“I invented the game of basketball in the late 1880’s and watched it gain popularity all the way through the early 1900’s and 1910’s. But during the 1920’s the game dipped in popularity as people saw it as only an option to watch or play when there wasn’t any football, baseball, or hockey," Naismith said. "Then with the 30’s came the Great Depression and with the late 30’s came the decline of my personal health. By 1938 I knew I didn’t have much longer to live here on earth. I feared that my death would coincide with the death of basketball. I began losing sleep at night, not about my own death, but about my one true love, basketball, disappearing from gymnasiums and stadiums across the country. That’s when I began building this room. Now obviously, with my ailing health, I couldn’t build this place alone so I called out for the help of my protégé at the University of Kansas, Phog Allen. Together we dug like Fantastic Mr. Fox and the gang and created this underground room, painted completely in white with only two basketball hoops on either side. When the room was finished, my life was nearly finished too. Before I reached the end, I sent out five invitations to basketball greats of the time then came back to the room one more time, falling asleep for good on the middle of the floor. Much to my surprise, I didn’t wake up in heaven nor did I wake up in hell, but instead there I was, sitting here in the form of a basketball. I waited, Oh God did I wait, completely immobile, no arms, no legs, no limbs of any kind for that matter, miserable and unable to even simply roll over. I began to feel cold and alone on the floor. I would stare up at the baskets and long to be flying through them as if I could become apart of the very game I created. And then walked in Phog Allen with five men trailing behind him. They were the five I had sent the invitations to, there was the dazzling passer Nat Holman, lights out shooter Dutch Dehnert, speedy small forward Danny Banks, the Babe Ruth of Basketball John Beckman, and of course the legendary center Joe Lapchick. I watched them walk in and felt a sense of peace come over me. I wanted to laugh so hard when I watched Phog try to explain to them that Dr. James Naismith was sitting right before them in the form of a basketball.
“Well, it’s not exactly the easiest thing to understand,” Kobe replied.
“Exactly,” Naismith said laughing. “So anyways Phog Allen began to retell the guys why they had been chosen.”
‘Naismith believes you five can keep the game of basketball stay alive in a way that he would not be able to,’ Phog Allen explained. ‘He created this room so that no matter how old you five become, you could always come back here and be in your prime, running as fast as ever, shooting the ball as precisely as you ever had. See pickup the basketball over there.’
“The five were reluctant at first,” Naismith explained. “But eventually Joe Lapchick hesitantly reached down and lifted my basketball self into the air. I felt a rush and sense of joy as I finally was off the ground. Then, as quickly as I was lifted off of the floor and into the air, I fell back to the ground as if I were a hot potato scalding the big man’s hands.”
‘What’s the matter?’ Phog Allen asked reaching down to pick me back up.
‘I,’ Lapchick stared at me in half horror and half awe. ‘I can’t, I, I honestly felt like I was standing in front of a packed stadium of fans chanting my name.’
“Phog Allen howled in laughter, and quickly passed me back over to Lapchick,” Naismith continued. “He had me for only a split second then quickly passed me through the air to Banks, Banks, just as shocked at Lapchick dished me quickly over to Beckman. Beckman to Holman, Holman to Dehnert, Dehnert back to Allen and Allen back full circle to Lapchick. I felt like a bird soaring high through the air as the five began to make fancier passes to each other, even beginning to propel me higher into the air, back spinning my way towards the hollowed out peach basket which to them looked like a brand new hoop and net. I would fly through the air, the blank white room spinning around me now looking like a beautiful summer morning in Lawrence, Kansas, the hoop looking like a swimming pool anxiously awaiting my canon ball splash. I disappeared only briefly into the darkness then felt myself free falling through the air, eventually hitting the floor like a peach falling from a branch on a tree only to be picked back up again and tossed back through the air. I felt alive, I was alive, and so to was the game of basketball.”
‘Now you understand,’ Phog Allen shouted in excitement, slapping his knee as he howled in laughter. ‘This room is what basketball did for you your entire lives. No matter where you were, what was going wrong, what pain you felt in your life, you pick up that basketball and everything else disappears. It’s just you and the hoop. Let this room remind you of that feeling, let this basketball forever remind you of the game you love. The game that Dr. James Naismith created.’
“For the next ten years they all came and visited the room religiously,” Naismith said. “I didn’t stay on the ground longer than 8 hours at a time during that stretch. I had never been happier in my life. But then their visits became more and more sporadic. At one point, I spent an entire year laying over there in that corner. Apparently this room made them feel more depressed about the way life was outside of the room, each sprint in the confinement of these walls made their aching joints feel worse outside in the real world, the visions of previous glory surrounding them on these walls made the mundane routines that were their elder lives seem even more boring. Eventually they decided cutting ties with the room was the best way to accept their new lives for what they were. They needed to stop teasing themselves with, ‘fun and games’ and embrace life for how it was in the real world.
But then came 1952 and the surprising death of Speedy Davey Banks. He came into the room looking especially frail and sick, but still wanted one last moment of glory. I wanted to weep as I watched him sprint from one end to the other and then toss me again and again through the hollowed out peach basket. That night he lay in the center of the room his heart beginning to beat less and less. In complete astonishment, I watched as his body too morphed into a nearly identical old school basketball like myself. There we were, two basketballs, sitting alone in a blank white room. I looked over and etched into the side of him were the letters: SF. The other four returned a year later, but when they walked in they were horrified at what they saw. They made the connection between Davey Banks and this basketball then slowly realized that ending up here, alone in a room, as a leather basketball, was not the way they wished to spend eternity.”
‘What if we sacrificed our basketball selves, let them die in this room, but continued one with our normal lives and own eternities elsewhere?’ Holman asked the guys as they began brainstorming ways to get out of this situation. “We separate ourselves from our basketball selves, the point guard Nat Holman dies in this room, but the father, the husband, and every other part of Nat Holman lives on in the real world.’
‘True, we could maybe, I don’t know, leave our basketball shoes in here and vow not to play the game again,’ Beckman chimed in.
‘But what about Naismith and Banks?’ Lapchick asked. ‘We’re just gonna let them sit here forever with the four of our basketball selves, alone?’
‘Hey, sorry to interrupt, did you guys see this: SF on the side of Banks’s basketball?’ Dehnert said lifting the basketball into the air. ‘Isn’t that weird?’
‘What?’
‘It just feels like a basketball,’ Dehnert replied.
‘Well no shit Sherlock,’ Holman replied harshly.
‘No, like it doesn’t feel like a basketball the way Naismith’s did, and there’s no crowd around me, I feel like I’m just holding a basketball in a blank white room.’
Lapchick began to remove his basketball shoes then watched in excitement and slight remorse as they morphed into yet another basketball. This time the etching simply read: C.
‘Interesting,’ Lapchick said picking up his own basketball from off of the ground. The basketball immediately burnt a red circle into the center of his palm. ‘Shit!’ he yelled tossing the basketball down to the ground. ‘Well apparently I really am supposed to let it go.’
“One by one the other three took off their basketball shoes and watched their pairs also transform into basketballs. Lying before them now were six basketballs, labeled: PG, SG, SF, PF, C and the ever-glowing basketball that was myself. At this moment the doors flung open and in walked Phog Allen looking considerably irate.
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