The bright spots

I remember when I asked Nick Nurse about Paul Watson last February. Sitting 2nd row in the small, converted dressing room, wood cubbies ringing the tops of the concrete brick walls, where media huddles for pre and postgame availability and the laughing shrieks of the team’s children’s dance team rings from the other side of the wall most nights. I was edged out by a dude speaking over me, I forget who, but Nurse returned to me after, nodding, “Ma’am?” (an internal furrow of confusion at the designation).

Watson had just played a little over four minutes to close out the night, his most in an NBA game up to then. He’d had a big block and grabbed a rebound, helped cap off a 127-81 win over the Pacers. I asked, a bit breathless in my excitement because I was writing a feature on Watson for the team, if Nurse was happy with his minutes. Nurse seemed surprised at the specificity of the question, that it was about Watson. A touch annoyed, he said something like there was a reason why guys like Watson, then on a two-way between Toronto and 905, were there. That they “went out there”.

And now here’s Watson, in his first ever NBA start, still out there, catching a short, bunny-hop backward pass from Fred VanVleet in the paint, bouncing it once before he goes barrelling downhill, splitting Terrence Ross, Wendell Carter Jr. and Chuma Okeke so smooth and quick, water off a duck’s back if the beads were sea swells.

Here’s Watson, firing threes. Waiting in the right pocket, quiet, so quiet that when the one-armed windmill pass from Malachi Flynn lands in his hands no one is even looking yet. James Ennis goes careening over, trying to startle him out of it but Watson’s statuesque, unhurried, putting up the shot and letting his leading hand hang in the air, fingertips so high they must brush cold air churning down from the industrial A/C up in the rafters.

Here’s Watson, left pocket, same thing. Wide open, he jogged to the spot eons ago, VanVleet fires it to him out of the thick scrabble of the paint, Watson’s feet are already plated in a wide V as the ball comes to nestle snug in his two waiting hands. No one is there. Watson waits a beat, almost like he wants to see the pain on Cole Anthony’s face as he spins, comes tearing to the corner, much too late. The ball arcing over his head as he leaps past Watson, landing way over the baseline and Paul is already gone, jogging back up the court.

Here’s Watson, slipping around taking shots just beyond the arc like he’s the inevitable hand of a ticking clock, no rush. First 11, then 2, 2:45, 12 — no, a casual spin to 12:15, he’s got all night.

Here’s Watson, skipping backward, face placid but his eyes flit to everywhere, reading.

I didn’t ask the question this time but Nurse answered it almost the same. Running hard to the corner, hard drives, these are what they want their wings to do. Ah. But Watson’s speed is so unhurried, so quick he blurs on camera until a close cut to his face or upper body shows a stillness settled there, an ease that gums up velocity.

Watson told me once he was the most impatient person he knew but you would never guess it, for how he handles time like something tangible. In his hands it slows, cools, stills, speeds back up and leaves you in a thrilling lurch.

What are the bright spots now, in a city, a province, shutting down?

I grapple with the line between rage and grief, an anxiety that has settled into my body like wasps will against the eves of a house, the clefts in a tree, thickening the papery layers of a nest in stratified menace. Dormant from the outs but inside, just seething. Swarming all over.

Waking every night from 3am on, tossing, plummeting back into sleep only to wake an hour later and do it again. Every morning comes with the kind of exhaustion that the night before never manages to chase off.

What are the bright spots now, as our bodies quietly immolate?

Here’s my whole family, vaccinated. I feel a coursing joy in that. In being the weakest link even as we are mandated back to a place where I won’t see them in person, at least up close, for weeks.

Here’s a kind of cumulative breaking point for tens of thousands of people listening to Doug Ford stumble his way through a presser meant to lend some leverage, at least, to our grappling, but that swung and swung in lazy, circuitous circles that ricocheted off every imaginable sticking point the science and recommendations have offered for months. A year of living in something and we’re worse off, less afraid, more exhausted, a bad mix. Here, though, is the power of rage offering clarity.

Whenever basketball as a whole quits giving bright spots I go back to the barest minimum it offers. Bodies bypassing natural law. Sequences of motion that splinter what’s substantive.

Here’s Nikola Jokic, thundering slow under the net, so strange and strong and exacting that when he pivots on the spot, turns, any defender sorry enough to catch on his hip, in his extended invisible wake, is snared, trailing and helpless.

Here’s Jokic, just literally climbing all over everybody.

Jokic, who seems so often blundering in his own force, making razor-precise passes simultaneously over his head and behind his back as he’s bumped and bodied out of the key to PJ Dozier under the basket.

Here’s Julius Randle, floating by Luka Doncic, shooting like he’s underwater, left arm lifting the ball to tip in off the outside edge of the backboard.

Here’s Derrick White, runaround pass from DeRozan to Lonnie Walker to White’s hands clenching and opening in quick Morse for how he’s crouched and ready. Here’s White after a pogo jumper, snagging on CJ McCollum’s trailing arm and crashing backward to the floor just in time to see the ball sink. White’s face, a wide-opening of joy and disbelief as he walks backwards and breathless and beaming.

Here’s Marc Gasol, Cristo Redeemer in transition, swinging two-handed overhead shots so hard they audibly rattle the rim.

Here are slices of physicality, maybe the most desperately as we’ve ever needed them. I don’t mean we need this season, we don’t, we could all re-watch the Bubble, highlights of years gone by, pull from them the same nuance of extrapolated force as escape.

Because when I arc and bend and tend to move my body in response to 0.4 or so seconds of play, when I feel a smile pull at my face or a hitch in my breath, my brain quells for a second. The force of demand on it from the simultaneous needling and numbing press of reality dims. I can track movement, response — somebody else’s — minutely.

I can drift, blink through what’s grim, roam around in velocity that isn’t mine. Feel calmed at a body’s easy clarity. Think of how incremental things eventually add up, like Watson’s late-game four minutes last February to 25 in his first NBA start. A masterclass in continuity, in finding small moments of resolve when time is the only thing adding up.