1 The Shot
A diminutive point guard sporting a classic buzz cut slashed his way through a double team with his silky smooth dribbling, cutting through to the free throw line with relative ease, earning the oohs and aahs of the packed crowd.
The defenders he left in the dust with his tight handle, scrambled after him, disregarding everything else as they tried to stop the man way out of their league.
His hawk-like eyes and thick eyebrows knitted as he decided what he wanted to do on the fly.
Because a few feet in front of him, a player more than a head taller than he was, blocked his path to the hoop.
He could try a floater—which he had absolute confidence in— over the man, or he could do the more conventional, but less individually glorious way to close the game out.
Which was a drop pass to the waiting arms of their free big man on the left side close to the hoop, or a kick out to the right to their red hot shooter.
Owing to his wealth of experience earned by playing in more than a dozen different countries—some of which he only knew beforehand from travel websites— he weighed the pros and cons of every possible decision like clockwork.
Once Tremaine Mills got off the ground, Tremaine Mills knew what exactly it was he wanted to do with the rock.
His slight, toned frame got off the ground and into the air, seemingly challenging the big man in front of him, prompting most fans to hold their breaths, or utter words of prayers, for whatever their import point guard was going to do, it would determine who would enjoy the confettis waiting at the ceiling of the arena.
After all, Tremaine's team was down by a precarious point with a second and a half remaining in the game.
This is precisely the moment where heroes are born.
Fortune favors the fool.
"You are 37 now, why are you still chasing a delusional dream you can never reach?"
"Mills, you know that you are our star, we want you here, please don't waste your time on NBA tryouts."
"Mr. Mills, I'm sorry, you are too old to be an asset and an NBA player, we wish you good luck on your future basketball endeavors."
What's wrong with an old man never giving up his dream about one day suiting up for the NBA!
It's the National Basketball Association, after all!
It is the holy grail of basketball. The greatest desire. The final destination.
Every single basketball player aspired at one point in their lives to take part in the greatest league in the world.
Mike, Kobe, LeBron, Steph, Giannis, Luka, who doesn't want to be in the same breath with the greatest?
For Tremaine, being in the same playing field as even the bottom tier guys of the NBA would have sufficed.
One game. One minute. Hell, he'd even take a single touch of the ball!
But he's 37 now...
He stretched his heavily tattooed right hand up, and released the ball in a high arc to avoid the taller defender's lanky, outstretched arms... for the last time as a professional basketball player...
Tremaine's world then slowed to almost a halt.
He felt a sudden sharp pain on his left chest, making him wince, not even a blink after the ball left his hands.
Fine, body, I know I've abused you for long enough, I'm going to retire and give you a lifelong vacation after this...
Whatever happens with this shot, he's gonna be leaving the sport he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into for more than two decades.
Competing with nothing to lose day in, day out. Honing every single basketball skill to his absolute limit for whatever comes next. Wasting the prime of his life inside random gyms in random parts of the world. Joining league, after league, after league, without end. All for the greatest pursuit that never was for him…
Oh what a naive, foolish man I was.
'I wonder what the manager would tell me if I told him I would hang up my shoes after this one?'
Tremaine knew that this might be his backwater, not so significant, version of Michael Jordan's "The Shot."
Tremaine knew his mom was on the stands, watching in amazement as his short, untalented boy competed in the sport he loved until his body gave out.
"Mom, I'm sorry I haven't given you grandkids or a daughter in law. I'm sorry I haven't been a filial child. I'm sorry I'll never be able to repay your grace in this lifetime."
As the ball swished through nylon, and the time expired, the deafening applause and screams of joy and excitement that should have followed the dramatic game winner was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, a loud thud on the hard court ended the celebrations before it even began.
"Wait up, folks, game winning import Tremaine Mills had just collapsed on the floor!"
"What's happening here?"
"Where are the medics!!!"
The pin drop silence was palpable on the sixteen thousand spectators in the arena.
On the big screen above the court, everyone saw the first responding doctor shaking his head, after checking Tremaine's vitals and performing CPR...
Confetti fell like rain as the game winner Tremaine Mills laid there, motionless, not breathing, and with a smile plastered on his exhausted face.
***
The annoying sound of an alarm clock jolted three naked teenagers awake.
Two of them—a tall male and a slim female— shared a single bed, while the other opened his eyes wide in shock, about the situation he's currently seeing from the other bed.
"What in the actual fu—"
"Holy shit what's the ruckus, Tre man! You watched us do it the entire last night!" Tremaine's roommate and his girlfriend stormed out of the room, and into the shower, grabbing their clothes along the way.
Tre sat there, slack jawed, with nothing else to say, the disorientation visible on his face.
'I collapsed, right? After that last floater... I collapsed and... What am I doing here?'
He looked around him, he saw his friend's lame, yet nostalgic LeBron James' signed jersey hanging on the wall, his spanking new college jersey he always showed off...
'This place...'
Tremaine's mind became flooded with memories of his youth, of his doomed first collegiate stint. Everywhere he looked, from the mattress he was sitting on, to the large mirror showing him his close cropped hair, and his barely toned muscles, and to his best friend's girlfriend's underwear on a far corner of the room, to the overly used old Adidas basketball shoes at his feet...
Everything reeked of the scent of youth.
He shook his head at the disturbing fact that was in front of him, he tapped the eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose, to fix it...
'Wait where's my glasses?'
That was when everything came back to him.
He started wearing eyeglasses at the end of his freshman year in his first college. His best friend Deshaun broke up with his first girlfriend Emily after spring break. The LeBron signed jersey was destroyed in a nasty prank by their teammates right after they played their final game of the season. Even this old basketball shoe broke down for good, in one of his final practices in a Fighting Illini uniform.
'Oh, yeah. My uniform.'
He rummaged through the messy closet rack in search of something that would make it clear to him.
Tremaine couldn't find it.
His Fighting Illini jersey was nowhere to be found.
Could it be...
His best friend and his girlfriend got out of the shower in their underwear. His best friend looked at Tremaine's listless, astonished face with curiosity.
"Bro, what the fuck are you doing staring into space like that? Aren't you supposed to be in a rush?" He asked while fetching his girl's stray underwear at the corner.
Tremaine swiveled his head into the direction of his friend's girlfriend. His listless look lingered on the woman that had been a friend with the both of them for a long time.
Her curves, her fair skin, her bleached blonde hair, her honest to goodness smile... but Tremaine removed any feelings of hot bloodedness on his mind instantly.
"Yo man, what the fuck, don't gawk at Emily like that." Protective instincts took over for his friend, in jest. "Wait, shouldn't you be rushing to get to the gym right now instead of peeping?"
Tre shook his head wildly in an attempt to rouse himself from his stupor. 'What is this guy saying?'
"What?" It was the only word he managed to say in the end.
"There's no way you forgot about varsity try-outs, Tre!" Emily smoothly spoke, since she knew everything that goes on with these two. "Basketball try-outs!"
"You're just seventeen, and yet you keep on forgetting the most important stuff." The lovers were already putting on their clothes as Tre slowly rose to his feet... still a little confused about the overall situation.
'No way I returned to the day of the try-outs right?'
Tremaine got slightly teary-eyed upon seeing his old phone, still in its full glory, without unlocking it, he saw the date today.
August 25, 2041.
"Fuck me it's actually the day of fucking try-outs!"
Tremaine moved as swiftly as a freight train, and was out the door in less than two minutes, leaving Deshaun and Emily stunned.
"I sure hope he could join you, in the team, Shaun."
"I know he would, that guy's a fighter."
