Sugar Foot
When I was in middle school I was obsessed with basketball. I collected basketball cards, watched any and every NBA game, and pestered my dad to eventually put up a hoop in our cracked and slanted driveway so I could practice night-and-day. My junior high basketball coach, Dan Smith, to all of us kids, was a basketball-god in human form, had played ball until a knee blow-out and surgery, marked by a scar that went from his thigh to the top of his shin. One day at a practice, he invited a friend from his college days, Lorenzo Williams, to briefly visit our school.
If you aren’t fully versed in late 90s basketball minutia, Williams went undrafted in 1991 but was picked up by the MOST 90s team ever in 1992: the Charlotte Hornets. He was playing for what were then the Washington Bullets when I met him. To a bunch of young basketball fans, it was hard to comprehend meeting an NBA player. They were just images on the TV, and didn’t seem entirely real. Even if the Bullets, and shortly after renamed the Wizards, weren’t a very popular team—it didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t the Clippers. In the 90s, if you wanted to insult someone on the playground, you might say they weren’t good enough to sit on the Clipper’s bench.
Me and my sister standing next to Coach Dan Smith and his family.
He didn’t hang around the court long, but did start signing some autographs for anyone who wanted. Most were on pieces of lined notebook paper with the unperforated scraps still frayed to the left side, pulled right out of the spiral. I did the same, at first, but then concocted the sort of idea that only a seventh grade, middle-class, short-for-his-age punk would think of. I took out a pen and signed my name to the page. When I handed it to him, my coach asked, “What’s this, Noley?”, and I confidently shot back, “This is my autograph, for when I get to the NBA someday.” Both Lorenzo and Coach Dan burst out laughing, but I didn’t feel embarrassed. Their laughter wasn’t cruel, only surprised. Williams shook my hand and said, “Hey, kid, you’ve got some charisma.” I had to ask later what that meant.
You should know, I wasn’t a very good basketball player. I wasn’t even the best on my team, much less in possession of the kind of latent physical potential to one day play in the NBA. Upon reflection, as I grew up, I realize the incredible difficulty, hard work, talent and even luck that it takes to play at the NBA level—even if it is for the “worst” team in the league. In fact, I didn’t even make the first basketball team that I tried out for.
Coach Dan Smith was over all the sports teams at our little private school in Ocala, Florida, and my first memory of him, in the fifth grade, two years before making him laugh with Williams and my autograph, was being sent to the office when I threw a volleyball at another kid’s head and then wouldn’t listen to him telling me to apologize. That was our introduction. After that rocky start, I went out for the soccer team, a sport that I barely knew even existed, solely because all of my closest friends were trying out. I made the team. Everyone did.
That soccer season, in my memory, was a lot of fun. As I learned how to dribble the ball and ran drills, I quickly picked up the nick-name “sugar foot” from coach Dan, when it became obvious in shooting drills that, no matter how much force I intended to put behind the kick, the ball would barely roll into the goal—if it did at all. These drills were without a goalie. However, I had boundless energy, and didn’t really mind smashing my 95-pound body into other people, so I fit in nicely as a mid-fielder. Only on the right side of the field though, because as useless as my kicks were, my right footed kicks were, at least, marginally better than the sad excuse for what happened when my left foot connected with the ball.
Me (The titular Sugar Foot) and Jonathan Tony to my right.
When soccer season ended, my friends started talking about basketball tryouts. Coach Dan handed out a flier at the last game. I knew only slightly more about basketball than I did soccer, as that was my first organized sport involvement. All that was in my mind were the away-game bus rides, the after-school practices, the feeling I got by running as hard as I could, until I was exhausted, and then usually jumping into my pool at home with some friends. I wanted that to continue. So, I tried out.
I don’t remember anything about the tryout itself, but I do remember all of us mostly fumbling our way through it on not to widely different levels of ability. The taller kids certainly had the most advantage, and had the easiest time scoring and rebounding over the rest of us. In my mind, things were going to go the same as before. Everyone would make the team. But, as you already know, soccer teams are bigger, need more active players, and have a lot more flexible space than basketball. So, it came as quite a heart breaking shock to me when I didn’t make it.
