Page 6 of On Merit Alone

Chapter Four

Merit

Ignoring Ira King was like ignoring a hot air balloon passing overhead. You couldn’t not look at it. Marvel at the ingenuity. Take in the beauty. In my case however, he was like an airplane ripping through the sky. Loud and disruptive and impossible not to hear.

Ever since the night he decided to bless me with his presence and advice, I couldn’t get him—no, what he said out of my mind.

Honestly, the nerve of that guy. How dare he try to tell me how to do my job? How arrogant. How self-important to think I wanted his advice.

He might also be one of the highest-scoring point guards in Defenders history.

He might have been a top performer in the organization as a whole and one of the biggest names to grace the game since the early two-thousands.

He might even be the man who came back from the exact same “career-ending injury” that I was attempting to come back from now.

But you know what? So was I.

As of my last playing season, I was the top scorer in WNBA history. I was the highest percentile player to ever compete in the women’s game. And I was the highest-ranked pick to ever come into this goddamn city.

Just because the general public had a propensity to highlight men's accomplishments on a way larger podium than they did for women didn’t actually make him more important than me. It didn’t mean he was better than me and didn’t give him the right to give me advice.

The media must have truly gotten to his head for him to think himself so amazing that he was automatically the voice of all things basketball. Wrong! A good player didn’t automatically make a good coach. It took a good eye, good instincts, and the ability to deliver a message to be a good coach.

I knew that…

So why couldn’t I get what he said out of my head?

Two games had passed since Mr. Tall-and-Annoying graced me with his opinion in the gym.

Two more losses. We were officially O-and-five on our record and headed into a very tough matchup.

We couldn’t afford to lose any more games.

If we were going to turn things around, we really needed to win this one.

And while I was supposed to be thinking of something to say to my team right now, something inspiring and motivating and fitting of the goddamn team captain, I could do nothing but replay those same stupid words in my head.

You start to bend weird… You favor one side… throwing your whole rhythm off.

“Holy shit… they did it,” a voice said, cutting through my spiraling thoughts and bringing my attention back to the present.

Blinking up, I noticed basically my entire team on the other side of the locker room, huddled around someone’s shoulders as they looked at a phone screen. “They tied it again .”

I immediately rolled my eyes.

“They” were none other than the Defenders. And what they’d done was comeback from a losing streak to tie the score in the third round of the playoffs.

I had to admit it was pretty impressive of them to be down three to nothing in a seven game series and comeback and tie it. My newfound rivalry with their star player aside, even I could admit that was a difficult thing to do, especially when the game to tie them took place in the opponent's house.

The fact didn’t stop the annoyance from slipping under my skin as I lifted myself off the bench and started toward my teammates. “Alright, guys. C’mon, let’s focus and huddle up before Coach gets in here.”

I tried to rally them, but not a soul listened to me. They just continued watching the phone. Emily, in the middle, held it up a little higher and said, “Cap, come look at this.”

My eyes rolled once more as I rounded the back of the group and stepped onto a bench to see over some of the tallest of us standing at six-four and six-five.

I let my hands fall to the shoulders of Dylan, a six-foot, five center from Nebraska and Donna, a post from Russia as I leaned over the girls.

While I wouldn’t call these ladies my friends exactly, I would definitely liken them to something like sisters—at least when we were in these uniforms. I didn’t actually have anyone close enough to be my sister outside the confines of this organization.

Which is why I was totally comfortable using them as a balancing beam.

Them too, as they both wrapped an arm around my back and absorbed me into their little huddle.

Focusing on the phone propped up in the middle in Em’s hands, I watched the National Sports Channel highlight the men’s game in San Francisco.

They started off down in the first half.

King and Rogers, the star pairing, had no groove and were giving away shots and turnovers left and right.

The team wasn’t clicking, and in the sixth game of the series, they were starting to look sluggish.

Whoever was working the camera seemed to be zooming in on Ira King’s profile a lot.

As he ran up and down the court, as he took a shot, as he walked away from the sidelines with his hands on his hips and his head down low.

Decked out in the Defender white and red, and a compression sleeve running up the length of his shooting arm.

I also noticed the brace that bracketed his left knee.

His injured knee . The one that apparently made him an expert on knees and the correct way to bend them.

Cue more eye rolling.

