There was a time when the basketball goal seemed very close to me when I looked up at it from court level. Of course, those days are long gone. Along with my ability to do a 360, a Windmill, a Tomahawk, a Vanilla Thunder, or other esoteric made up name for a dunk that I used to come up with. No, these days when I look up at the goal I experience what I like to call "negative vertical". What is this concept, you may ask? "Negative vertical" ocurrs when you are so far from being able to dunk the ball anymore, that merely thinkiing about it thwarts the attempt and wisely keeps you on the floor, thus "negative vertical". Nowadays when I play, the mid-range jumper (toes barely above negative level) seems much more appealing than trying to go up under the basket and strain my already aching knees. I think and think and for the life of me I can't really remember exactly when I lost my desire to slam the ball. Could it have been that time that the rim hung me up, maybe when I jammed my pinkie finger in the top net loop, the time I went up for a slam and had to do a finger roll, I don't really know. Fact is it's just something that I no longer do, kind of like how I don't have my hair down to my shoulders anymore (genetics will tell), don't listen to the Bee Gees anymore (now I'm a folkie), and most definitely don't sit up all night reading Carlos Casteneda (so seventies-eighties). Whenever I get the urge to try to get in shape a little bit, maybe even enough to do a one hander, I put on a Cavs game and watch Lebron fly through the air with the greatest of ease and that usually calms down the urge. Not that I was ever any Lebron James, don't get me wrong, but I was on the court with some high flyers back in the day: Darryl Griffith, Albert King, Magic Johnson, Mike Magee, Louie Orr, others and I could and did do my share of slams. But I digress, the here the now is the important thing, I just can't dunk anymore and I guess it really doesn't matter. Once you no longer make your living playing basketball, the slam becomes a mute point, an irrevalency, an anachronism, until you see someone like Lebron taking off from the free throw line. At those times, you would give anything to be able to recover just a little of your "negative vertical" to go up and over a defender, to rattle the rack, to jam it down, one more time.