Drafted
He was sitting on the couch when he got the call. They called it a couch though in actuality it was a futon left by the previous renters of the apartment and perhaps even the renters before them. No one knew the origins of the futon. No one had been around long enough to trace all of its stains.
John had decided to stay in the rented house rather than return home to his parents for the summer. He was taking some summer classes that wouldn’t start for another couple of weeks and in the meantime he was drinking a lot of beer and smoking a lot of weed and talking about the potential of hooking up with women.
He wasn’t watching the draft when he got the call. John was a sports fan, but not that type of sports fan. He had favorite teams that changed based off their record and he knew some of the players’ names, sometimes, when they were personable enough. He liked to go to bars during playoffs and drink and cheer and declare grand judgments about the playing and the coaching as though he, John Johnson, who never even went to the gym, could play better than the professionals.
Thus, it was a surprise when John got a phone call informing him that he had been drafted to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the second round.
“What?” he said.
“Congratulations!” they screamed and gave him his flight information.
The polite thing to do would’ve been to inform them that they had made a mistake. The last time he had played basketball was in a pick-up game in the fourth grade and his team had lost. It seemed easier though, to drive to the airport and get on that plane. Minnesota, he thought, would be nice and cool in the summertime.
He peeled himself off the futon, trails of crumbs falling off his belly and onto the floor. He put on his running shoes, things he hadn’t worn in years that were peeling not out of use, but out of the passage of time, and his hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of his university, Northwestern South Carolina University.
His car had broken down two months ago and he’d not yet fixed it, so he took his roommate’s car to the airport and left a note on the table, “I’ve been drafted to the NBA. I’ll be back.”
John bought a Cinnabon in the terminal while he waited for boarding. Airports always made him feel a hunger that was not caloric in nature. He finished the Cinnabon and then immediately craved for another, stopped only by boarding announcements.
He was pleasantly surprised to be presented with a soda and given the offer of a pre-flight alcoholic beverage. John had never flown first class before. He hadn’t flown at all since abandoning the biennial family vacation. To be on an airplane by oneself was lonely, the weight of the craft pressing upon his late-night body in a way it never had before. He thought about what it would be like to crash into the ocean. It was too dark to see that they were flying over land.
He was drunk off those tiny bottles of liquor by the time the plane landed in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and he ran off the plane in order to use the men’s room. He’d expected that the flight attendant would cut him off at some point. He didn’t know what it meant to be responsible for his own choices.
There was a man waiting for him at the entrance to baggage claim with a sign that said JOHN JOHNSON. He should’ve explained then, should’ve said, “I’m wholly ordinary,” but the man in the suit handed him a gift bag filled with swag and John was so wooed by his presents that his mouth glued itself shut.
The man led him to a limousine. The only other time John had ridden in a limousine was on the way to his youngest uncle’s wedding when he was a small child. There weren’t enough seats for John to sit in his own and his mother had forced him to sit on her lap, taking all the joy out of the experience. This time, John had the limo to himself and a variety of tiny liquor bottles, which he stuck in his pockets for later.
At the hotel, he was greeted by the coach of the basketball team, a name that he promptly forgot. Something simultaneously eastern European and forgettable.
“We’re excited to have you aboard,” the coach said.
“I’m excited too,” John replied and shook his hand. He was excited. They were in the lobby of the fanciest hotel he had ever been inside and he had a suite to himself. He decided the morning was a better time to tell them about the mistake they had made. After all, there wouldn’t be any more flights out of the airport that late in the evening.
Up in the suite, John ordered a steak and a bottle of champagne and turned on the television. John liked shows about nature, episodes about animals ripping one another to shreds.
He was thirsty and hung over when the phone rang the following morning to inform him that there was a car waiting to take him to the Timberwolves practice facility where he would meet with the rest of his future teammates.
John drank half a $7 bottle of water out of the mini-fridge and put a t-shirt and shorts from the swag bag he’d been given the night before. He didn’t have a choice but to wear the same pair of underwear.
He should’ve told them then, at the entrance of the practice facility where Timberwolves employees gathered to given him a tour. There were so many introductions though and by the time they were finished, there was no space for John to declare his ineptitude at the sport. The tour finished at the locker rooms where John was assigned a locker and given a uniform with the name JOHNSON printed on the back.
The other players were starting to filter into the locker room. They were the tallest men that John had ever seen. He should’ve confessed to the other players the astounding gaffe their organization had made, but he was scared they were going to eat him alive. Two of the men were speaking a language that John didn’t understand. Something eastern and deadly.
“Glad to have you on the team,” the players said and shook his hand. John felt dizzy. He wondered if there was somewhere that he could get water from. All he could find were coolers of Gatorade.
He thought there would be more introductions, some sort of getting to know you games, before he actually had to start playing basketball. When the other players said, “Come on, Johnson, it’s time to go,” he nearly confessed what had happened. Instead, he went to the bathroom and vomited.
