Ross White

I was wrong about the no-look pass, the windmill
motion of his arms that ends with the ball slicing
through two defenders, wrong about the shimmy
mesmerizing an opposing guard as LaMelo sidesteps
into the lane, about the possibilities of a body,
wrong about the outlets to Gordon Hayward, the outlets
to P.J. Washington, behind-the-back passes
to a cutting Miles Bridges, skip passes to a pair of big men
whose names you’ll one day see in the box score
and think, “Who?”, I was wrong about a lot of things,
the picks and the rolls, the picks and the pops,
the high percentage shots, the step-back threes,
the full-court underhand pass that devastated the Detroit Pistons,
the forty-foot jumper that stunned the Phoenix Suns,
the kid who, when asked his favorite movie, named a film
that wouldn’t be released for another year,
I was wrong about his shot, wrong about
his confidence, wrong about his work ethic,
which I talked about a lot, during the draft, on the phone,
I was wrong about the Charlotte Hornets being doomed
to mediocrity, wrong to say it on Reddit, on Twitter,
on podcasts, on Facebook, wrong to be a forty-five-year-old
spending so much time decrying a kid of eighteen,
wrong to be so bored and so small that I spent days,
weeks saying hurtful things about LaMelo Ball
though I’m sure LaMelo Ball wouldn’t care
what strangers say because strangers have been saying it
all his life, I was wrong to send hateful words into the world
like a plank driven through with rusty nails, I was wrong
about how it would feel to be needlessly cruel,
even out of earshot, wrong about unselfish play,
I was wrong about the way his sneakers would sound
scraping against the court, I had wrongfully thought
it would sound like cicadas creaking their eerie chirp,
I was wrong about the reeds of his legs resembling
cattails in the brackish Chesapeake Bay waters
my family would visit too briefly in the summers
when I’d spent much of the school year daydreaming
and being disciplined for it, aimless kid, flaky kid,
kid who couldn’t seem to live up to his potential,
I was wrong about the way LaMelo Ball would wheel
through air two feet above the court as if strolling
through botanical gardens full of queen of the prairie
and scarlet beebalm and oakleaf hydrangea,
I was wrong about how it would feel to hector
someone who wouldn’t, in that moment, fight back,
which my grandfather had warned against,
saying it was no better than mowing the grass,
because in time everything you cut down
would rise up but you’d only get weaker with age,
not knowing that you were each blade severed,
I was wrong about the way LaMelo Ball would vault
down the court like a deer, his grace so controlled
every muscle must have been in symphonic accord,
before sticking a pullup three, I was wrong about
how one night a deer would bound into the woods
when my headlights fell on it, not freezing, not hesitating,
but surging electric in that critical second, gravity
no obstacle to instinct, and how that deer would remind me
of both my grandfather, who had, by that point,
been gone for years, and, sure enough, LaMelo Ball,
I was wrong about the way the blue of his uniform
would evoke that one perfect cloudless afternoon
in the gulf when the ocean on the horizon
went from wine-dark to blue and the sky
dove into that horizon with the same shade of blue
which gave the sense that there was no edge
to possibility, that the universe was infinite
and we were all floating suspended in it
on whatever islands we arrived at, and then too
I was reminded of my grandfather, the tender way
he would bend down to snort in my ear
and tickle my neck, the way he would hoist me,
throw my legs over his shoulders and walk,
my hands turning his head to tell him where to go,
his step so light I almost felt us floating, I was wrong
about possibility, I was wrong about wonder,
I was wrong and I was wrong and I was wrong.