From the Boston Globe
July 10, 2005

The basketball diaries, revisited:
Memories of playing, and coaching, and learning

By Bill Littlefield

Most sports-related books that claim to teach life lessons are transparently silly. Some are written by wealthy coaches trying to capitalize on gullible nitwits who assume that somebody who has succeeded on the court or the field will know how to fix the stumbling businesses and feckless relationships of people they've never met and have no interest in meeting. Many of these books are full of injunctions such as ''Work harder than the other guy." It's not that this is bad advice, but anybody paying $29.95 for the mantra is probably coming to the lesson too late.

''She's Got Next" is a brilliant and worthy exception, in part because when Melissa King started keeping a journal, she didn't know she was beginning a book in which basketball would figure. Gradually, she discovered that her experiences on the court had things to tell her, and she had sense enough to listen.

Beyond that, she does not preach to her readers. Instead, when she approaches a pick-up basketball game, she invites us to witness what she sees and learns. She observes Plato, Kobe Shoes, Dreadlocks, Double-Pump, and Fair Guy, and we get to listen to the interior monologue as she tries to figure out how she'll do with and against them when somebody in the game turns to her and nods that, yes, she's in.

Among the things basketball on the playground teaches King is that ''generally speaking, quiet players are better than players who talk a lot." Having watched a white guy who ''was especially full of himself, yelling and hollering and doing double fist pumps when he did something good," she concludes that ''it's okay to enjoy your moments, but you don't want to take it too far . . . it's just unseemly, like you're not that great of a player if you're too excited about a good game, or not that smart of a person if you let yourself believe a day's grace is permanent."

The apparently effortless poetry of that last phrase distinguishes King. She cares about how her writing sounds. She also cares about the people she meets during her basketball days, especially the children. Though she is not the least bit sure she'll have any particular facility for coaching, she volunteers to guide a team of 10-year-old girls through a hoop season. Before she can even gather the players together, she learns she's been blessed with an exceptional number of ''gifted little athletes," at least according to the evaluations offered by the parents of same.

In fact, King's charges are perhaps representative. There's one little girl who listens well and can really play. There's one, Brittany, who can't, really, but who manages to achieve an epiphany of sorts when she grabs the ball at the same time that a much bigger girl on the other team latches on to it. (''Brittany looked like a chipmunk wrestling a bear, but she hung on, and when the whistle blew, she let go, a little confused, like she was thinking, Was that me? Did I do that?") There's also a mean-spirited little gangster of a kid who acts out her resentment of the more talented and dedicated girls by throwing the ball out of bounds on purpose each time it comes her way . . . a problem neither Rick Pitino, John Calipari, nor Bob Knight has ever had to face.

Coach King not only teaches these children to play together as teammates, she helps them discover something many older, better athletes never find: the terrific advantage that comes to a player who can relax and feel grateful for the opportunity to play, even -- or perhaps especially -- when the score is tied and time is running out. By smiling her encouragement and calmly talking about fun in the face of tension and a gym full of roaring, red-faced parents, King creates among her players ''a circle of quiet." This is a sublime and mysterious achievement, especially for a rookie coach.

None of this is to suggest that King regards herself as a genius, a guru, or even an especially successful strategist. She's wise enough to recognize that she hasn't always gotten it right. Of one brief series of encounters with a little girl who hung around one of the courts where King used to play, she writes:

''What bugs me now is, I should've taken her to the museum. Probably, we'd have wandered the rooms of the Art Institute, awkward and uninspired in an alien setting, playing roles we weren't accustomed to, relieved as hell when it was over, but that's just probably. I should've taken her, on the outside chance that it could've changed everything."

Rare is the writer of life-lesson-offering books set in sports who acknowledges her own mistakes. Rarer still the coach who concludes that sometimes you have to risk being taken advantage of in order to demonstrate your concern, an assumption based on the recognition that concern for each other is more important than winning, or even outworking the other guy. These are among the qualities that give King credibility when she maintains that ''it's funny how a game can take you to the truth of things sometimes."

Bill Littlefield hosts NPR's ''Only a Game" each Saturday from WBUR in Boston.

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