John Saker - Open Looks: My Life in Basketball

First edition published in 2015 by Awa Press, Unit 1, Level 3, 11 Vivian Street, Wellington 6011, New Zealand.

ISBN 978-1-927249-18-5

ebook formats

epub 978-1-927249-19-2

mobi 978-1-927249-20-8

Copyright John Saker 2015

The right of John Saker to be identified as the author of this work in terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

Some material from this book originally appeared in the following publications: chapter 1: Tracing the Arc, Four Winds Press; chapter 2: Into the Field of Play, Tandem Press; chapters 4, 5 and 7: The Sunday Star-Times; chapters 6 and 8: North & South; and chapter 9: The Evening Post.

Cover photograph by Bill Bowman, Independent Record (Helena, Montana)

Cover design by Greg Simpson

Ebook conversion 2015 by meBooks

Find more great books at awapress.com.

JOHN SAKER is a writer and former professional basketball player who lives in Wellington, New Zealand. After studying at Victoria University, he spent two years at Carroll College, Montana, on a basketball scholarship, and in 1977 he became New Zealands first professional player, joining French sides over three seasons. He also represented New Zealand as a Tall Black from 1975 to 1987 and captained the 1984 team. A specialist wine writer, he is the author of How to Drink a Glass of Wine, Pinot Noir: The New Zealand Story and Vinacular: A Wine Lovers AZ.

To my high school coaches Kerry Oldfield, Dale Sharp, Andy Marshall and John Zohrab. I thank you all.

Shooting in the dusk, Montana. Mark Blaszkiewicz

Several years ago I played my last game of organised five-on-five basketball. I was part of a team of middle-aged men whose different lives aligned every Tuesday night through this shared pleasure. Our opposition was always youngermuch youngerbut seldom smarter. It was their legs vs our heads. We would gift them 20 or so points a game because a lot of the time we wouldnt, or couldnt, run back on defence. We had to make up for this handicap with a half-court offence based around sharp passing (and, I have to admit, often a height advantage), along with a defence where the tactical foul was raised to an art form. We could make it work, but only for a while. Although wed once been champions of the B Grade, the law of diminishing returns that applies to all declining jocks saw us gradually slide down the league table as our ages moved in the opposite direction.

By that last game, the pleasure factor was also waningfor me anyway. An old ankle injury made running painful. Worse, Id joined that subspecies of player Id always detested: grumpy old pricks who once had a game and cant let go. Bearing witness to your wilting skills on a weekly basis is to be reminded that death has you in its sights, and what could be more grumpiness-inducing? To co-exist amicably with the game as a mature exponent I saw I had to recast my relationship with itI had to stop caring, basically. I could never quite manage to do that.

In my younger years, if Id gone without playing basketball for a matter of days Id start feeling bereft. Today, Im happy enough in my role as passive observer.

The hold it has on me now may be gentler, but my admiration for it still runs deep. From the moment basketball arrived in my life there seemed no end to its generosity. For one, it was so permissive. Every player was allowed to do things, to be inventive. Although it was played in a more confined space than most other games, there was no other in which I felt as free as I did playing basketball. To be effective in exercising that freedom meant practice, lots of it, and that was no imposition. You ran to basketball practices, they were so much fun. This was mostly because there was a competitive element to almost every drill (unlike rugby practice, where a half-hour was usually spent going 15 on nonepure tedium). When there wasnt competition, there were other compensations, viz. the pacifying symmetry of the five-man weave.

Something I never expected at the start was the playful imagination that drove the basketball lexicon. Given my fondness for words, this was a bonus. Metaphor bursts from the game like fruit from a tree. Different shots come clothed in wonderful descriptorsteardrop, dagger, alley-oop, skyhookas does the sound of them hitting their mark swish, string music, harmony of the hemp. Even shots that never look like going in are given their dueairball, brickalong with the geography and features of the playing areaelbow, arc, lane, window, cup.

Poetry would also gush from commentators: its off the boards and through the cords; he tickles the twine for two; and my own favourite from Cato Butler (who figures on page 115), the leather sphere drops through the iron orbit.

Then there is gym ratthe name for a person so hopelessly infected by the game that he or she hangs out in gyms for hours on end, practising on their own, playing with a passing parade of shorter stay devotees, as permanent a presence as the lines on the floor. Gym rats soak up the games smells and sounds, listen intently as others pass on its stories, and shoot the balltheyre always ready to do that. A gym rat thinks nothing of putting up a couple of hundred js a day, maybe topped off with 50 free throws.

My own gym rat years ended when I was 22 and signed a professional contract. The wholesome bond a gym rat has with the game gets rudely roughed up when money enters the picture. Whenever a young sporting pro tells the world about the joy of getting paid for doing what he or she loves, Im dubious. For me, the transition was not wholly joyous: the start of something Id wanted was tempered by the passing of a sweetness I never thought Id lose.

The stories that make up this book were written over the last couple of decades, at different times when the opportunity arose or I felt compelled to write about basketball. Many have America as their backdrop, although I spent only two years playing there.

One memory from those times was entering my college coachs office for the first time. Behind his desk were rows and rows of books, all written by other coaches. Invited to explore further, I found a reservoir of ideas and philosophies on every aspect of the game. Plays for every possible situation, how a practice should be structured, drills and defences, fast break styles, zone offence principles, the importance of the reverse pivot the game was dismantled to reveal parts I never knew it had.

These books were emblematic of two things. The first was the givingness of Americas basketball culture. If you knew something, you shared it. You spread your knowledge and your enthusiasm: the game deserved no less. My standing in that office, a Kiwi on a scholarship, was a facet of this open-handedness.