The warm ups weren’t so bad. Not at first, anyway. Sure, he was the slowest one running back and forth across the court and sure, he struggled to do even basic drills with the ball. It was nice though, to be part of a team. The other players helped him out when he lost control of his basketball. He kept waiting for a whistle to blow, to say, “Stop, he is a fraud,” but nothing happened. As the drills got harder, John got worse. He was gasping for air. His lungs so full, he thought he was going to explode from the exertion. He wondered if anyone had ever died from exercising. He wanted to lie on the floor of the court and would’ve if only there hadn’t been giant men running back and forth across it.
“You’ll get better,” they told him after the practice. “It’s hard adjusting to pro-style play.” They patted his butt a lot.
John went out to dinner with the other new players. They all seemed to know each other from something, the March Madness tournament or AAU ball. John Johnson was the only white guy at the table, a situation that made him vaguely uncomfortable despite insisting to himself over and over again that he felt comfortable being in a large group of black men.
It was the only time in his life that John Johnson had ever felt truly full. The other players ate and then they ate some more. They didn’t drink much, if at all. Many of them weren’t even 21 yet. John didn’t let their sobriety stop him. He was never one to turn down a free drink and besides, the alcohol made him feel more relaxed. If there was ever a time to tell them, it was then. The problem was, he was having such a good time. After five drinks, he was no longer uncomfortable and felt certain that these men were his only true best friends in the world.
“I love you guys,” he said at the end of the time and none of them seemed to think it was strange.
John woke up the next morning so sore that he was unable to move. He ordered room service. A stack of pancakes, bacon and some fruit for good measure. It wasn’t until he was throwing up in practice that he considered this might be a bad idea.
It was announced that day that they were taking a break for Summer League. Everyone seemed to know this already except John who said, “What’s Summer League?” He got no response.
He went back to this house at Northwestern South Carolina University. When he told his friends what had happened, they didn’t believe him.
“No, really,” he insisted. “I’m an NBA player!”
“Yeah right, man. Whatever you say,” they said.
One of John’s roommate’s was still pissed that John had left his car in the airport parking lot and refused to speak to him ever again.
John’s classes and Summer League were set to start the same day. Fortunately, John was a master at dropping classes. John dropped classes all the time. He dropped classes when he didn’t want to walk all the way across campus. When he overslept through midterms. When he wanted to stay home and smoke weed. John wasn’t a master of telling the NBA that they had drafted him by mistake. It was an easy choice to make.
This time they flew him out to Las Vegas. There were a bunch of new guys on the team this time. People he’d never heard of, which meant they weren’t Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Steph Curry, or Kobe Bryant. He thought maybe amongst so many newbies he wouldn’t be the worst newbie, the biggest noob. This, among many other assumptions that John had made about Summer League, was wrong.
He was happy to see some of his friends from the night he got drafted. They hugged him like it had been a long absence. Like they shared deep secrets with one another and not just a basketball court.
After practice, where John tripped over his feet and was zero-for-four on the shots he took, they hit the buffet in the casino. John had been to a casino before with his friends from Northwestern South Carolina University. The floors had been stained and the whole building stank of cigarettes even though smoking was banned. There was no food and they’d had to pay for all the cocktails they drank. By the end of the night they were too drunk to drive back to school and ended up staying at an overpriced hotel near the casino having lost all their money. At the time they’d described the experience as “great” and “unforgettable.” John couldn’t believe the things that his past self had been wowed by. What a sucker.
Summer League John had much greater expectations for himself than Northwestern South Carolina University John. Summer League John was impressed by piles on piles of shrimp and crab legs. Summer League John got a soup bowl full of butter to dip the aforementioned creatures of the sea inside. He went back for seconds and thirds. He ate in a way that he never knew that he could eat before. He still couldn’t shoot a free throw, but man could he catch 17 shrimps in his mouth.
“Slow down,” his new best friends said and John resisted screaming, “PUSSIES,” because if there was any insult NBA players disliked it was being equated with being a woman.
Most of the team went to bed early because they had a game the following afternoon. John led a rally to convince a couple of the guys to go to a couple bars with him.
“Just for a little while,” he said. “We won’t drink.” Five minutes later he was yelling, “Shots!” which he regretted as soon as he was out on the basketball court the following afternoon and giant men were trying to crush him with such veracity that John wondered if that purpose of the game had changed from trying to get the ball into the basket to stomping on John Johnson. They were quickly down seven and then twelve and then twenty-six.
The turning point in the game was when he shit his pants.
“Oh shit,” he said as he felt that liquid slide down his leg.
Everyone saw it. The whole entire world. People who had never watched Summer League or the NBA at all watched John Johnson shit himself. If asked beforehand what he would’ve done if the whole world saw him shit himself, John would’ve said “lay on the floor and die.” In a miracle of basketball, the team rallied.
John was benched and discretely handed some sweatpants. It was very hard to be discrete when so many cameras were watching him. Who even knew there were so many cameras at a Summer League game?
It was as though when John wasn’t on the court, they were a different team. John knew the answer to this was because he wasn’t a real basketball player and had been drafted by mistake, but even sitting there with shit on his legs he was too scared to say anything. Some fears are impossible to get over.
