My Point Guard is Using a Fake ID

If ESPN is ever do desperate for content that they decide to start making 30 for 30s about men’s league basketball teams, I’ve got the team for them.

My spring men’s league 4-on-4 team was one for the history books. We all signed up as Free Agents (a polite term to describe people with a lack of friends) and were put on a team of 8 together. In our first week, we lost both games. That was the end of our losing, as we won (or tied) the rest of our regular season games and swept through the playoffs to win the championship.

Naturally, the 8 of us decided to run it back in the summer with a 5-on-5 team. This time, when we signed up, we were able to list each other as teammates and make it clear that we do in fact have friends. When we got our preseason email, we were in for quite a surprise – our team of 8 was growing to 10.

Like a devout Mormon family whose parents forgot to use the pill and had twins but then pretended that it was intentional, we were going to welcome our 9th and 10th members of the family with open arms. As we warmed up in a noisy basement gym of what I believe is a cancer center, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our 2 newest team members. It turned out that 1 of the new guys was a friend of my teammate, so that left only 1 wild card.

Just minutes before tip-off, a short man walked into the gym. We could tell by his aimless wandering that he was looking for his new family – he had found it. “Are your Jacob?” remarked one of my teammates, who had done some Facebook scouting after seeing his name on the roster. “Well, yeah, I’m his brother. I’m Eric.”

This is where things went off the rails.

My league requires that all players be 21 years old (as everyone knows, it’s much more tolerable playing douchey 22-year-olds than douchey 21-year-olds - that year really makes the difference). I guess that Eric is here interning for the summer and is a sophomore in college and therefore not 21 yet. As a result, he used his brother’s ID to sign up for a men’s basketball team. That’s right, he was willing to commit fraud to be able to hoop for 5 weeks in his summer. I loved the commitment and knew that despite his slight, youthful frame, there’s no way that Eric would suck. Nobody jumps through hoops like that to suck.

It turns out that Eric is, in fact, pretty good. He was still meshing with the team in his first week, but there were flashes of good basketball and he clearly knew what he was doing. He was a welcome addition to the team.

Everything was going splendidly until Eric ran right into a 6’5 250lb center from the other team who was hedging a screen. Eric’s boyish body was vaulted towards the half-court line as he grabbed his shoulder. Eric stood there, his shoulder limp like a fish on its last breath, begging for a whistle – he got no such call. It was truly a rude welcoming to the big leagues.

My teammate, who pretends he’s a doctor but is really just an ice-pack salesman, walked out of the gym with Eric and his dislocated shoulder. He was prepared to pop the shoulder back in place, but then remembered that he had no medical credentials to do such a thing. Eric left the cancer gym for the night as we played on. We proceeded to lose handily. How could we carry on when we knew the newest, youngest member of our team was in such pain?

Another week passed, and we had two games again last week. We won both, but Eric never turned up. One of our teammates reached out to Eric to see if he was alright and reported back that “Jacob said he’s still recovering from his injury.” Up to this point, I was certain that his name was Eric, but now began to question if I had misunderstood it all and that his name was actually Jacob. I’m hopeful that our 1-armed, fake ID-using point guard returns this week to clear things up - we miss you dearly, Jacob/Eric.