#4: The shot.

Similar to my comment regarding the Beatles in the previous post, I've loved sports just about as long as I can remember.  My first love was baseball.  I played little league and, at least for a kid my age, I was pretty damn good (or so my memories tell me).  But on May 7, 1989, a new sport grabbed a hold of me, replacing the game played by the boys of summer as my new favorite pastime.

The sport is basketball.  The event that particular spring day is simply known as "The Shot."  I had been a passing fan of basketball for a couple of years previous and had slowly learned the nuances of the game, like all other sports, from my father.  I recall the Lakers winning it all in '87 and then Pat Riley predicting they'd repeat the next year--which in fact they did thanks in part to Isiah Thomas's sprained ankle.  But "The Shot" was the culmination of those few years as well as the culmination to a game and series.  Also, it was the springboard for what many would say is the greatest individual career in American team sports.


By 1989, Michael Jordan had already solidified himself as the new face of the NBA, taking the torch held by Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.  He was already a global star--featured in those great Nike commercials with Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon.  Yet for the most part, he was still a great player on a young team that had yet to accomplish anything.



That changed in the first round of the 1989 NBA Playoffs, when his Bulls played the heavily-favored and heavily-talented Cleveland Cavaliers.  The league was already put on notice when the young Chicago team took Cleveland to a deciding fifth game.  And what a game it was--multiple lead changes in the final minutes, three such occurences in the last six seconds alone.

I remember it vividly.  When Jordan hit that second-to-last jumper, I was celebrating, stupidly thinking there was no way Cleveland would score a bucket with only six seconds left.  Then I sat there dumbfounded when Ehlo scored.  "How could they let a guy (an inbounder) sprint to the front of the rim virtually uncontested for a layup?" I thought to myself.  Then when Jordan got the ball for that final play and let it go just above the charity stripe, somehow I knew it was going in.  He had made everything look so easy before that, that if he got a clean look anywhere inside the arc, he had to make it.  Only in retrospect, did I realize that it was a tougher shot.  He was drifting left (though looking at video shot from behind, he's remarkably balanced for how quick he had to make that move).  He also had to double-clutch with Ehlo right in his face.



The Bulls were eventually eliminated by the Pistons, who would go on to win the title that year.  But Jordan got his two years later; and then of course five more throughout the 90s.  The following fall, a brand new team came to my backyard, the Orlando Magic.  I finally had a professional sports team in my city and I never looked back.  But the magnificent obsession with the game of basketball came from the greatest shot made by its greatest player.