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But the entire gym erupts in cheers, the crowd chanting my name. It is just two points scored midway through the third quarter in a regular-season game. Game day comes, the point guard gets the ball into my hands, and I position the ball between my legs before hurling it upwards. I just couldn’t do it.” Even though I haven’t heard this explanation in 1988, I struggle with the same sentiment.Įventually, however, my desire to make a basket overwhelms my fear of judgement.
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“I know I was wrong, I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. “I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded,” he said.
#WILT CHAMBERLAIN UNDERHAND THROW FREE#
Much later in his career, Chamberlain explained why he only shot underhand for one season, and reverted to the less accurate overhand free throw afterward. I know he is right, but am not sure I can find the courage to shoot granny-style in a game where all of my teammates and classmates from school will be watching. I blush hard at the suggestion to shoot underhand, dribble a basketball against the white linoleum flooring of the gym, and stare at the black curve of the key instead of making eye contact with Mr. It is my way into a world where I otherwise don’t seem to belong. I do, but basketball is more than just a sport to me.
#WILT CHAMBERLAIN UNDERHAND THROW TV#
I play the sport constantly, watch it obsessively on the TV in our basement, rock my turquoise and purple Charlotte Hornets jacket daily, and not simply because I love the game. Some of the Indian kids who live in the city of Charleston emulate their wealthy white classmates, picking up tennis or golf as entry points into American culture.Īs for me, I choose basketball. The only Indian boy at my elementary school, who all of the white kids either think is my brother, or insist I should date, speaks with an exaggerated twang, drinks heavily through high school, and loudly votes Republican later on. How do you assimilate into the dominant culture when your own culture is so invisible to the majority? My small group of Indian peers and I answer this question in different ways. Raised by fathers who were players of the game, taught to play at driveway hoops as soon as they could walk, they can shoot overhand. But at age 9, this feels like yet another way in which I am being set apart from my peers. In my adult life, I have listened to entire podcasts about the accuracy of the granny-style shot, about how Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in the one game where he shot free throws underhand, and Rick Barry’s career free throw percentage was a chart-topping 89.3 because he opted to do the same. “Wilt Chamberlain shot underhand.” His blue eyes, magnified by round, wire-rimmed glasses, probe mine. “Some of the greatest basketball players of all time shot underhand, Neema,” Mr. “Granny-style,” my teammates disparagingly call it. Not overhand, as I’ve been trying to, but underhand. Bradford proposes that I shoot the ball a different way. I love the game, but I am about as far from a natural talent as my parents’ hometown in India is from this gym. When I play defense, my teammates say I look like a praying mantis, my hands weaving in front of me instead of out to the sides. When I shoot the ball overhand, it falls short of the basket by several feet. Still, my Indian genetics make me short, weak, and terribly uncoordinated. By opting to play, I take a step further away from my nuclear family, and closer to my West Virginia community. Basketball is not a sport my immigrant parents understand, and the parental time commitment it requires is not something their lives leave space for. In doing so, he also takes on the responsibility of chauffeuring me to and from practices and games. Bradford doesn’t have to pick me, but he does anyway. The question is simply which coach will choose to take them on.Įach girl is selected for a different team. Every kid is guaranteed a space on a team. “Try-outs,” in this pre-AAU, pre-hyper-competitive era, involve dribbling up and down the court, shooting two lay-ups and a couple of foul shots. In 1988 in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, there is no designated league for girls, and when I try out one Saturday in October, there are only two other girls in the gym with close to 80 boys. His sons are two of the quickest, highest-scoring players in our local league. Why has Carl Bradford chosen me for his team? I wonder about this. The only brown kid on a team of white boys, my puny arms, thick glasses, and long, oiled braid setting me even further apart from their wiry, muscular bodies and cropped blond haircuts. I am 9, the only girl playing on an all boys’ basketball team. I stand on the foul line at the Cross Lanes Methodist Church gym.