayer works!

A BASKETBALL STORY PT. IV

This section is dedicated to Teresa, who somehow still finds enthusiasm for my crappy stories...

My visit with Coach Roberts set the pattern that would help me flesh out the mystery of Jimmy Waters. Coach gave me a note with a single name written on it, “Ms. Bereta Ebanks”. Ms. Ebanks, (known in the neighborhood as “Miss Bea”) was a close friend of Jimmy’s grandfather, Cornett Waters. Miss Bea was the lady who helped raised Jimmy, and at 82 years old she was still sharp as a tack. My interview with her shed light on Jimmy’s early years.

At the end of her interview, Miss Bea gave me another note with the world “Six” written on it. “Six” turned out to be Tyrell Atkinson, one of Jimmy’s former teammates, who’s nickname came from the number he wore on his PSH basketball team jersey. Six, who currently works security at Madison Square Gardens, told me about Jimmy’s time in high school, who his friends were and how he managed himself during that time.

At the end of his interview, Six sent me to visit Officer Frank Walsh, a corrections officer who knew Jimmy from his stay at the Wilkinson Boy Reformatory. Each interviewer would lead me to another person in the neighborhood who had a story to tell about Jimmy Waters, and then another person, and another one again after that. In the end, I was following Tek-9’s advice. I walked the streets. My notes from those interviews are assembled in the brief history written below:

December 21, 1973
Jimmy Waters was born. He was the son of Trenton Waters and Wanetta Miles, was born. Trenton had abandoned Wanetta soon after she became pregnant. Jimmy’s paternal grandfather, Cornett assumed responsibility for Wanetta, a Jamaican immigrant who had no family of her own. Wanetta died during childbirth, and Cornet became Jimmy’s sole guardian, fully accepting his role as a single parent.

Of this, Miss Bea said: “Cornett’s son was no good from the start. That boy lived to get in trouble and when he got that poor, pretty girl pregnant it was a scandal. Still, it’s funny how when she was alive, she had to bear so much shame in the neighborhood. Everybody bad-talked her. But when she died, the way people talked about her after, you would think she was the Virgin Mary herself. Cornet stood by her though. He knew his boy was incapable of being a good father or a husband, so he stood up for that girl something fierce. And when she passed on, he stood up for her little boy.”

October 1980
Six-year old Jimmy Waters displays above average cognitive abilities, particularly in spatial conception and problem solving. This comes as a surprise to everyone except his grandfather. Cornet, an electrician for the New York City Department of Education for Region 6 (Brooklyn), was a well known neighborhood fixture. He was well respected for his common sense, discipline and problem solving skills, which he claimed stemmed from a life-long love of games of all types. Cornet begins to invest his grandson with a similar passion for games, starting with checkers, backgammon, card-games and eventually introducing Jimmy to the basic concepts behind chess, Go and Scrabble.

To this, Miss Bea said: “Jimmy and his grandfather would go at it all night. They would be sitting across from each other over a checker board or some such. They would study that board, as the clock ticked away, each one waiting for the other to make a mistake. It was odd to see a boy so young sit so still for so long. But it’s not like Jimmy knew no other way. Cornet would not allow a TV in his house. He didn’t want the boy distracted by a whole bunch of foolishness. And Jimmy, he just adored his grandfather. They spoke the same language.”

September 1986
Jimmy is streamlined into the gifted program at Paul Robeson Junior High. Teachers and faculty are impressed by his academic grades, and his quiet nature, but show concern for difficulty with social skills. He is encouraged to participate in extra-curricular team sports. Jimmy soon gravitates to basketball. Around this time, Jimmy meets Sam Rodriguez and Tyrell “Six” Atkinson who will prove to be his lifelong friends.

Sam Rodriguez was a troubled kid who lived in the neighborhood, coming from a notoriously bad family. Sam’s mother and father lived in Puerto Rico and tried to send money to their kids when possible. Big brother Hector was supporting his four younger siblings by selling drugs.

Six says: “Man, that Hector was bad news. He kept the house like a pig sty, and it was full of all his juvie friends who spent all day getting high. Sam was always running away from home. One day Old Mr. Waters and Jimmy invited Sam to stay over whenever things got too bad at the Rodriquez house. That’s how Jimmy and Sam became friends.”

