The Shot: What Basketball Taught My Son That I Never Could.

Perched on our driveway is an old, worn out adjustable basketball hoop. The kind you pull a pin in the back to adjust the height to seven feet to practice windmill dunks.

In the spring, a bird comes by and pecks off a piece of the brittle net and uses it to build a nest in our backyard. The cracked plastic base houses crickets and spiders and tiny lizards that scurry out whenever I move it. Two five-pound bags of sand resting on the base make sure it doesn’t fall over when there’s a slight breeze.

The hoop is a piece of shit.