I was immediately marked out as a spectator and not a player.
When my cousin Maura threw me into a game of pick-up basketball with her boyfriend John in Queens, New York.
Basketball had always been a novelty game for milk bottle white Scotsmen whose only connection with the game was The Harlem Globetrotters.
Until I got to America.
And saw the importance of the game on that visit to see my cousins in New York and then four years later in Boston.
Where I would pass by the statue of Boston Celtics’ legendary coach Red Auerbach.
Outside Quincy Market at Faneul Hall where I was a bus boy at GuadalaHarry’s and ice cream salesman at a parlour.
Anyhoos I had myself my basketball team.
And despite warming to all the teams in North American cities I’ve passed through in the years since.
The New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors, Denver Nuggets, Washington Wizards, Philadelphia 76ers, Memphis Grizzlies, LA Lakers and Clippers, Miami Heat and Orlando Magic.
I was a Celtics fan. Which wasn’t a huge jump from my young days following a football team, Celtic in Glasgow.
This was my year for my long-awaited return to Boston 33 years but COVID has stalled that on the plate.
When I would also fulfil an ambition I didn’t even know I had.
To walk the Fenway Park Green Monster perimeter where I’d seen the Red Sox hit their home runs that 1987 season.
The NBA play-offs are playing out in a DisneyWorld bubble in Orlando.
And you should catch it on whichever channels you pick up.
MEET YOU ON THE COURT
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