Six continues: “Jimmy was a quiet guy, so everybody though he was some sort of mark. But let me tell you, Jimmy was one tough kid, and you didn’t want to get him mad. He was completely loyal to his team, but he was especially protective over Sam, who was this younger, dirty, skinny, stork-of-a-kid with a hell of a foul mouth. One day Hector was chasing Sam down the street with a stick-ball bat, ready to brain the kid over something. Everybody got out of Hector’s way right quick, except for Jimmy. Jimmy, who was maybe sixteen or seventeen at the time, stood up to Hector, who was at least thirty pounds heavier and a full head taller. Hector makes like he was gonna to swipe at Jimmy with the bat and Jimmy just hit him in the throat and kick him in the nuts. Hector drops like a sack of potatoes.”

Six laughs: “That was Jimmy, man. Never pick a fight with a gifted kid who spends all day studying your weaknesses.”

1987 to 1989
Jimmy starts gaining notoriety for his gamesmanship in basket ball. His unique philosophy on the game comes from his early days playing board games with his grandfather. Early on, Cornet taught Jimmy the value of losing.

According to Six “When we were training Jimmy would tell us how his grandfather told him that most people use losing as an excuse to quit, and by quitting they became losers. Jimmy taught us that when somebody is winning, it’s an opportunity to learn. His theory was if you keep playing with somebody better than you, eventually you will discover their strategy, you will discover how they win. And if you’re smart, you’ll learn how to defeat their strategy and beat them. Just keep them in the game. Keep them playing, and it’s only a matter of time before you discover how to win.”

That philosophy leads PSH to its legendary 1990-1991 winning season.

August 17, 1991
Tragedy strikes the Waters family yet again. Jimmy, who was preparing to go away to SUNY on a ball scholarship discovers that Sam has run away from home yet again. After checking all their old haunts, Jimmy is unable to find his best friend. Frustrated, he confronts Hector at the Rodriquez house. Unfortunately, the house is raided by the NYPD at the same time. Three people are arrested, including Jimmy, who is confused for one of Hector’s dealers. Hector dies in the raid after being shot twenty seven times, reaching for a stolen Walther P99. Jimmy was arrested and charged with possession and intent to distribute.

Six: “It was a bullshit charge! Jimmy never touched a drug in his life, but it broke Old Mr. Waters’ heart anyways. They tried to have Jimmy released right away but the DA was going crazy, talking about charging everybody as adults [Jimmy was 17 at the time]. In the end they dropped the charges based on Jimmy’s spotless record and the testimony of the other arrestees. But it took six months to process Jimmy’s file. By that time, SUNY dropped the scholarship, no other school would touch him, and the Mr. Waters went broke over lawyer fees. It didn’t matter anyways because after those six months in the lock-up somebody fucked Jimmy up so bad that he couldn’t play basketball ever again.”

To be continued…

Go is a board game for two players that originated in ancient China before 500 BC. It is now popular throughout the world, especially in East Asia.

Go is played by alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19×19 rectilinear grid. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it is tightly surrounded by stones of the opposing color. The objective is to control a larger territory than the opponent by placing one's stones so they cannot be captured. The game ends and the score is counted when both players consecutively pass on a turn, indicating that neither side can increase its territory or reduce its opponent's; the game can also end by resignation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)]

A BASKETBALL STORY PT. III

When we last left acclaimed freelance writer Kalil Honsou, he had finally found a link to famed basketball player Jimmy Waters, whom Michael Jordan, himself, believes is the “Greatest Player of All Time”.

This segment is dedicated to Nick Lucas. Keep your head up, Brother! AKW

I am at Peter Stuyvesant High School (PSHS), sitting in the office of Coach Elijah Roberts, watching a video tape of a game between the PSHS Senior Boys Basketball Team and St. Mary’s Senior Boys Team, from Fort Greene. The tape is from the 1990-1991 season. A banner year for the PSHS team apparently. The infamous Jimmy Waters plays center position for PSHS. I should be elated, because I finally get sight of a mystery that has been plaguing me for the better part of a year. But I’m not elated. I am bored.

