in the white American middle class of small midwestern towns and
the way the game was played in urban, black Philadelphia. The
first difference was a big one. At home we had always gone by the
rule that when your team makes a basket, the other team gets the
ball.

In Philadelphia it was just the opposite. I passed off to my team-
mate, he made the shot, and we kept the ball. This game, new to me,
was called Make it, take it. With these rules, the team that started
making shots could get on a roll and win without ever losing the
ball. The rule was disconcerting to me and had the effect of making
the game more intense -- you had to be better on defense to block
the other team's shot, and you had to get the ball in order to stop
their momentum and start your own. At the same time there was
all that incentive to make your own shot because you had the ball
again immediately.

They were playing at playing, and I could not quite push myself
into the style of what they were saying and doing. One of the main
differences between their kind of play and mine was that they
obscured the score so no one could keep track of the amount by
which a team was winning or losing. That little byplay always kept
the margin of difference between the two scores small, but I was
pretty sure my man and I were winning by a good bit.

Playing basketball while growing up, my friends and I had
learned how to work on our shots. We would first practice a jump
shot from the keyhole, then stand and pump in free throws, and
after that try two-handed or one-handed shots from various fixed
positions on the floor. Then we would practice dribbling, first driv-
ing to the left using the left hand, next driving the other way with
the right. Each fake, each type of shot -- whether jump shot, set
shot, or layup -- was a single Cartesian piece. We only assembled
the pieces when we started a game.

For my Philadelphia teammate and our two opponents, it was,
conceptually, a different game. There were no discrete moves, no
special, bracketed shots. It was as if the game was a continuous flow
from the beginning to the end; the entire repertoire of adventurous
tactics -- dribbling, driving, shooting, passing, faking, running a
play -- formed an unbroken performance, sometimes successful,
sometimes not. It did not particularly matter. The score was no
longer paramount; instead, the emphasis was on performing when
one received the ball, not as an isolated star, but within an organic
flow of self and other, ball and basket, depending on the oppor-
tunities of the very instant.

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