Chapter 1

Basketball has dominated my life ever since... well... since I was old enough to remember. Even at the ages of 5 and 6; I was clumsily trying to dribble a basketball on my driveway. Eventually that led to throwing the ball up towards the hoop, and after a while, actually MAKING some shots.

When I wasn't playing basketball, I was thinking basketball, and for that matter, probably eating, drinking and sleeping basketball. At least, the sleeping part I can confirm.

I hated winter with a passion, because with all the ice and snow New England got, I'd lose out on several months of basketball. My only solace was when the local high school, college and pro teams played. There was many an evening that I fell asleep to the rough voice of Johnny Most, as he was "High above Courtside" at the legendary Boston Garden. Bird, Parish, and McHale were my heroes, and Laimbeer, Worthy and Thomas were all names that gave me nightmares. I cheered when the Celtics won, and cried myself to sleep on the rare occasions they lost.

I told my folks that the second I could sign up for local youth league basketball; I'd be there ready to sign up, with or without them. I spent a couple hours a day by myself in the driveway, just dribbling and shooting. My mom claimed she could always tell when I was making trouble; she could tell I was up to something when she couldn't hear the rhythmic bouncing of the ball on the pavement.

My folks were, well, for lack of a better word, AMUSED at my fixation on basketball. They tried to make sure I didn't burn out on it, but they kind of expected me to lose my drive for the game eventually. But more than anything else, they supported me. They knew how much it meant to me.

And then in the blink of a moment, it all changed forever.

Some idiot had taken a car for a joyride, and had panicked when the cops turned on their lights and siren behind them, after they had confirmed that the car had been stolen. He apparently led them on a chase throughout the city, but near the end of that chase he tried to take a turn at too high a speed, and overcorrected, clipping a ten year old boy on the sidewalk that was just walking home from a friend's house, sending him flying 15 feet through the air... Three guesses who that boy was, and the first two don't count.

I guess I really shouldn't complain, after all. The doctor told me that it was touch and go for a while, that if the lunatic had hit me head on instead of clipping me with just a corner of his stolen car, those odds were pretty good that the thief would have been looking at vehicular manslaughter charges instead of the reckless endangerment and vehicular assault to go with the stolen car charge.

But that was not much solace to a ten year old that needed 11 surgeries to piece together a shattered hip and pelvis. I spent six months in bed and a wheel chair, either preparing for a surgery, or recovering from one. One of the things that kept me going in that very difficult and pain filled time was the fact I could look up at my dresser, and lying on top of it, was my basketball. I literally drew strength from that thing. The idiot who hit me had taken so much away from me, so much time (at least from a 10 year olds view point), even school (they home-schooled me for a year rather then have me kept back) and all the pain, but he wasn't going to take basketball from me.

After the surgeries, came the next step, which was physical therapy. More pain, but each time I used the twin guard rails to support my bad leg, and walked from one side of the therapy office to the other, I got a little stronger. It CERTAINLY didn't hurt that my dad offered to get two season tickets to the Celtics if I completed my physical therapy. With motives like that, it was hard to keep me from wanting to go too fast, but the therapist kept me on the right track, slowly rebuilding and strengthening my bad leg.

That October, I was able to get out of the wheelchair I had spent so much time in, for limited periods each day. Instead, I was given a cane, and was encouraged to walk a bit more each day. My first steps with that thing was more like a drunken man's shuffle, as I dragged the injured leg behind me, but it got slowly better. Dad lived up to his word, and was able to come through with the season tickets. We couldn't make EVERY game, but we made well more then half of them, and he never complained about the cost, or the premium parking he got to make sure I didn't over do it with my leg. That was the year that the Celtics went 67-15, so I got to watch the greats at the greatest time ever.

The real turning point with regards to my injury was on a cool late September day. I had finished one of my daily walking sessions, when I sat down on the bed, and looked outside. My dad had finished raking the leaves (he jokingly told me that he couldn't wait until I was healthy again, so I could help HIM with the yard work). I looked outside, and realized that I hadn't been able to play ball since the accident, nearly 14 months prior, and realized with a New England winter quickly approaching, it would be 6-7 months more before the weather would allow it again, and I saw the ball on the dresser.

I made a decision at that moment, and after checking to make sure Mom was still downstairs, taking care of the wash, grabbed my cane from the bed, and the ball from the dresser (Thankfully, it hadn't deflated at all since the last time I had held it), and hobbled toward the front door as quickly as I could. Somehow, I knew that I couldn't let the moment pass.

Heading outside, I weighed the ball in my hands, letting my fingers drift over the raised surface slowly, being very careful not to tip myself over, since I couldn't lean on the cane very well, with the ball in both hands, one on either side of it, committing every bump to memory. Then as my left hand returned to the cane that was propped on my leg and my right hand turned the ball over and pushed downward, and I waited for what seemed like an eternity as the ball ever so slowly succumbed to the forces of inertia and gravity.