When I’m bored, I tend to jiggle my right leg constantly, a habit that has been an annoyance to my family and friends for years. Once in college, at the end of a disastrous one night stand, the girl I was with kicked me out of the bed because my thrumming right leg prevented her from getting any sleep. On this day, I have a pocket full of subway change in my right pocket. I have somehow drowned out the constant chiming coming from my right hip, but it’s loud enough for Coach Roberts to pause the video tape and comment:

“What is the matter with you?”

Exasperated, I reply: “What’s the matter? I’m watching the so-called ‘greatest basket ball player of all time’ and he keeps losing, that’s what!”

Coach relaxes and says: “Oh that. Relax. Enjoy the video. You’re missing the best part.”

Reluctantly, I acquiesce to his suggestion, musing on the fact that I have met the only coach in the world that referred to losing a game as the “best part”.

Elijah Roberts is sixty-three years old, two short years from retirement. His office is a mess; there is no other word for it. Sort of like Joe Franklin’s office. Almost forty years of accumulated notes, files, charts, graphs and play books, are piled up all around the office, in a filing system only the coach could ever decipher.

He started his career at PSHS in 1968, then assistant coach. He was one of the first ten Black teachers hired after the race riots ripped through New York in the mid to late 1960’s. He has survived much throughout the years, striving to shelter his students from heroin during the 70’s, followed by cocaine and crack in the 80’s, finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel during 90’s as Bed Stuy slowly revived itself. He spent his career either coaching basketball or teaching urban social studies during the off season. He and his dedicated colleagues turned PSHS into the best school in Brooklyn. He is a survivor, a rock, and the embodiment of the PSHS school spirit.

Upon our first meeting, he asked me to call him “Coach Roberts” or just plain “Coach”. He considers that term an honorific, much like how high ranking martial artists revere the term “Sifu”. In Elijah Roberts’s eyes, there is no more honorable profession that turning untrained, uncoordinated young children into a cohesive and unified sports team.

So here we are sitting in his calamitous office, him the Coach, and me somehow regressing from ace freelance writer to one of his fidgety students. I watch as a St. Mary’s player, “Number 5” approaches Jimmy in center court. Number 5 executes a deft feint to the right, shooting a quick crossover dribble underneath Jimmy’s hands, and then driving across the court for an easy lay-up. I’ve seen him do this move about for times already, each time Jimmy falls for the fake.

Except this time.

This time Number 5 is half way to the basket before he realizes that Jimmy has deftly stolen the ball, and executed his own beautiful lay up for two points. I watch, startled and amazed, because Jimmy has stolen the ball with a slight of hand worthy of the canniest street magician.

The ball is back into play. Again Number 5 and Jimmy face off. Number 5 fakes left and then right in quick succession. It’s a well practiced double feint that allows Number 5 to blow past Jimmy, dribbling up to the PSHS basket.

Except there’s no ball in his hands.

Jimmy has again stolen the ball for a lay up. After 20 minutes of losing, PSHS is somehow gaining momentum, within four points of the lead. The St. Mary’s coach changes strategy. Players are replaced and a new person faces off against Jimmy. This new player blows by Jimmy twice and St. Mary’s pulls ahead eight points. Then suddenly they are stopped dead cold. Jimmy is back, stealing balls, grabbing rebounds, shooting from all positions in the key. Every shot is nothing but net. PSHS is ahead by ten points. The PSHS home crowd goes wild.

Needless to say, I have stopped fidgeting.

Rapt, I watch the game to its completion in silence. There is a pattern, here, quickly discerned. St. Mary’s changes tactics against PSHS. They collect a trickle of points, and then are shut down stone cold as Jimmy adapts to the new play. And when St. Mary’s starts to double team Jimmy, he throws a no-look pass off to the side, a seemingly wild pass, off to nowhere, almost a desperation move. Out of nowhere PSHS teammate rushes in to pick up the pass and scores. The first few times this happens, you think Jimmy is just plain lucky, a few more times you begin to think he’s psychic. The boy is good, and he’s a generous player. By the end of the game, each team member has averaged at least 25 points. The game ends with PSHS up 108 to 67. The tape ends.

I turn to Coach Roberts, somewhat confused.

“I don’t get it.” I say, more to myself that to Coach.