One of John’s roommates liked to repeat the phrase, “It’s all about trends,” over and over when watching sports games. It annoyed John because he knew that his friend only said such things in order to sound smart. John had thought the phrase was meaningless until they won that game and went on to win the next and the next until suddenly they were the first seeded team in Summer League.
John’s parents called. They didn’t know that he’d been drafted because they didn’t watch the draft or know that Summer League existed.
“How are your classes going?” they asked. John was the younger brother in his family. He had a sister attending medical school to be a brain surgeon. Compared to her, he would always be uninteresting in everything that he did. No one pitied such invisibility.
“They’re fine,” he said. “Hard.”
How fortunate that his parents were the only people on earth that hadn’t seen the video of him shitting himself. What a blessing the technological illiteracy of the old was.
The first couple of games in the Summer League playoffs were blowouts. Summer League Playoffs were nothing like the NBA Playoffs. No long and drawn out suffering. No traveling from city to city. Summer League Playoffs were win or die. Win or go home without a contract and be relegated to the G-League or Europe forever.
John Johnson was still benched. They told him it was to let his bowels rest. They had undertaken a lot of trauma, they said. John didn’t protest. He loved the bench more than anywhere he had ever been before. He was a part of the team without having to touch the ball. All he had to do was yell and cheer and pat some butts and at the end of the day he was rewarded with that big W and got to celebrate like he was the one whose dunk made SportsCenter.
A Summer League championship trophy was starting to feel inevitable. They were a team of destiny, they said in the locker room and it was all due to John’s shit. He didn’t know that anything that could come out of his body could be so powerful. The shit that led a team to victory.
Because John wasn’t a good sports fan, he didn’t know what it was to jinx oneself. He went to the club the night before the big game. Conventional wisdom would state that he jinxed himself by drinking too much leading to a hangover the following day. Jinxes, however, didn’t work using conventional wisdom. No, the mistake he made was not drinking to the point of sickness, the mistake he made was telling everyone about the certainty of their championship while he drank to sickness. There were girls, so many girls and after many minutes of him explaining to them that he was a basketball player on a real basketball team and having one of the other, realer players from the team come over and corroborate his story, they seemed like they might be vaguely interested in making out with him. It was hard to kiss though, when he was screaming “Champion!” over and over again to anyone who would listen.
Things went wrong from the get go. Their best player got in early foul trouble and was benched. The other team, the Boston Celtics, saw an opportunity. They forced foul after foul as they sank a Summer League record of three pointers. Maybe they could’ve stopped such a slaughter on offense if they had been better, more experienced players. Instead it was Summer League and they had John Johnson on their team.
In the third quarter, they were able to cut the lead from twenty to twelve. John was standing up at the bench, gyrating. His emotions were dictating the movements of his body rather than the self-consciousness that normally did. It was the freest he had ever been.
In the fourth, the other team had a four minute dead zone, where it seemed they were incapable of making anything.
“Garbage!” John screamed from the sidelines. “Absolutely garbage!”
Just as it seemed their comeback was complete, their best player fouled out completely. John didn’t know what that meant because John didn’t actually know all the rules of basketball. Suddenly, John Johnson found himself in the championship game of the NBA Summer League and he knew, without any doubt or hesitation, that he was absolutely going to fail.
He wasn’t wrong in this assumption. He let the other team get a three pointer and then he tripped over his own feet and bumped into a player taking a shot in the process, which led to them shooting free throws. Then, with three seconds left in the fourth, John Johnson found himself with the ball in his hands. Three seconds that were simultaneously an eternity and nothing at all.
John didn’t know what to do with the ball. He wasn’t good at dribbling and there wasn’t enough time to pass it. He did the only thing that he could: he launched the ball into the air. The whole crowd was silent as they watched it float slowly, so slowly, towards the basketball. They erupted into screams as it went in.
John Johnson, student at Northwestern South Carolina University, known pants-shitter, had just won a Summer League Championship.
His teammates were so happy that they dumped a cooler of Gatorade over his head, which actually was quite unpleasant. John collapsed to the floor and lay there for several minutes, as he’d wanted to ever since he first stepped on the court. He couldn’t imagine the ways his life was going to change.
As it turned out, the Minnesota Timberwolves weren’t interested in signing him for the regular season. They cut him a check and shook his hand and wished him good luck in the rest of his basketball career. That moment would've been a good moment to tell them that he had never been a basketball player to begin with, but he didn’t want to leave them with bad memories of him and so he said nothing. He got on the plane and flew back to Northwestern South Carolina University.
He was expecting his check to be large, because he knew that NBA players were quite rich and he was disappointed to find that it was only several thousand dollars. He wanted to make it last. He wanted the several thousand dollars to make a momentous difference in his life. Instead he bought a couch and he was quite happy with that purchase until he spilled a two-liter of Mountain Dew all over the cushions. He sat in it regardless. His butt had been in worse places.
Tasha Coryell’s book of short stories, Hungry People, was published by Split Lip Press. She’s also had work published in Pank, Word Riot, diagram, and other journals.