The heart of a Wali Jones basketball clinic won’t find you on Valentine’s Day — even if it happens to be Wali’s birthday.
And you won’t find it in cards or roses.
If you want to feel it, come closer.
Step into a summer gym with no air conditioning.
Consider this your warning.
We’re not here for flickering candles.
We’re here to get as close to the fire as we can stand.
Inside a Wali Jones Basketball Clinic
The heat hits before anything else.
It’s in the air.
In the walls.
In the way the floor warms your feet, like you’re walking on coals.
The kids are sweating through two shirts — the one they came in with and the one they just got from the clinic.
One girl is standing, tugging at the top shirt, fanning herself with it like an accordion.
Sweat runs down her face.
“You can take that off if you’re hot and sit down,” Wali says.
She forgets the shirt.
And sits.
Like it’s musical chairs and the music just stopped.
She wasn’t about to lose her spot, and especially not her new shirt.
Other adults get up and talk.
One after another.
Glad it’s him and not me.
That becomes my mantra.
Called to the Fire
Then Wali looks over at me.
“Come on up for a minute,” he says. “They have to know who you are.”
I whimper.
Barely audible.
Caught forever in my friend’s video.
And I’m like, “Me?”
Like that moment in a movie.
“Yes, Stephanie. You.”
I walk up anyway.
I didn’t come prepared.
I came to stand close to the fire.
Now I’m in it.
I’m wearing my dad’s jersey.
Thirty-two.
Of course I am.
He says my father’s name — Billy Cunningham — like it still belongs in a room full of kids who have no idea who that is.
I tug at the jersey so they can read it.
Thirty-two.
So they know his number.
I tell them Wali and my dad were teammates.
That they won a world championship.
That they started out on the streets.
That basketball is family.
My voice shakes when I say it.
“We’re all family together.”
I tell them to have fun.
And then I don’t know where to stand.
Do I stay at the kids’ table?
Or do I join the adults?
The kids clap.
I hear it before I see it.
That sound.
I always loved sitting at the kids’ table.
Before it was time to go back and stand with the adults.
Passing the Guard
When it comes time for the gifts, Wali shifts the room again.
“The 76ers are giving you something.
The older kids are going to pass them out.
Say thank you.
If you don’t say thank you, you won’t get one.
Older kids — make sure of that.”
The older kids move through the rows, handing them out.
This couldn’t have been how it went back then.
When my dad and Wali ran clinics like this?
I remember hearing they’d play against the kids and wouldn’t let them win.
Or did I read that somewhere?
I don’t remember.
And I definitely don’t remember the goodbyes.
Maybe we left soon after that.
That day with Wali and the kids doesn’t end.
The ball never stops moving.
What my dad and Wali once did together didn’t stay in the past.
It found new hands.
New floors.
New crooked baskets.
Standing there, I’m not in a world I had missed.
I stand in a world I had been all along.
And I know where to stand.
This is a Muse for Wali Jones.