Sports Column

Never too old to chase dream

Fair Game

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Jun 26, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

CHARLES BARKLEY

Pardon me for writing about a dream I had the other night. In the dream, I’m in my early 30s (that’s a couple of decades ago) and playing a pickup basketball game. Among my teammates: Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon, and my Portland Tribune colleague, Dwight Jaynes (If I can be out there, Dwight can, too).

The only player I can remember off the opposing team is, oddly, Raef LaFrentz, one of the nicest guys in the current Trail Blazer locker room.

In the dream, I’m doing my best to feed Barkley, and I do it several times. At one point, I thread the needle between a pair of defenders with a pass on the fast break to Barkley, who flushes it and then compliments me for the assist.

He also chides me for missing a couple of right-handed layups (I’m a southpaw, but that’s no excuse).

It’s fun stuff, and after I wake up, I spend a half-hour playing Sigmund Freud, trying to analyze what I have just dreamed.

I come up with this: I played competitive basketball, for fun and exercise, for about 40 years before giving it up two or three years ago. I’ve always felt it was the best workout there is, and I always enjoyed the mental part of the game.

But at some point in one’s life, with the toll that basketball takes on your body, it’s time to move on. I’ve done that, having switched to tennis, jogging and the gym.

I miss playing hoops, though.

And perhaps this one final ride – alongside Barkley and Olajuwon, two of my favorite athletes to deal with during my newspaper career – is a sort of a denouement to something that has been a big part of my life for such a long time. One last, glorious romp up and down the court.

(And mind you, for this gym rat, playing with NBA types could have only happened in a dream.)

Are there any of you who have retired from playing basketball, and miss it as much as I do?

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