We were just kids. Ball players. Hoopers. Most of us couldn’t point out Argentina on a map. Was it in Southern Europe or South America? I knew it was one of the two, but it was difficult to remember which. 

Our shouting was louder than all of it. Louder than the squeaking of our high tops. Louder than the ball bouncing on the hardwood floor and carbon steel rims. Our shouting was my favorite part. Gimme that shit! after blocking a shot. Shoot for it! after a disagreement about possession. And, of course, And Onnnne! after a tough finish through contact.

The greatest on-court compliments you could earn were shouted comparisons to the NBA players we saw on SportsCenter every night. Mount Mutombo! we’d holler when Shawn, a lanky Jamaican American kid swatted a shot out of bounds. Shawn loved to wave his finger in the face of his opponent after a block, borrowing the signature gesture of Atlanta Hawks star Dikembe Mutombo. 

I was proud of my status as one of the only white kids at our gym who earned enough favor to be compared to players in the league. However, there were unspoken boundaries and stipulations to my inclusion. It was understood that any player comparison shouted after a move I made must be a white NBA player. This wasn’t a rule conceived by my friends. This was a rule written in bold and underlined in the basketball scrolls. A rule that is strictly followed to this day by teenage hoopers and professional basketball broadcasters alike.

I’m not going to write a book about why this rule was written and continues to be followed. But I was fine with it then, and I’m fine with it now. There are far more urgent cultural puzzles to solve. This rule did mean, however, that the glossary of names my friends could select from for my NBA comps was limited. To make matters worse, a lot of the white players in the league, in the eyes of young fans like us, seemed like doofuses who existed primarily to be vanquished by the Black superstars we idolized. Most of the white guys in the NBA–toolsheds like Brad Miller, Todd MacCulloch, Matt Harpring—just looked like six-foot-nine gym teachers.

I can still remember how it stung, if only for a moment, being compared to Keith Van Horn. What were they thinking? God forbid I, the sixth man of Robert Service High School’s middling freshman team, be compared to a consensus NCAA All-American who averaged 20 points per game in the NBA. Mike Miller, though not nearly as good a player as Van Horn, was at least a respectful acknowledgement. J-Will, shorthand for Jason Williams, was a compliment. But I was a wing player. A slashing scorer. A shooting guard who couldn’t shoot. And that year the small cohort of NBA whites just didn’t yield an apt comparison.

Would it have been generous for someone to yell out Kobe! when I pulled a hesitation dribble, drove baseline, and finished a reverse layup? Sure. Yes. Of course. Who wouldn’t want to be compared to the player whose posters and Sports Illustrated covers were wheatpasted to their bedroom walls? But this was the earliest aughts. These were the days of Save the Last Dance and Kordell Stewart. It would have been unconscionable then and still discouraged today. 

Plus, it was understood that my friend Stephen Carmack was Kobe. The Kobe of our rec center, at least. An explosive athlete who should have played Pac-12 baseball, Stephen was 5’9 but he played above the rim. He could do the controversial carry-palm crossover that Iverson and Kobe popularized. He spent countless hours learning Kobe’s patented fall-away jumper and he’d thump his chest like Kobe after nailing said jumper for game point.

Stephen’s dad, Mr. Carmack, would often run with us on Friday nights. Mr. Carmack was no taller than his son and lacked Stephen’s athletic prowess, but he had the mysterious core strength that builds as a hairline retreats, and he could easily muscle his way through us for driving layups and offensive rebounds. A boisterous man in his late 30s with a thick Virginian accent, Mr. Carmack was a chatty hooper who would call us all feathers on the court. Let’s go feathas! Dig in now feathas! Muscle up feathas! 

I didn’t particularly like being called feathers, but would always accept the moniker as a clarion call to dig a little deeper and play with a little more grit. Years later, Stephen would overhear me telling this story and counter that his dad had actually been calling us fellas, not feathas. I still can’t be sure.

Mr. Carmack’s hoops knowledge went back further than ours, and if I got cooking at open gym Mr. Carmack had a more expansive bank of white players to compare me to. Shhyyit, go ahead then Dan Marley! Take his ass to the hole Chris Mullin! Shoot that thing Bob Sura! I only vaguely knew who Bob Sura was, but Mr. Carmack’s encouragement always made me feel like I belonged.

As I advanced through high school I tightened up my handle, refined my jumper, and could even dunk with regularity (if wide open on a fast break and if my preparatory footwork was just so). I was no Kobe, but on my best days I could give (our) Kobe a run for his money. And thus, by my junior year, there was only one player comp that I was assigned, that I would accept, or that would have been just. I had earned it. He was my comp, and off-limits to the other two white guys who played with us regularly.

Would sociologists have found it appropriate to assign my whiteness and all of its heavy baggage to the future gold medalist  and Hall of Famer from Bahía Blanca? We didn’t know. We weren’t sociologists. Despite my lackluster geography education, my friends and I agreed that I was the him of our open gym. So when I spun by Kobe and shot a floater that barely escaped the high-reaching hands of Mount Mutombo before tickling the twine—there was only one word I wanted to hear. A word that I’ve never loved more. Yelled louder than we’ve ever yelled since.

‘GINÓBILI’ 

ZACH POWERS  is a writer, editor, and MFA student telling stories about education, advocacy, and culture in the Pacific Northwest. His writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers across the region, including The Seattle Times, The News Tribune, Pacific NW Magazine, The Anchorage Daily News, South Sound Magazine, Tacoma Weekly, and Weekly Volcano.