It was like whoever this camera operator was had my own personal torture in mind. There was barely any footage of the rest of the team. Every other clip was Ira, Ira, Ira. It was annoying me for more than the obvious reason—because he was annoying.

No. It was annoying because, as I watched it, I started to notice things that weren’t annoying.

Like how focused he looked as he stared down the court before the whistle blew.

How his free throw ritual consisted of exactly one movement—a singular bounce of the ball before he lined up and took his shot.

How he was the first to every one of his teammates who went down, offering a hand to pick them up.

As the clip rolled on, I tried to imagine how the calm man who had spoken to me first, not once but twice, fit into this high-pressure, high-performing team. Both times he’d spoken to me, he seemed so laid-back, so calm and collected and unbothered.

As a certified very bothered individual, I found it unnerving. I couldn’t imagine how that attitude translated into such successful results. Where was his urgency?

It wasn’t until the clip played out its last seconds, showcasing the Defenders fighting back from a ten point deficit and King sinking a basket at the last possible second of the game, that I saw it. We all did.

Some things in life you want so bad you’re willing to do almost anything for them.

You work hard, you do the right things. You get some small wins and win some you knew you would accomplish.

And then there are those times where something amazing happens.

You have no idea what will ensue, you have no idea what the plan God has laid out for you might be—but you know what you want, and you work like crazy to get it.

You let muscle memory take control. You don’t think, you just do. You enter a zone.

And then you win.

Ira was in his zone. Jump shot, layup, hook shot. One after the other after the other until… bam. Three pointer at the buzzer. And you know what he did? He erupted.

It was more than just a celebration of victory—fists clenched tight to his sides as he let out a bellow of triumph and relief.

It was a culmination of hard work and struggle and ups and downs and wins and losses and the want of something so bad, you’d maybe shave off a couple years of your life just to have it.

It was a battle cry, a victory chant, a declaration of war.

It was a microscope into his mind—his heart.

Despite his even-keel demeanor, he was raging inside. Just like I was .

Bend weird… favor one side… rhythm off.

I bit my lip, contemplating his words in a new light. I’d just lost three games in a row, and he’d just won three. There was a chance that he could know what he was talking about.

Usually, when I got stuck, I tried to listen to Grandpa’s voice in my head.

But lately, I haven't been able to hear it like usual. I’m not sure if it was because of time or if the loneliness of only hearing my own thoughts was catching up to me, but the spot where he used to be was vacant more often than not.

Other than my own thoughts and the phantom whispers of Grandpa in my head, Ira’s voice was the first one to stick with me in a long time. It wasn’t like his advice was to change up my entire style of play. It was small, minuscule even. If things were tight, I could just try it.

Moments passed. Not everyone was silent, and no one person reacted the same, but one thing was abundantly clear. I didn’t need to say anything to pump us up. We didn’t need words to convince us to go play our hearts out.

Because Ira King had just shown us how.

I refused to admit that his advice worked.

I refused to admit it toward the end of the second quarter when I made sure to pace myself so as not to gas out.

I refused to admit it when I took extra time to focus on my knees before a free throw… and I made it.

I refused to admit it when we took the lead early in the third and ran away with it in the fourth, leading us to a relatively easy road to our first victory of the season.

I refused to admit it.

I refused.

But as I sat on my couch at the end of the night, showered and snuggled under my favorite blanket. The TV on, but muted. The Denver Defenders’ game highlights were what played. This was probably the third time since I’d been home that Ira King was filling my screen.

And even though my mind was strong enough to deny him, my subconscious was not. Because here I was on my phone looking at the same highlight saga I’d been watching on repeat all day in article form.

I scrolled through the words, skimming the recap as I scoured for details I hadn’t already seen.

There were none.

There was something, though. At the bottom of the article was a photo album. Most of the shots were of the Defenders during their game. A lot of them were of Ira and his right-hand man, number twelve, Rogers. But two of them specifically caught my eye.

One was of that moment. The one we’d all seen before our own game, of Ira losing himself to the competition and screaming out in triumph as he clenched his fists in celebration. And the other was an image that once again gave me a chilling sense of motivation.

Ira—half-shaded as he headed into the tunnel after the game but half-visible in the bright lights of the arena—had his fist raised high in the air. Steady, like a flag post. Victory evident but not boisterous as he herded his team out with a win.

I downloaded both.