All of Life Can Be Explained By A Spurs Fast Break
The following is excerpted from Beauty In Motion: A Spurs Fast Break by Zack Phillips, available April 30 from HarperCollins.
It started simply enough.
Manu Ginobili, the 14-year veteran of the NBA, saw the basketball glance off the rim. And he grabbed it.
And with that, It had begun.
“It” was a Spurs fast break. Beauty incarnate. Perfection manifested. Basketball Nirvana brought to life and then euthanized so it can be in heaven where it belongs.
I had come to San Antonio to witness it in person. To understand it.
By the time It was over, this fast break would be far more than two points. This fast break would change how we viewed basketball, how we viewed ourselves. Its beauty would come to symbolize the best of humanity, its ephemerality a vivid reminder of the fleeting nature of life.
It would teach me how to be a man.
Beauty Traced
Like most mysterious creatures, the so-called “Fast Break” assumes many names. Transition. Tempo. F-Break. Fast-B. Fas Bre.
It has existed for more than a half century. But what is a “Fast Break”? The term for pushing the ball up court to gain a numbers-advantage? Or something else? Something bigger?
Its creation is typically credited to a mid-century, North Carolina College coach named John McClendon. So I traveled to North Carolina to find out who he was.
“John McClendon was a mid-century, North Carolina College coach named John McClendon,” says Mary Tompkins, the official college historian.
The 83-year-old Tompkins has grey hair, warm blue eyes, and a gentle face that seems to say “Hush, child, I will answer your questions after we drink tea” and “There’s nothing so important it can’t wait for a cup of tea” and “Do you want some tea? I’m getting a tea vibe.”
Over tea, Ms. Tompkins tells me the story of McClendon and his wondrous invention, the Fast Break.
“John was known as an innovator,” she says. “He also had a notoriously small bladder. He always had to go to the bathroom.”
One day at practice, McClendon found himself in desperate need of a bathroom break as the team’s scrimmage progressed at a torpid pace. Not wanting to call a water break until one of the teams notched the required ten points, he instructed both squads to run baseline to baseline and try to score as quickly as possible. Thus, the Fast Break was born.
“It wasn’t until he got back from the bathroom, the coach realized he might have something,” Tompkins says, wistfully and fondly but also sadly.
The chamomile is dark, the color of basketballs soaked in chamomile.
I thank Ms. Tompkins for her time. My understanding is almost complete.
Beauty Revealed
Ginobili and his Spur teammates know none of this history. But then again in a sense, they do know it. They know it instinctually. They know it in their bones.
On that fateful April 2, Ginobili has only just secured the rebound. But the inchoate beauty is there. The Fast Break is already taking shape.
Ginobili, looking up court, dribbles twice.
The point guard’s eyes make out teammate Kawhi Leonard racing towards the Raptors’ basket.
Ginobili zips a pass. It’s not just a pass, it’s a connection, one human being reaching out to another and saying “I notice you; you matter to me.” The pass travels just past the outstretched fingers of a Toronto defender and snugly into the orbit of Leonard.
Leonard receives the pass in stride and redirects it with a simple flick of the wrist.
Leonard’s touch pass journeys perfectly into the hands of LaMarcus Aldridge, who is somehow improbably — unbelievably, impossibly, undoubtedly — in the perfect spot.
Aldridge receives the ball in both hands and with a single step is on the rim, slamming the ball into the basket, as if to say “This — THIS — is life.”
I can’t believe what I’ve seen.
Ginobili Rebound.
I see beauty.
Pass to Leonard.
I know love.
Leonard pass to Aldridge.
I feel my father’s apology.
Aldridge dunk.
I am peace.
2 dribbles, 3 passes, 1 dunk and the world will never be the same.
And somewhere, a woman named Mary is drinking tea.
