A crow is a black bird. Steve Blake is a white professional basketball player. The two are opposite colors and are not the same species yet their journey is identical and, perhaps, universal: flying, whether through the air or on the court, can result in tough landings.
An obvious comparison
I was engaged in conversation with Blazers General Manager Kevin Pritchard, because we are close friends and work together and often drive around in my car, when I heard the sound that every driver doesn’t want to hear. You know the one. Splat. It could be death. And it could be at your hand. And you’ve got to remain cool because Kevin Pritchard is watching and because the car you’re driving is still travelling 55 miles an hour.
It’s a character defining moment.
To stay or to go?
Me? I couldn’t drive on. Kevin Pritchard was in a hurry, he had an important meeting to get to, a meeting about an article that I was writing for the Oregonian, but I told him the meeting would have to wait. This was life or death. Life or death situations always take precedence over meetings. I needed to go back and check on the crow. If not for myself, then for the karma that would go with abandoning life like that. This cold, brutal world has enough abandonment.
Kevin, of course, understood perfectly and agreed with me.
We took turns transporting the bird’s body, caressing its still breathing life and we busied our minds by sharing memories of our favorite articles that I’ve written for the Oregonian, as I made haste for the nearest vet. The vet, Susie, a lifelong friend of mine that I met 3 weeks ago, survived breast cancer so she knows what death’s doorstep looks and smells like. ”I’ll do everything I can, John,” Susie told me as she took the bird from me, impressed that someone as important as Kevin Pritchard was following me around.
I made Steve Blake show up and comfort the crow
The two hours I spent in the waiting room were agony, and all I wanted to see was Susie smile, like the time she smiled when I touched her breasts by surprise, and commented “just testing to make sure they were back to normal” while I visited her in the hospital for a column I was writing for the Oregonian. It was a light moment in a series of dark moments for her, and although I might have stepped over the line I know now that she didn’t mind. My touch, that touch of human life, changed things.
But now I sat in that waiting room - on a hard, uncomfortable chair, mind you - and I looked up at the television, finding myself watching a replay of Steve Blake running into a hard screen in Philadelphia. The Blazers’ strong point guard held his arm in pain and Blazers fans like you held your breath in fear: was this the end of the season? Is this so-called, by some, “deepest team in the league” going to miss the playoffs now that their achilles heel at point guard is laid bare for the entire league to see?
Sergio Rodriguez, who I can’t understand when he speaks, and Jerryd Bayless, who I have talked to personally at Blazers practice on multiple occasions and who expresses a determination that makes me think he has what it takes, now must hold down the fort until Blake recovers from his separated shoulder. His broken wing. The team told you 7-10 days. Privately I doubted this timeline but didn’t say anything publicly. But privately I doubted the timeline and was not surprised at all when 7-10 days became 3 weeks or more.
And so from Blake’s injury comes another character defining moment.
To step up or to wilt?
For the Blazers, Rodriguez and Bayless, we will have to wait and see for the answer to that question.
For a dying crow, however, there is only one answer: wilt.
Indeed, the bird I killed on accident was already wilting by the time Susie brought its body back to me. I looked at Kevin and Kevin looked at me. There are no words in this situation, not even an appropriate poem by Longfellow.
The crow loved going to Blazer games
So I took the body, carefully, gently, like I would a baby of my own flesh, and I carried it to the only fitting resting ground. I laid the poor bird down next to Katie’s grave.
Tonight I laid to rest a crow’s body on Katie’s grave. And this morning Steve Blake woke up, one day closer to returning to the court. Cycles. The world is but a series of cycles. The NBA too. The nice thing about cycles: when you’re down, that just means you’re about to be back up. When it’s dark, there will be light. For me, for you, for Kevin Pritchard, that light can’t come soon enough.
For that bird, and for Katie, it’s all light from here. Oh, to be them right now.
