The fundamentals of memory

I don’t remember Michael Jordan at that game — maybe he refused to sell His licensing rights. I remember Scottie Pippen, and Charles Barkley (I think). I certainly remember Kobe and Shaquille, and they were the most powerful duo. Today, I can only recollect with precision the year (2000) because it was when Shaquille first got a ring with the Lakers, and I knew him, sort of — and he was definitely wearing a yellow jersey in the game. I think I remember Dennis Rodman, who, years after, I started to watch compulsively in Youtube videos. What a player; what a force of nature.

I didn’t know shit about the NBA; didn’t know Hakeem, or Tim Hardaway. Haven’t heard of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Didn’t know about the legendary Celtics, or about Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. I was just a Brazilian kid playing a basketball game, slightly seduced by the mechanics and, I think, the allure inherent to every great sport superstar. We don’t need to know a lot about a player to feel his greatness — that’s why it’s so easy to sell Jordan or LeBron shoes. They’re magnetic.

But I didn’t want to play with a yellow shirt. I played, basically, with two doubles: John Stockton — the King of Steals — & Karl Malone and Tim Duncan & David Robinson. Don’t know the reason (and I still recollect the narrator’s voice when I selected Stockton and Malone to play). The Spurs have been champions a year before, but I certainly didn’t know that. I didn’t know who was Tim Duncan, or Robinson, or Coach Pop. However, I refused to play with other athletes. To hell with Iverson, Gary Payton or Ray Allen; to hell with Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers (that I knew of, but don’t know what).

For some reason, the memory of that NBA game stood with me. I didn’t play it for long, once I replaced it for Fifa 2000, but I still cherish those afternoons, after school, when I was at my bedroom, playing fast before sleep time, in a small, old TV, my knees over the bed, because the TV was in a high space at the wardrobe and I was just a very short kid. I remember having a Mickey Mouse blanket, and it was blue, with stars: he was boarding a spaceship. I remember pausing the game briefly to sit over the big, wooden desk at my bedroom to watch the neighbour’s dog barking, when it was raining, through the window and the iron grids, which protected me from falling.

A year later, for a magical coincidence, the same NBA stars came back to my routine: it was the beginning of the sixth grade, and I got copybooks for every different class — every one of them with a NBA player on the cover. I had Stockton again (don’t remember Malone). I had Kobe (don’t remember Shaq). I had Reggie Miller, in a beautiful cover, with the Pacers logo and some blurred lights in blue, white and yellow at the background. I had Tim Duncan, without smiling, still young, in black and white. I doubt my mother or father — actually, my father’s secretaries bought my school stuff at that time — knew I was fond of the NBA. They all knew I was a sports kid, although, and I suspect that, while buying my copybooks, the secretaries remembered the days when, before going to the soccer practice, I used to drop by my father’s office, always in a complete uniform, showing my soccer boots around, very proud. They went for the sports theme (a safe bet), and they got it right. I still see them, sometimes, at the street, and I want to thank them, but I’m afraid — they could think I’m a lunatic, or a very strange guy.

Then comes a great hiatus, and I don’t have memories of NBA players for a very long time. I remember watching the 2006 Finals at ESPN, while chatting at MSN and writing scraps at Orkut. I remember how everybody, at the transmission, was talking about Dwyane Wade winning a ring before LeBron. I watched the 2004 Olympics, and recall references to LeBron, Carmelo, Dwyane and the failure of winning a gold medal. I was enchanted by Ginóbili then, even before I knew he was a Spur, even before I started to root for Argentina in soccer — this started in 2005, because of Juan Roman Riquelme and a long, groomed love for underdogs (and a teenage will to be different). Then came Maradona, and He contains all the love, all the anger, all the pain of the world, and it’s impossible to fly away, once you get hooked.

It was 2007 and, at my first semester in college, in another city, living with my aunt, I discovered myself a Spur — by then, I already knew Ginóbili and Duncan were playing together, but I don’t know how I figured that out. Maybe googling, while I was blossoming as a good pupil of the beauty of knowledge, that was fueled by the internet. We, as humanity, will never truly recognize this beauty — and how important it was for kids from my generation to have, abruptly, access to so much knowledge. My cousin, who lived with me, was a 14 year-old basketball player — today, he is a two-time Brazilian champion — and he loved Steve Nash. My aunt, who passed away in the last week of the last year, and to whom I’ll always be extremely grateful, used to go to bed early, as my cousin, who slept at the same room. My classes in college went from 16p.m. to 22p.m., and I used to arrive home around 23p.m.. I would go to the bakery and buy a few things to eat, besides an orange juice, walking fast to avoid missing the start of the playoff games.

I watched almost every game from the conference semifinals and finals — every game broadcasted by ESPN — , and I watched every game of the Finals, against LeBron and the Cavaliers. I remember fearing Steve Nash and watching Leandrinho, being reminded by the commentators, every fucking minute, that he was Brazilian. I remember Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams from Utah, and thinking Boozer was strong as hell. And Rafael ‘Baby’, who barely played. I remember liking the fast-paced game of Mike D’Antoni, and his moustache — I still like his moustache, but not the coaching.

