He is an expert low dribbler, and in the middle of his moves, especially when he puts the ball behind his back, he sometimes seems to sit for an infinitesimal moment on an invisible chair. He has a center of gravity somewhere just above his knees and the coördination of a jazz drummer. One way to illustrate basketball’s cosmic, planetary nature would be to describe the game as played by the point guard Kyrie Irving. these days is referred to as “pace and space.” A player with the ball in his hand is his own solar system of gravity and velocity. The most popular style of play in the N.B.A. The climax of every play involves a sphere, usually in rotation, entering a circle, its own brief eclipse. The ball itself, often seen spinning on the tip of a finger, is the size of a globe. There are lots of sports that involve a round ball, but basketball is the most cosmic and planetary. I have always loved this line for its lordly belligerence (“You bore me,” it seems to imply) and because I feel it holds a profound truth about the game. Journalists crowd him asking locker-room questions: “How did you do it?” “How did it feel?” “What were you thinking?” After a brief pause, Gervin responds, “The world is round.” One of my favorite basketball anecdotes involves George (Iceman) Gervin sitting in the locker room, sometime in the late nineteen-seventies, after hitting a game-winning shot.
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