Heaven is a Playground

London 2022 - Present

“… but I think we never doubted each other’s purpose or sincerity about the game. If there was ever a need for a touchstone, a plank to lash our vastly different situations to, we simply retreated to basketball.

I think it was notable that one of the few things my presence affected was not player interaction or spontaneity, but response to achievement. After executing a stylish move to the basket, a player frequently would search me out on the sidelines and shout, ‘Put that mother in the book!’

Some of them I did. Others I didn’t. A lot of things I know I missed. But then I was only in Brooklyn for a summer and Rodney Parker says you could live there a lifetime and never get it all.”

Excerpt from “Heaven is a Playground” by Rick Telander