Read an Excerpt
Inside Moves by Todd Walton
Introduction by Sherman Alexie
The first draft of this introduction was 33 pages. The second draft was 21 pages. You are reading the ninth draft.
Why did I struggle to finish this intro and deliver it late to my publisher?
Because I caught an elbow in the mouth playing pick-up basketball, lost a front tooth, and cracked my upper mandible. Less than twelve hours after the accident I was in a dentist's chair, stoned on laughing gas, as I received a human and pig bone combo graft in my face.
Yes, I am part-pig now. So when I eat bacon does that make me a cannibal?
After a few weeks of recovery, I began the early drafts of this intro. I wrote and wrote and wrote. The intro became a short memoir about my basketball life. It detailed my journey from clumsy grade-schooler into farm town high school star to community college recruit who declined those offers and accepted academic scholarships to attend Gonzaga University where I played rat ball with other hoops rodents and sometimes ran with the college team.
Yeah, I'm proud to say that I was able to run with a Division I college team and not completely embarrass myself.
I used to be good. Not great. But good enough to play with almost anybody. But I am in decline now. Oh, I still play with former college and professional players but I have become the old guy who hits a few shots, sets good picks, and will still hit the floor for loose balls.
I'm the old guy who gets his face busted by elbows.
But I'm also the old guy who ordered a field hockey goalie's mask from New Zealand so I can protect my whole face as I returned to my weekly run.
Yeah, I'm playing ball with a still-healing bone graft.
I have to play. I would get so depressed without hoops that I'd feel a thousand little deaths.
Todd Walton's Inside Moves is about that same kind of crazy passion for basketball. It's about that same kind of crazy passion for life. For physical and spiritual survival.
I can't begin to tell you exactly how much Inside Moves means to me. It is the best novel about basketball ever written. And I'm sure you just thought, "Wait, how many novels about basketball are there?" There aren't enough, that's for sure. Most of the great sports novels are about baseball. But I think Inside Moves ranks with the very best sports novels ever written.
To give the most basic comparison, Inside Moves is the Bull Durham of basketball, except with war injuries, amputees, prostitutes, radical surgery, and the lonesome, lonesome wails of hungry souls.
After you read it, you’ll want to play hoops with a broken jaw.
Sherman Alexie
