Basketball – The Game I Love 3.9.2022

Dear James,

I wrote a letter to you a little over a year ago about friendship and basketball.  It was inspired by a high school basketball game coached by your dad.  This letter is inspired by a basketball game – a game played on the Duke University Campus.

As a UNC fan, your grandfather loves to hate Duke basketball, but especially their long-time coach – referred to by most people as Coach K, the winningest coach in college basketball history. And at some point, you will hear about Coach K’s last game at Cameron, a game played this past Saturday with a Duke team ranked #4 in the country hosting an unranked Carolina team that had lost badly to Duke in Chapel Hill a few weeks earlier. No one really expected Carolina to win.  But this is Duke/Carolina – and anything can happen.  Carolina did upset Duke by 14 points that night, spoiling the pageantry of Coach K’s farewell party. And I loved every minute of it, including the tears shed by the Cameron Crazies. As did all the Franklin men that evening.

I and GG will be visiting you in Boston next week – the first week of March Madness, a term signifying the beauty and craziness surrounding the NCAA College Basketball Tournament. And I will be watching it. Some day you will watch it with me because you have been born into a family that loves college basketball. But we especially love ACC basketball, and even more especially, Carolina basketball. 

I became a true ACC basketball fan in 1976, the year UVA beat UNC in the championship game, and in so doing, became the first ACC team to win the title by defeating three ranked teams in a row. It was an incredible tournament performance and became my ACC baptism. And I have been a convert ever since.

James, memories are like a patchwork quilt. They get pieced together by common threads. And my basketball quilt not only includes memories of tournaments and games, but the special places I enjoyed learning and playing the sport. You will have similar memories. The first court I played on was located across the dirt road from our house and consisted of bare dirt with a bicycle rim nailed to a pine tree.  As we would shoot our cheap rubber ball through our makeshift basket, my cousin Buckwheat and I would pretend we were the Boston Celtics. The second court was also a dirt court. But that court also included a backboard in the form of plywood nailed to a telephone pole.  We could play actual games on that court – and we did.

But the court I have the fondest memories of was the blacktop court located at Mineral Baptist Church.  While in high school, we would play full court games all day on Saturdays and Sundays. And in the summer, I would play until my calf muscles cramped up so bad that I could hardly walk.  Even so, I would sit out a game to recover so that I could get out there again.  I could not get enough of it.  

While in college and graduate school, I played league and pick-up games at beautiful indoor gyms at Randolph-Macon College and UNC-Chapel Hill.  A highlight was playing some pick-up games with my Business School classmates in Carmichael Auditorium, home of UNC basketball until 1986, the year the Dean Dome opened. And when we moved to Richmond, I loved playing at the JCC and playing with my friends on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings at the Steward School and at Short Pump Middle School.  But my favorite court in Richmond was our driveway court – where I instilled in each of my sons the love of playing basketball. 

James, pick a sport and love it. And if you do not love it, pick another sport.  And enjoy playing it for as long as you can and while doing so, play it with passion.

Gratefully, PJ

A poem written for you that was inspired while attending the 2014 ACC Tournament follows:

The Game I Love 3.16.14

It is that wonderful spectacle 
Known as the ACC Tournament
Where my three sons and I
Watch fourteen games in five days
With the final climactic day 
Ending with Virginia as champions
 
I relish this season 
The ACC tournament 
The Final Four
Inspired to play ball
On warm spring days
With the blooming daffodils

My love for this game began 
On a dirt court with a bicycle rim  
Nourished later on the heat of blacktops
Running until my calves knotted up
And finally flourishing on hardwood courts 
In buildings that are like churches to me

The love of this game
I have passed down to my sons
As I hope they too will pass on
For there are few things as joyful
As tightening the laces of your sneakers
In anticipation of the game