If Cormac McCarthy wrote for Sports Illustrated
March came sputtering with requisite Madness and brackets and young men worshipped by their peers and fathers. Harsh dusty winds unnoticed outside stadium gates, the multitudes locked inside. Penned in. By their projections and regrets and sadness.
Devendorf rode into Memphis alone. Griffin was already there. Devendorf spoke first, as always.
I’m here to see about a championship.
Yeah. Championship.
Oklahoma. Not too many basketballs there.
Just enough.
The Memphis air too heavy to be called air. The Orange-clad masses, faithful a thousand miles away from home. Millions of people, millions of dollars wrapped up in the muscles and tendons of teen-aged giants. Held breath.
Toss, jump, tip. Underway. Delicate power under basket, blinking speed outside. Five white and five orange run and stop and turn and throw and pursue one another and the sphere. Squeak and shout, slap and whistle. A neophyte would wonder at the sheer spectacle, but none are unaccustomed.
One always rises at these times; others fall. Dreaming keeps us guessing from where we can stand, and our hopes are tied but we know not where. Griffin shoulders a team, a state. Someone must; he does. Forty-three times the leather through the nylon for the white. Thirty-seven times for the orange. The Orange. Laid low by a multitude of tormentors, and by their own folly. Sooner raised a fist to the roofbeams.
They filed out, spent, and returned to hotel, inn, lodge, soon to continue the undetermined March — and Orange turned for home, sudden end and soft goodbye.
Tags: blake griffin, college basketball, cormac mccarthy, eric devendorf, march madness, ncaa tournament, sports illustrated
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