You’ve probably seen the TV episode or the movie scene before, where the kids line-up to look at the list posted on the wall. I imagine it comes from a generation of people, now-writers, pulling from these early experiences of disappointment. And I was disappointed. I don’t think I had even felt this type of emotion before that moment. Rejection. Not being good enough. Left behind, left out. Failure. The sting was sharp and bitter. The loss of something I didn’t possess. It was more vacuous than the loss of something tangible and present.
The list had been posted on Coach Dan’s office/equipment room door in the morning before first bell. After I read it, I couldn’t immediately walk into class, and let everyone else see the red evidence of my shortcoming in my eyes. I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, taking slow heavy breaths to suppress my disappointment, when my best friend Jonathan Tony, who’s name I had read on the list, came in and seemed surprised to find me there. To his enduring credit, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s ok, man.”, and it was.
That year I didn’t make the 5th grade boys basketball team at F.A.C.S. shaped something powerful in me, something that has followed me the rest of my life. I went to every basketball practice I could, to what I assume was the annoyance of my friends, and sat on the bleachers listening and watching. I wanted to absorb as much as I could. I rented VHS tapes from Blockbuster of old NBA highlights, borrowed a “Pistol” Pete Maravich tape from the library called Homework Basketball, and practice my ball handling exercises until I built up blisters on my hands and fingers. Every single day I told myself that I was going to make the team next year, and be the best. Nothing short of that would be accepted.
Me to the left and Jonathan Tony at center.
In my first game on the team in the 6th grade, an away game, it felt like the biggest moment of my short, privileged life. We played behind the whole game. I can remember it so clearly. How, after every whistle that blew, I thought Coach Dan was going to sub me out. But he didn’t. By the fourth quarter, I had played every single minute—all of them a blur. Broken plays. Hustling for rebounds. Fighting tooth and nail for every bucket. We were still losing. Of all the things I can’t remember about that night, the one solid thing I do: how I wasn’t even thinking. Every move felt like a reflex action. Including when the final buzzer played and we lost.
As you can imagine, that little shrimp of a kid took it pretty hard. Later that season, Coach Dan, frustrated with me in a practice snapped at me, “I thought I had something that first game. But you still haven’t let it go.” His words seem cruel today, but I was always one to argue with him at practice, and I know that’s why he said it. It might be difficult to understand just reading this, but I always knew that he cared about me and wanted the best for me and the whole team of kids. But from then on I was afraid to lose. I played like it ever since. That’s something else I’ve carried with me.
My final year under Coach Dan Smith, he took a job at a different private school. When I heard the news, that same feeling I had the day my name wasn’t on the team roster returned. Another future emptied in my heart. The way a kid sees every moment turning the world upon a new axis, unable to realize it doesn’t all center around themselves. After that, my interest in basketball, as a thing I did, began its slow decline. By the time I made my freshman high school team, other things grew up and into its place. After my first practice at Forest High School with Coach Koff, I tendered my resignation in a handwritten letter, delivered to his mail slot in the main office. As much as it was fully my decision, I couldn’t face that new coach, because a part of me still felt like a failure as I traded sports for music and joined my first band as a keyboardist.
Lorenzo Williams and I shared a hometown: Ocala. We even went to the same high school, sadly, I never made it to the NBA in time before he retired. However, I did attend one of his basketball summer camps at a local college. He played for eight different teams during his career. His best season was with the Dallas Mavericks in 94’-95’ where he started 81 out of 82 games. Though he only snagged about 4 points a game—defensively, he was pivotal. Just shy of 7 feet, he averaged almost 2 blocks for the year. If you don’t know anything about basketball stats, that’s pretty damn good. “Small ball” was not a thing like it is today, and size was seen as everything.
Williams never played with a team that I particularly followed, but I remembered him, the handful of times his name popped up on the TV while I was watching a game. Each time, that day would come back to me, standing in line on our blue and gold painted court. I would remember the way he taught me the word “charisma” and what it meant. The way he seemed taller than the Florida sun at noon. The unfettered laughter of a giant. The way he could’ve made me feel small or like the dumbass kid I was—but didn’t.
Me and Coach Dan Smith
Coach Dan and Lorenzo Williams
