demons2005

Custiom Jones woke up and meditated, ate three bowls of cereal, and meditated again. He cleared his mind and conjured an image of a basketball spinning about itself in the middle of a black void. He focused on the ball until he tuned out all other thoughts and his heartbeat stalled to a slow murmur. Years of dedication to the art of meditation had allowed him to control his mind and concentrate like crazy. Now, with an emptied mind he tried to feel universal benevolance. He was interrupted by a phone call but ignored it, trying to maintain his concentration. He finally gave up when he heard the answering machine:

"Hello you've reached Custiom Jones, I'm not available leave a message"

"Sup man it's Ray I was wanna go down to the Rec and play some pickup, come on down if you get this I'll probably be there til noon."

Custiom got ready to go play ball and was at the gym within 15 minutes. Since it was 11:30 there were only a few people shooting around, but they had been waiting for an 8th to run a game of 4 on 4, so Jones changed into his basketball shoes while the others shot for teams, no chance to warm up. Within couple minutes later the game was rolling. CJ shot for ball and missed, so he started out on defense. Ray came down the right side of the court, crossed over to the left before CJ had time to react, but luckily he recovered as his teammate caused Ray to hesitate. Ray fed the ball inside to some really tall clumsy white guy who got lucky and banked it in from about five feet. CJ brought the ball back down the court and saw noone cutting so he passed it to a dude on the wing and fought for position inside. His indecisive and unskilled teammates passed it around and eventually fed him the ball. With his back to the basket he started to spin right. As soon as Ray bit he reversed direction and faded into a jump shot. Swish.

Mike

Despite what I thought about first, I've decided that paragraph one really is much in line with the rest of the short story because when I read it, I did not believe a single word of it. I was thinking the whole time: this is probably just some kid who has nothing else to do but to ponder about 'universal benevolance' which he has no idea about it - how can he? It seems he's obsessed with the idea of meditating than the reason for meditating. He's trying to discover his teen identity. When he goes to play basketball, I get treated to a long paragraph about the ordinary: how much worse Custiom's teammates are than he is and why won't they give him the ball he's so much better than them? Oh, and he finally gets the ball and of course it's a swish because he meditated about a basketball this morning; he's one with his ball.

__________________
- Mike

demons2005

well he doesn't get the ball back because in pickup games alot of time people don't always do whats best like the Pros. I see what you're saying with the second part I didn't intend it that way but it works out real nice.

anywhere here's the second installment

Ray found a dependable second scorer on his team in a 6'3 guy who could hit the midrange jumper, and they scored on 5 of their first 6 possesions mainly relying on the pick and roll and the clumsy guy's dominance of the offensive glass. Custiom's teammates, meanwhile, had yet to get in any rhythm, turning the ball over 4 times predictably trying to feed Jones. He found one open teammate who managed to put in a shot and he himself managed to hook in another, but his teammates were too afraid of contact to cut from the perimeter, and thus they had great difficulty scoring. A few minutes into the game and it was 5-3. When the score reached 10-4 Custiom realized it was time to take over, now or never. A group of five were waiting around by now and called next game. Custiom did not want to relinquish the court without a fight. Encouraging his teammates to take open looks, he began to give 110%. A turnaround 4 footer put the game within 5. CJ intercepted the lazy inbound pass and scored the easy layup. 10-6.
"Alright we can do this guys get a stop"
Ray dribbled between his legs and surveyed his position. His second option screened to his right with an amazing first step Ray managed to brush CJ off the screen.
"HELP! SWITCH!" Custiom called out but his teammate was slow to react. Ray was already in the air shooting a pull-up J. It grazed the back of the rim on it's way through the cylinder.
"Hurry Hurry!" Custiom shouted at the guy who picked up the ball after it went through the net. Ray's team was slow to turn back around and he saw an opprotunity for a fast break. Within a few seconds he was down the floor, Ray backpedalling furiously in front of him. As they approached the basket, Jones hesitated for a moment, just long enough for Ray to stop and begin to take a step forward to close the gap between them. Ray instantly realized his mistake as Jones continued at full speed blowing by him before he could turn his momentum around again. The rapid change of momentum had left Ray on the ground, to the pleasure of the guys watching the game waiting for "next." 10-7.