Hoops and linguistics
Manabu has the hardest time pronouncing “l” and “r.” We work on the problem constantly, repeating this sentence: “Larry really likes rowing the boat along the lake.”
As we hooped it up on Sunday, I realized something else: Manabu has the hardest time dribbling left-handed and shooting lay-ups with his left hand. When we play one-on-one, I overdefend his right hand, forcing him left. Still, he drives left while dribbling right-handed.
And during lay-up drills, he always jumps off his left foot while doing left-handed lay-ups. As Mr. Einan taught me in sixth grade, it’s best to jump off the opposite foot when doing lay-ups. So, for right-handed lay-ups, hop off the left foot, and vice versa.
To rectify the problem, I had Manabu drive the length of the court, dribbling with his left hand, and then finishing with a left-handed lay-up. And up and down the court he went, gaining a bit of confidence in his left hand, but still losing his dribble often and frequently reverting to jumping off the left foot on his lay-ups.
As I watched him struggle, I thought of Larry Bird, the Hick from French Lick and my childhood hero. Legend has it that Bird practiced with his left hand so diligently that, by the time he was a teen-ager, he was stronger with his left hand than with his right. Bird inspired me to practice endlessly with my left hand in our driveway as I grew up, and, by extension, was now doing the same for Manabu.
And thinking of Bird, it dawned on me: Manabu is troubled, in English and basketball, with his “l”s and “r”s. And I thought of the old sentence (“Larry really likes rowing the boat along the lake”) and then created a new sentence: “Larry Bird really likes left-handed lay-ups.” I taught the new sentence to Manabu.
And up and down the court he went, dribbling with his left hand, saying aloud, “Larry Bird really likes left-handed lay-ups,” as I counted aloud his dribbles in Chinese: “ee-ur-san-si-wuh-leo-chi-ba-jow-shuh.” And I thought of my good friend Brad Bergman’s words, as we used to run through neighborhoods in Rochester, chasing a golf ball down the street: “I wonder if people think we’re retarded.”
