Happy hoop: Perfect picks, squeaky sneaks

Four or five months ago, just about the time Jack Frost started up his nose-nipping thing in earnest, I started celebrating Maine’s sixth season (in addition to the four you’ll find in the dictionary, many of us also note the arrival of two others: mud … and basketball).

Since then, I’ve piled up the miles, heading to Jonesport and Milo; Burlington and Boston and Newark. Bangor. Orono. Augusta. I’ve been lost. And found. Flown through an ice storm. Driven through a blizzard.

But since November, if there was basketball to be played (and hot dogs to eat, of course), I was ready, bag packed and pen at the ready.

Here’s what I found out:

There are two sides of the basketball world. There’s the good, pure, unadulterated side, where jumpers are always open and refs are always right. We’ll talk more about that side later.

And there’s the artificial, clich?-driven, as-seen-on-TV side. That’s the one people like me fret about when they’re sitting alone in a Comfort Inn in Vermont, pondering life’s big questions.

Among those questions: If there are four “media” timeouts per half of each college game, how come (as a duly recognized member of said media), officials never ask me before they call one?

Sometimes, the game’s pace is a bit too fast for me. Sometimes I get thirsty. Other times I could use a trip to the men’s room. But every time I hop up and down and signal for one of those media timeouts, the refs ignore me.

Another question: Why is it that TV crews can stand in the middle of the court and tell a player to keep shooting jumpers – during pregame warmups, mind you – so they can get a good lead-in shot for their college broadcasts, while you’re not allowed to put one foot on the hardwood in order to dodge a zealous, traffic-clogging security guard?

Why is it that hearing any chant that begins with the words “Nuts and bolts” immediately makes me realize what an idiot I must have been when I was in high school?

And where exactly did Coach Clich?’s kids step up from when they really came to play, you-know-what-I-mean?

Enough of the negative. On the other side are the timeless classics that make people like you and me head back to the gym year after year.

It’s the basic. The squeaks of sneaks on a freshly polished hardwood floor.

It’s the perfect free throw: Three dribbles (or four … or, if you went to John Bapst, none at all). A flex of the knees. A flick of the wrist and that soft, sweet whisper of nylon rippling.

It’s the pulsing drumbeats of a high school band playing the same song that their moms and dads played when they helped carry their team to a victory at the Eastern Maine tourney.

It’s the purity of watching a perfect pick unfold … screener planting his feet an instant before the unsuspecting defender crashes into the human wall nobody warned him about.

It’s recognizing the subtle difference between an amateurish flop and the masterful performance of a player who has figured out the magical trick of how to draw – and sell – an offensive foul.

It’s witnessing the raw emotion that accompanies defeat as players wipe away tears that explain, louder and more clearly than words, what it feels like to work that hard … to get that close … and to come up short. Again.

And it’s looking at the scene that unfolds 50 feet away, as victorious 17-year-olds wait for their teammates to show up so they can collapse into a 15-player pile that all of them will replay … and replay … and replay … on their mind’s VCR for the next 60 years.

Hope you had a happy hoop season. See you next year.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter. His e-mail address is jholyoke@bangordailynews.net