I waited, and I was rewarded with the sound that I had been waiting to hear for so long, the ball hitting the pavement with a solid thunk, and returning to my hand. Slowly, hesitantly, I started dribbling the ball in front and to the side of me. No fancy moves, just a kid dribbling a basketball, and not very well, at first, but as I got used to the feel again of the ball coming up to my fingers and then pushing it back down again and again and again, it just felt... well... it felt RIGHT.

It may be a bit clichéd, but I think, that was the moment when I truly started to heal. I didn't have to shoot, didn't have to move, I don't think my legs could have taken it, for once, the feeling of being weak in the knees was NOT because of my injuries! I honestly couldn't tell you whether it was a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours when my mother came running to the door, alerted to the fact that I wasn't resting like I promised by the sound of the ball.

That earned me a scolding the like I hadn't seen for a while. I took it with a smile on my face, however, and I tried to "Yes Mom" and "no mom" and even "Sorry Mom" my way through it, could tell she was really scared that I would hurt myself. I could always tell when she was upset when she strung my full name together and made it one word. So if she was calling me MatthewDavidThomas, I was in a world of trouble. Fortunately, after she wore down, she saw the happiness in my face, and the way my free hand cradled the ball against my hip... and her smile told me how happy she was that I was getting back to doing what I enjoyed the most. But she told me that if I ever disappeared without telling her where I was going, that the door would be locked when I wanted to come in.

Throughout the fall, I managed to get out once or twice a week for a few minutes under the careful supervision of one of my parents, and Mom made sure that I didn't tire myself out too much. And at the end of the month, I got another surprise, as after a year of home-schooling, I would be returning to school next year, which was great, as I missed being around people... My family was great, even my younger sister Kaitlin, but trust me, I wanted to deal with more folks then just my family and my doctors!

The problem was that I had missed sixth grade, and in Holliston, that was the year that folks transferred from the 4 elementary schools to the 1 middle school in town, and I missed out on the year where everyone mixed together and in many cases, set their cliques for the next few years. So, when I returned, I kind of was in an in-between status, as I knew a lot of people, but I didn't have many close friends.

Besides, with a cane and a limp, I was DIFFERENT, which is never a good thing at that age. But I didn't much mind, I had a couple good friends, who even liked basketball, and would listen to me ramble on and on about the game. And I even got Mr. Wilkins, the school janitor to leave the gymnasium unlocked a couple times so I could shoot some hoops at school and not have to worry about braving the elements at my home. I still didn't have the stamina to do it for more then a half hour, but I was grateful for anything

Of course, it wasn't all that good, as I had missed out on one of the things I had wanted to do so much, and that's actually play the game. The doctors told me that eventually, I could be independent of the cane on a semi permanent basis, but they told me it would be years before I could even RUN regularly. Playing the sport competitively was a definite no-go, as far as they were concerned for now. Even once it was fully "healed", which wouldn't be until my growth spurt stabilized, it would still be a little more vulnerable to further injury then my good leg. So, after two years of test after test, and trial after trial, I had finally gotten back to a semblance of normalcy. But my attitude had changed, as a result of my home-schooling.

It used to be that the only books or magazines I'd read had to do with basketball in some way. Even with all the home-schooling work my parents gave me (they were afraid I'd fall behind if they didn't test me with more advanced items than most kids my age would face), there were many hours of the day and night where I was left to my own devices, and I couldn't fill them with working out and TV, so I started picking up books and spent many days reading them. My favorite was still stuff about basketball, but I learned to read authors like Anthony and McCaffrey, and that led to other books.

So I hung out on the outskirts of all the groups at school, and made a couple good friends, including my best friend, Analise Craig. Anna hated being called Analise, and would only let her parents call her that. Anyone else and she would ignore them, with her nose up in the air. She also had the not-so-affectionate nickname of the "Mouth from the South", because she was from Alabama, and because she spoke like a Southerner, even slipping up and saying "y'all" every now and then, a fact that drove our English teacher, Mrs. Dinter, nuts. (If she caught Anna using the words, she'd always remind her that "y'all is not a proper word, Anna". Anna would blush and promise not to do it again, and then a few days later it would happen again!)

But she was another inveterate bookworm, just like me, so we always saw each other in the library during our free periods, or kicking back with a book during lunch. Eventually, I dragged her a little bit out of the shell she had put around herself, and she helped keep me from going insane when my injury was acting up. Soon we were swapping books, with recommendations of which one to read next. We were never boyfriend and girlfriend, even as the whole school discovered that particular phase of life, but we were always friends.

The next couple years saw me going in for a couple follow-up procedures, to make sure I was still healing properly, but all was going well. Anna and I even helped a couple of our friends out, by doing a study group for folks who were having trouble with certain lessons, but we never did their work for them. We just tried to find a new way to explain it to them, or finding a different way to express the issue, and seeing where they took it from there.

Being a brain was one of the worst things that you could be tagged in that school, but somehow, Anna and I never got tagged with that label. In my case, I think a major part was because I was such a basketball freak, and Anna always would tag along with me when I watched a game in the gym (even though she'd spend most of her time reading). But I think the most part was that Anna and I never talked down to the kids who were having trouble, or called them dummies, or what have you. Both of us knew what it was like to be ridiculed, and didn't want to put anyone else in that place.