I remember Fabricio Oberto, his long hair, and Michael Finley, and the sprinkled face of Matt Bonner, who will always seem to me a very good guy, because he gives me this impression. I remember Brent Barry and Bruce Bowen, and how some people at my favourite Orkut community (about soceer) hated him. I remember being pissed off by the fact that Ginóbili always came from the bench, until, two years later, I learned — from a very good friend, my first boss — that, in basketball, the starters finish the game. I was happy with every three-point made by Ginóbili, and it took me a few games to understand the unstoppable ‘defense!’ choir from the audience.

When San Antonio sweeped Cleveland, I wanted to jump at the living room — but I didn’t, respecting my aunt. But, after a conversion by Ginóbili, I clapped loud, without saying anything. However, just when the trophies were coming to the court, and Tony Parker got his Finals MVP award, my aunt opened the door, going to the bathroom. And she saw me happy, really happy, and she, instinctively, said to me: ‘You can celebrate, it was your team, after all.’ She had the same reaction when Fluminense — my team de facto — won the Copa do Brasil, at the same month. She went to the bathroom just after the final whistle, watching me in glory, exasperated, waiting for an opportunity to shout at the window, letting everybody know I was happy.

I’m a NBA League Pass subscriber since 2011, and since then I watch at least half of Spurs’s regular season games, and pretty much every playoff game — in Brazil, it’s cheaper to watch every game of an NBA franchise or a world-class european soccer team than the local matches with our teams; it’s stupid, it’s dirty, it’s cruel. I was already drunk in 2013, when Ray Allen got an impossible shot; I was sober in 2014, when I witnessed the greatest exhibition of pure, perfect, unselfish, beautiful basketball I have ever seen. When Kawhi Leonard became a king — I remember his eyes watching LeBron, and Duncan’s elbows to the front, hugging the orange ball, as a stoic philosopher.

I have a #20 Ginóbili white shirt, a black one, number 50 (from Robinson), that my brother gave to me, and a casual one, also black, Leonard’s name, that I got in New York — when I went to the Madison Square Garden and witnessed the Spurs losing to the Knicks. Ginóbili didn’t play, but I just wanted to see Duncan, at that moment — a glimpse of memory, a reckoning of things past, and the copybook days, and the Mickey Mouse blanket, and playing the NBA game as a child, choosing Stockton & Malone or Duncan & Robinson, and a stupid dog barking when it was raining, I was wearing warm pajamas, and was cheating my mother, because I used to say to her I was doing my school exercises, and she thought it would take a few hours, but I was smart and had always managed to write them in a few minutes, and so I would always have a few hours to play videogames, feeling the sound of a fictitious steal, Duncan’s name, a slam dunk, a snowy road, the sun far away at the rally game, and it wasn’t really part of the track, so I never came close to it.

Five years ago, the bedroom where I was this happy, short and smart child fell down in a thunderous way, destroyed by a cataclysmic avalanche, and the building was — believe — fractioned in half; and the half still standing, vacant, never able to have life, or happy kids again, is not the one where my bedroom was, or my mother’s bedroom. Today, there’s only a bathroom wall, and we can see it from the street, the flower drawings in yellow at the second floor, but no more wooden desk, or tall wardrobe. I will never see that bedroom again, but I have Duncan’s memory, and the happiness of being a sports kid who loved soccer and had NBA stars in copybooks, and the recurring pleasure of watching him play, for all these years, like I first played with him, when I didn’t know a lot about knowledge, but I certainly knew about passion. And he gave me comfort, because, even if I can’t go back to that bedroom, or even to that moment, I could remember him — and I couldn’t ask him for nothing else.

Today, I respect and admire Tim Duncan because he personifies everything I respect and admire in sports. He always played for the same team and gave up a few millions to win. He was never dishonest. He was a hell of a player — and he was Gary Cooper, the strong, silent guy. He was a builder and a believer, because he won five championships with a franchise worth less than the Clippers, only because they are from San Antonio. They’re stripping this from soccer — the pleasure, the difficulty of winning, the unpredictability of not knowing if you’re gonna win. Who cares for Barcelona and its 300 goals in a season? Who cares for a trophy won by Manchester City, when it spends way more than any other team in the world? It’s a rigged victory, and it’s a rigged feeling, and so it doesn’t belong to the concept of sport I learned to love. And Duncan, Ginóbili and the Spurs will always be everything I learned to love in sports, even because he was there, at the beginning, when I was just a child, living a memory — and a warm one, or I wouldn’t remember nothing by now.

I wish Duncan all the best. He’s a catalyst for a lot of good in my life, and I’ll never forget him, because, hell, I can’t. It’s that powerful.