One of my mentors once shared with me a metaphorical riff about a man trying to get out of a bar that was filling with smoke. He closed it with, “If there’s a back door that’s unlocked, the man who knows about it won’t have the same urgency to run away that the others who are climbing all over one another to get out of the front door do.” I was young and stumped when I’d asked him how to get my big-toe-dippers to decide to go all-in.  Speaking in riddles was coach’s preferred mode of communication, painting a picture ripe for interpretation was his jam. He had wanted to demonstrate a potential solution as much as I had yearned for direction. My question and his answer met in a field of never-forget.

Nobody writes much anymore. I’m not talking about novels or short stories or how-to-make-a-million-dollars-while-you’re-getting-your-nails-done books. I’m talking about writing –the physical act. WITH a pen or pencil (or crayon.)  ON a piece of paper. TO communicate. 

We have other, less cumbersome means.

Baked into the once translucent backboard in index finger printing, “GEORGE WAS HERE” lives loud and proud. The lonely hoop in the driveway is faded orange and rusting out. A raggedy net, two-toned by grime, hangs half attached, the whole thing looking tired and worn, but happy. Like it did what it came to do.

And oh, what it has done.

Thirty years and sixty-six days separate our best and worst of times. April 19, 1995, and June 23, 2025, aren’t so much bookends for our state as they are markers. Evidence of capacity. Dotted lines where creases changed the way we see ourselves.

Sports. Some people can’t live with them. Some can’t live without them. Some don’t even know they’re going on. Regardless of how you feel about athletic competition, the sports field is fertile ground for finding things out.

These are my current top five sports books that are about so much more than sports.

Michael Greller, a former 7th grade math teacher, carries the bag for Jordan Spieth. This past weekend at the U.S. Open at Oakmont (a brutal course which forces golfers to zig and zag—and throw clubs . . . and hit backward . . . and curse the rough and kick the sand . . .), he averaged walking around seven miles per eighteen holes. That’s a 28-mile weekend by the time the sun set on Father’s Day.  And that’s just the steps Greller took in front of the galleries and cameras while lugging a 40-pound weight over his right shoulder. It doesn’t count the daily pre-round super sleuthing or the trips to the range and back or the post-round data collection for the upcoming day.  How many steps he trod, only his Fitbit knows. 

Such is the way of life for a caddie, the world’s most incognito athletes whose profession is a masterclass on how to make a difference while staying out of the way.

Doors that aren’t closed are open. Even though they might look like they’re not. But what do you do with a sliver so slight that it mocks you in real time? 

The answer is simple but not easy. Find a way to hang around.

Coach said simply, “These guys are uncommon.”  Multi-colored confetti was still floating as a sea of cameras clicked on the boys standing just behind the logo in the center of the floor. The sweaty, happy hoopers looked like a band of brothers who had just run the court on the asphalt at the corner of 13th and Shartel. That they were and that they weren’t. Therein lies the beautifully juxtaposed magic of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA’s newly crowned Western Conference Champs.