“What don’t you get?” he asks. There is a knowing, crafty half-smile that brightens up his seamed face.

“I can’t reconcile Jimmy at the beginning of the game, and Jimmy at the end of the game. Was he just ‘playing around’ with St. Mary’s? Y’know, for kicks?”

Coach leaned back into his chair. “I didn’t get it at first either. But to understand it you have to understand Jimmy. Jimmy used to tell me that losing was the best part of the game, and for a coach like me, that took a while to understand.”

“What’s so great about losing?” I asked.

“It’s something Jimmy taught me, and it has stayed with me for the rest of my career. Jimmy was one of those students that come along maybe once, maybe twice in a lifetime. He’s a student that teaches you more that you teach him. Jimmy was never afraid of losing, because he felt that where he learned his best lessons.”

Coach reached behind him and grabbed a framed picture off his bookshelf. It depicted the PSHS Basketball team holding the 1990-1991 City Championship Trophy. I watched silently as his eyes shined gold, and then get that shaking wet look of nostalgia. No tears fell though.

Coach continued: “Jimmy taught us how much you can learn by giving up the first few minutes of the game to the opposing team. He would watch the opposing player and memorize which foot he lead with in a tip off, which side he turned to when he accepted a pass, which hand was favored on a lay up or dunk, which way his head tilted on a free throw, which eye blinked first in a foul. Jimmy would collect that information and file it away in that remarkable brain of his, and without fail, would use it to bury the opposing team under points.”

The Coach mused some more: “He was a good kid, that Jimmy. Straight A’s and the best captain our basketball team ever had. A natural leader, and humble as hell for a high school basketball star. Everybody loved him but Jimmy only had a just few good friends where were his teammates, and only one best friend, Sammy who never played. When he wasn’t hanging out with Sam, he was practicing his game on the park court. The team followed his example at every opportunity. On Saturday nights when most kids were just hanging out on some corner, Jimmy and the team were in the park practicing pick-and-rolls or jump shots until dark. He his ambition was to go to college to play ball and get his teaching degree. He said he wanted to be a coach just like me.”

After a respectful silence, I said: “You taught him all that.” More a statement that a question.

Coach laughed, but without much humor. “Heck no!”

“Then how did he get so disciplined.”

Coach leaned forward and grabbed a pen from a cracked coffee much perched at the corner of his desk. He scribbled a few words on a “Post-It” note.

“Here,” he said, passing me a note. “Go to this address. This person will tell you all you need to know about Jimmy Waters.” Coach picked up the picture, looked at it for a moment and turned his back on me to place the picture back on his bookshelf.

Somehow, I sensed I was dismissed. But I asked one more question.

“What happened to Jimmy, Coach? Did he make it to college?”

“No Mr. Honsou,” Coach Roberts said. “Jimmy ended up where ten percent of African-American males aged 18-29, end up.”

He paused. Sighed.

“Jimmy went to jail.”

The coach said no more.

Moon Over Harlem (William H. Johnson, 1944)

This artist’s depiction of a riot in Harlem tells much about the racial tensions that sometimes erupted in New York over the years. In 1964, a race riot broke out in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem after a white NYPD officer, Thomas Gilligan, was accused of police brutality, and rioting soon spread into Bedford Stuyvesant. This riot resulted in the destruction and looting of many neighborhood businesses, many of which were Jewish-owned. Race riots also followed in 1967 and 1968, as part of the political and racial tensions in the United States of the era, aggravated by continued unemployment, dissatisfaction with civil rights policies, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

A BASKETBALL STORY - PART 2

The story so far…
Acclaimed freelance writer Kalil Honsou begins his year long search for Jimmy Waters, a basketball player whom Michael Jordan, himself, believes is the “Greatest of All Time”.

* * *

At first my investigations were sporadic. Whenever I wasn’t running around either chasing a story, or chasing a buyer for my story, or surfing the net, or watching TV, or hanging out, or playing with my bellybutton lint, I was searching out the name “Jimmy Waters” amongst player archives and comparing them to Jordan’s. I looked for players who scored more points in one game, players with better offensive or defensive rebounds, players with better field goals made in one game.

I searched records from high school players in Bed Stuy, and found no “Jimmy Waters”.

