The Four Seasons of Snow

Inside the Real NBA

The Noontime Basketball Association (NBA) is a group of well-meaning individuals at and around Norwich University in Vermont.  They like to play basketball, or play at it I should say. 

The NBA was a major part of my life for ten years.  Three times a week this courageous troupe of professors, administrators, storekeepers and business people from town, and newspaper writers would gather to practice their craft and to generally beat each others’ brains in, both intentionally and unintentionally.  There are several characters among this group that I would like to write about.  I certainly don’t have enough time today to do so.  So I’ll spread it out over a week or so. 

The first character we will refer to is “Hairy Dave”.  Hairy Dave was as disgusting of a creature as God has ever put on this planet.  Our children were the exact same ages, and we were on the Cabinet together at Norwich, so we had many, many occasions beyond the NBA to experience each other’s company.  But it was in the NBA that I grew to love – and hate – this truly Neanderthalian descendant. 

I refer to him as Hairy Dave because he was, well, hairy.  He had hair on every square inch of his body except where it was most important…his head.  On his head there was a shiny planet-like glow of such epic proportion that when the sun hit it, the reflection would throw satellites off course.  The hair and lack of hair were both impediments to guarding him, for obvious reasons.  Another impediment was the sweat.  Hairy Dave was like a garden hose with no o-ring.  He just leaked water out of his body, sometimes spraying passersby in an obvious attempt to throw off their game.  This sounds utterly disgusting, and it is.  One time Hairy Dave hugged my daughter after a particularly hot summer basketball game.  It was the single most disgusting moment in her life.  She has feared middle-aged men ever since, and we had to get her therapy.

Hairy Dave was a terrific defender.  That is because if you beat him off the dribble, he would just tackle you to the ground.  His knees and elbows are the size of 10-pound hammer heads, and just as hard.  When he boxed you out for a rebound, his hip bones would lacerate your midsection.   But I can honestly say that despite all of these harmful qualities, I hurt him more than he hurt me.  The first week that I played with the NBA’rs, I broke his nose.  Quite innocently, I can assure you.  A year later, I did it again.  One year later, I sprained a ligament in his knee.  By year 5, it got to a point of such great mutual destruction that we developed an unspoken rule between us that we would always be on each other’s team.  And we were.  He would never leak on me again.

Hairy Dave was, and still is, a beast.  He’s also one of my best friends. 

Next time I’ll share another story about the NBA and one of its Hall of Fame members.