January 30, 1988 — I was a senior in high school, spending my Saturday afternoon indoors, focused on the final seconds of the television broadcast from Assembly Hall in Bloomington. Indiana, a year after winning a national title and now a mid-pack team in the Big Ten, was hosting Purdue, ranked second in the country, and rolling. After blowing a 21-point first-half lead, Indiana had the ball down one in the final 10 seconds. Indiana’s Dean Garrett turned in the lane and nailed a 10-footer, lifting the Hoosiers to the lead.
Less than two miles down the road, there was a full 84-foot basketball court in a residential backyard. A few of us knew the home’s owner, and he would let us play on the court as long as we kept his yard clean, kept our mouths clean, and didn’t park our driver’s side tires in his yard. Occasionally, he came out and played with us — he had played small college basketball in the sixties — and more than held his own.
Garrett’s shot cleared the net, putting Indiana in front by a point. The Hoosiers and their fans still needed to anguish through eight more seconds and a defensive stop. The buzzer sounded, and my adrenaline surged. I was still of an age where the remaining fates of a day, and sometimes the following day, were dictated by a team winning or losing. In the wintertime, that team was the Indiana University basketball team.
I yelled to my mom that I was going to the court, grabbing my keys and hightops on the way out the door. I drove out of my neighborhood and headed down the main road; as I turned off onto the side street, three cars were parked in front of the house with the backyard court.
Four of my buddies were already on the court shooting jump shots when I walked into the backyard.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.
“Man…,” said my buddy, always the pickup game organizer. “I didn’t need to call anybody.”
He was shooting long jump shots while he spoke.
“I was so charged up after that game, I had to come over here and play. And I knew I wouldn’t be alone.”
We talked about the game, the shot, Purdue’s comeback, the blown calls. Within a few minutes, five more guys showed up, giving us enough to run fullcourt five-on-five. Three more friends straggled in later, and we rotated them in after each game to 15. We ran, laughed, took some excellent shots, and talked trash after the bad shots, all with the energy surging from watching two hours of basketball in Bloomington. Darkness was the only thing that could send us home.