Spectator Sport: Outdoor Basketball

                I was playing basketball there. An opened-air, hard-floor basketball court that was covered by a roof, with a soccer field to one side of it, a parking lot on the adjacent side, and a place to just sit around on the opposite side. I loved playing basketball here. It was late in the afternoon and I was going to go home soon. I had been playing for about 3-4 hours. I lost track of time because all I was thinking about was putting the ball that I had in my hands into the orange rim that hung off the plastic backboard. It takes practice to get better at shooting, and practice is what I was going to do to get better at it. I'd been coming here to train for about three or four years now. I would usually hang around after practice to work on some of my skills. Then he walked in.

               A guy about 5"9 that was in really good shape to play basketball. He had black hair and his face looked like he was Asian American. I was quite indeterminate about his name or who he was. He went to the sitting area and changed his shoes to his Jordan basketball shoes, which were not so appealing. His shoes didn't have much color in it and looked very bland. He started shooting around at the other end of the court, opposite to where I was. He was sinking in every one of his shots. Seeing that motivated me to try to be a better shooter. He started doing some drills and practiced his crossovers and ball-handling. He had amazing ball-handling skills and had great crossovers, almost like Allen Iverson. Although it wasn't dubious at all that he was a better player than me. It was already categorical to me that he was a phenomenal player.  He kept practicing for about ten more minutes and he shouted over to me and asked me if I wanted to play one-on-one or not. I accepted the offer and we played. He was an amazing offensive player, but he wasn't so great on defense though. We played a game to eleven and he ended up beating me 11-9 since I was so tired from playing from the past hours. He had a respectful demeanor. I wasn't going to ever let him beat me again, but I was apprehensive about the next time we would play against each other again, if we ever did. Then we both went home. 

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