I widened my search to high school players in the other boroughs. No luck.

And even though Mike told me “Jimmy Waters” never made it to college, I searched the records anyway. To no avail.

I spent about for or so months, on and off, pouring through old, dusty archives, and poorly copied mimeographs, risking black lung and myopia searching for a ghost. I then realized that Michael was pulling my leg after all, and my interest in Jimmy Waters started to wane.

A few weeks later, I was chatting with another freelance writer friend of mine named Tek-9, at a vegetarian restaurant in the Harlem. Tek-9 wrote a lot of copy for The Source magazine and he’s somewhat of a legend.

(Rumor has it that one day Suge Knight cornered Tek out in the back alley of some record release party in Manhattan, for one of those shitty acts Death Row was promoting after Dr. Dre left the label. This was just after Suge was released from jail [again], and even though it was a long while after Pac and Biggie got hit, he was still riding high on the image of fear he was generating on the streets of both coasts. Suge was famous for his intimidation tactics [like dangling Vanilla Ice out a penthouse window in Miami to get him to sign over his royalties], and all of us writers were, well… frankly, we were running scared. I know a lot of writers who talked shit whenever and wherever, except when Suge was around. When Suge showed up, everybody’s mouths clamped shut. Except for Tek-9. A week before the confrontation Tek had given Death Row’s latest release zero mics, and wrote a scathing review that equated the future of Death Row under Knight’s command to the last days of Howard Dean’s bid for the 2004 Democratic Nomination. Apparently Suge took umbrage with the review. Suge confronted Tek, and the rumor is Suge came “heavy”. No body really knows what happened that night other than Tek and Suge, and neither one spoke a work about it. But Tek had walked away without a mark, and Suge spent the rest of his New York trip sporting thick sunglasses, apparently to hide an “eye jammy” that looked suspiciously like the butt end of his own Mark VII .357 “Desert Eagle”. Mitch “Blood” Green, like a motherfucker!)

Suge, three days after his meeting with Tek-9.

I was just chatting with Tek about nothing and everything. We discussed Bloomberg versus Giuliani and came to the conclusion that they were both full of shit. We talked about how we missed groups like Public Enemy, especially in the days of Bush’s second disastrous term in office. We discussed Jay-Z’s retirement, and made bets when he was going to return to the mic (September 2006. For the record, I won so pay me my “fiddy” dollars, bi-atch!). That led to a talk about Jordan and his three retirements. It was then I remembered that Tek had an encyclopedic memory of street basketball players. I asked Tek if he knew of a player named Jimmy Waters.

“Who?” he replied.

“You never heard of a street player named ‘Jimmy Waters”? Michael Jordan calls him the greatest player of all time.”

“…the fuck you talking ‘bout, son? Ain’t nobody greater than Mike!”

“I know, I know!” I said. “I’ve been searching player stats and there’s nobody with a better record.”

“You serious about this, Kay?” Tek asked.

I shrugged.

Tek started to think. He truly pondered my quandary.

He said: “A guy like Mike, you ain’t never gonna find anybody on paper better than him. So you’re looking up the wrong tree, son. You searching for the unknown, the unsung hero. The man in black.”

“Yeah, but does he exist?”

“If he does, Bed-Stuy is the perfect place to look for him. Bed-Stuy is full of unsung hero’s. The streets are littered with stories, tales, and legends you ain’t never going to hear. You won’t find 'em in no ‘lie-bury’, no internet and in no rap song. These stories, they too bloody, too hardcore for public consumption. You can’t find that shit in Harlem, son. You gotta go straight to the streets. You gotta walk the streets and wait for them to tell you the tales.”

“That’s just your way of telling me you don’t know who the fucker is.”

“No I don’t. But I tell you what I do know, son. What ever makes him the “greatest” ain’t got nothing’ to do with points and shit. It’s gotta be the story. If he does exist, I know who would know who he is.”

Tek wrote an address down for me.

“Go see this man. Go walk the streets.”

* * *

Three days later I knocked on the office door of Coach Elijah Roberts. He coached the boy’s basketball team at Peter Stuyvesant High, at the corner of Fulton and Schenectady.

