Michael Kidd-Gilchrist walked aimlessly through the foggy landscape. All around him he could hear metallic clanking sounds, but they seemed to have no source other than his ears. The only discrete objects he could discern were large numbers of lone bricks scattered upon the ground, some of them broken nearly to dust, others large and intact.
Suddenly, he came upon a basketball hoop, there in the murky obscurity. At his feet was a basketball. Given that he had nothing better to do, he picked up the ball and began practicing his jumper.
“Remember what Mark Price told you,” he thought to himself as he lined up his first attempt. “Keep your elbow in. Release the ball at the top. Follow through.” But, even as he remembered these things, his body protested, and he shot the ball with an ugly hitch, and he missed. The second attempt replicated the first, and Michael felt the familiar frustration welling up inside him.
“I can’t believe I thought I could ever fix you or your stupid jumpshot,” came a voice, and then, Mark Price was standing courtside. “You’re beyond hope. You’re doomed to shoot bricks forever.”
“No! I’m trying to get better!” Michael responded, but the words were thick in his throat, and what came out instead was a low moan.
Mark kicked one of the bricks that was nearby. “What do you think all these things are? They’re your bricked shots. And they’re going to keep piling up until you retire, you bust.”
The everpresent clanking noise was growing louder. Mark continued to spit insults, but his voice was being drowned out by the sound that Michael now realised was the sound of basketballs caroming off the rim. He readied another shot, eager to prove his shooting coach wrong, only to have the ball sail five feet to the left of the backboard.
“Failure! Failure!” shouted Mark. “You failed me! You failed your teammates!”
Michael tried to run, to escape from that horrible place, to go somewhere where nobody could scrutinize his jumpshot. He pumped his legs as hard as he could, but he wasn’t going anywhere, and that horrible noise was getting even louder. He looked up at the basket to find that it had grown to be the height of a three-story building, and now it was falling down on him, and he tried to get out of the way, but he couldn’t…
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Michael sat straight up in his bed. A dream. It had to have been a dream. Lying back down, he told himself that he would get up extra early tomorrow and head down to the gym to get some shots up.