High Price

injury had already put me at a disadvantage. While I was playing football for hours and hours every day in elementary and middle school, most of my teammates and competitors had already been focused solely on basketball. But back then, I’d played basketball, both organized and in pickup games, only as something to do in the football off-season.
    I tried to make up for the years of practice I’d missed by playing relentlessly at night, even when I’d already had a few hours on the court that day at school. Sometimes I was the only guy shooting hoops at 2 a.m. in the projects where my family had finally resigned us to living. No matter what was going on, I always practiced at least two to three hours a day. And then, if I was angry, bored, couldn’t sleep, or was just sick of dealing with people and their drama, I’d go out and do even more drills and shots, rarely tiring of ensuring my skills were on point. (I now realize it must have driven the neighbors crazy, given that the court was in the center of the projects in an open plaza surrounded by ten buildings.) The summer between eleventh and twelfth grades, I was on three different teams and must have played in practice and games for at least six hours on most days then, often more.
    All those kiddy biographies I’d read about athletes stressed hard work and infinite practice. They said that drugs were bad, that smoking anything could hurt performance. They heavily emphasized believing in one’s own inner strength and willpower, reinforcing the American ideal of the self-made man, the guy who triumphs through sheer persistence and unending grit. They showed me that the way to win was to outwork your competitors and use everything you had to maximize your skills.
    And so, though everyone else thought my height was a disadvantage—I was five foot seven on a good day—I chose not to see it that way. I was a point guard. I didn’t have to get in there and rebound with the trees. My job was to distribute the ball. I was always one of the quickest people on the court and had exceptional ballhandling skills. If I got to the basket on a big guy, well, either I was going to score or he was going to foul me, I didn’t care. I was fearless. I’d take it right to you. It was to my advantage that the bigger guys often didn’t expect that, but I wasn’t going to let anyone punk me. I came from a neighborhood where at any time, you might have to fight to defend your reputation, facing violence that might turn deadly. I brought that level of intensity to the court. The worst thing you could do was foul me. Okay, I get two free throws. I could handle that.

    Shooting a free throw during a high school basketball game.
    By eleventh grade, I’d moved up from junior varsity to varsity. By senior year, I’d be most valuable player on a team that, because we had a seven-foot center, was thought to have a good chance at the state tournament. My junior year, though, for the first time ever in my life, I just rode the bench. That was because I’d switched sports and wasn’t up to the level of the lifelong ballers. I couldn’t stand that, so any edge I could get, I would take.
    In this context, avoiding cigarettes and reefer seemed an easy choice. And so, when I wanted to abstain, I always had the out that I was worried about my wind on the court. To be cool, of course, I wasn’t always completely abstinent and I certainly wouldn’t preach about not using. But as a result, my early drug use was mainly symbolic and I carefully monitored any high that I experienced in order to avoid feeling like I was out of control.
    As is the case for most people, however, the first drug I ever tried was cigarettes, sneaking a stolen Kool or Benson & Hedges with Amp and Mike in my aunt’s backyard when I was seven and they were ten and eleven. None of us really knew what to do with a cigarette. Our main goal was to look older and impress the neighboring girls who were hanging clothes out to dry in the backyard that faced ours. Thinking I was safe from adult eyes, I got one from my cousins, lit it up, and inhaled deeply. I blew the smoke out, then posed with the cigarette between my fingers, doing my elementary school best to look Hollywood-cool and sophisticated. Stifling a cough, I found that it only made me dizzy. It also provoked the most excruciating headache I’d ever had, which is actually one of the most consistent toxic effects of nicotine.
    Worse, soon, those girls were