“My name is Kalil Honsou, and I am a freelance writer.” I said by way of introduction. “I’m writing a story on Jimmy Waters.”

Coach Roberts looked at me for a long time.

“It’s about time,” he said. “Come on in.”

To be continued…

Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the few neighborhoods in New York City to possess an identity and culture that is known to audiences outside of New York City. Director Spike Lee has prominently featured the streets and brownstone blocks of Bedford Stuyvesant in his films, including Do The Right Thing (1989) and Crooklyn (1994). Chris Rock's television sitcom, Everybody Hates Chris, portrays Rock's life growing up as a teenager in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1983. The neighborhood was also the setting of Dave Chappelle's 2004 documentary Block Party, in which Chappelle and many prominent Rap and Soul artists performed an impromptu concert on a street corner.

A BASKETBALL STORY - PART 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This story came to me in a dream. I’ll try to transcribe it as accurately as possible, but I’m afraid there are going to be some definite problems. For one thing, the story is about a basketball player, and I don’t know a single thing about the game. That’s going to be the weakest and most easily criticized part of the story, because, frankly, I’m going to fake it. But the story touched my heart, and I’m thinking it is demanding to be told. It is my intention to tell this story serially over several days and several ‘blog postings. Honestly folks, I don’t know where this story is going to go. I am hoping you will enjoy the journey.

THE GREATEST BASKET-BALL PLAYER OF ALL TIME
By Kalil Honsou

Kalil Honsou is a freelance writer who has published articles in The Source, Vanity Fair, and GQ. In 2006 he garnered critical acclaim for his three part article on Michael Jordan, entitled “American Legend: The Rise and Rise of ‘Air’ Jordan”, published in Sports Illustrated three years after the athlete’s retirement from the National Basketball Association.

It was the last day of my extensive interview with Michael Jordan.

Michael, gracious man that he is, had allowed me an unprecedented access to his private life. We had arranged to meet each other periodically over the course of a month, each time in a different location. Once in Mali, we met just before Michael was feted by government officials in the African nation. Another time, we met in a small town in Maryland, where Mike was busy coaching his youngest son’s Little League team. Yet another time we met in Las Vegas, joined by Charles Barkley for a private, high-stakes three-day poker marathon that was detailed in my article “American Legend: The Rise and Rise of ‘Air’ Jordan”. But on this, our last day, we met in Michael’s office at the base of operations of the Washington Wizards.

At the tail end of the interview, after I had turned off my tape recorder and was preparing to leave for the airport. I off-handedly asked Michael who he considered was the greatest basketball player of all time. This was meant as a joke. Those of us who had interviewed Mike over the years already knew his answer. When asked that question, a younger Mike Jordan would just smile and you and arch his eyebrows knowingly. Nothing more need to be said.

But this occasion was different. This older Mike was different. This was a man looking at the other side of significant events that shook his sense of security and mortality. This was a man who had to bury a murdered father, weather the storm of a crumbling marriage, and who also had to watch as close friends and business acquaintances burned up in the horror of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

“Hey Mike,” I said smiling. “Just for the record, who do you think is the greatest basketball player of all time?”

Mike looked thoughtfully over at me. “Ever heard of Jimmy Waters?”

“Who?” I said.

“Damn,” he said. “I thought you know everything, K. You’re slippin’!”

“There has never been a professional basketball player named ‘Jimmy Waters’.” I said. I was a bit stung, too.

“I didn’t say he was a pro.” Mike replied. “Didn’t even make it to college.”

“What’s he a street ball player? He better than ‘the Goat’?”

Earl “The Goat” Manigault
(1944-1998)

Considered the best street basketball player of all time. Known for his 52-inch vertical leap and his ability to “double dunk” (i.e. dunking the ball twice in mid air). Immortalized by Don Cheadle in the movie Rebound: The Legend of Earl “The Goat” Manigault. Died of heart failure in 1998

Mike scoffed at me. “Now you’re just plain trippin’. Jimmy Waters. Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. ‘The Planet’. Look him up there. Now ask me no more questions, I’ve got work to do.” Hey waved me out of the office.

Thus I began what would become a year-long odyssey to discover the man who Michael Jordan considered was more deserving of the title “Greatest of All-Time”.