In his cavalcade Notes on Hoops, Hanif Abdurraqib revisits the gold age of basketball game movies, shot by shot.

Even so from White Men Can't Jump. © 20th Century Studios.

I can always tell which one of my friends didn't grow upwards around hustlers by how they look up and lock optics with the person at the mall kiosk, who—by virtue of that enchanting eye contact—doesn't even have to wave them over. They drift into the grasp of the salesperson without fifty-fifty being aware of it. And that's when their coin is no longer theirs. On the street in a city my pal had never been to, a woman sells her a bracelet before she even knows what'southward happening. Compliments her skin tone and lays the bracelet over it. Leans in to get a good look then stands dorsum every bit if she is witnessing a gateway to the promised land creaking open right there on the sidewalk.

And let me be clear: I am not opposed to hustles, and I am certainly not opposed to hustling. When I say I came up around hustlers, I mean that I know what it takes to go on the lights on and so I've rarely been in the dark. I have exchanged cash for some things I don't want to know the history of. I've spent time on both sides of the hustling coin before and certainly will for whatever time I've got left on this twirling rock. A stone that, past the mode, is spinning faster at present than it was before. I don't understand the science, just I know that fourth dimension itself is a hustle. Spend a few days in Franklin County corrections and you might come up to realize, urgently, that time is a currency. Silence is a currency. Any currency that can be interrupted can be the source of a hustle. Which brings me, again, back to intimacy—though I promise I won't linger hither too long, except to say that non all hustles are intimate, but the best ones have an undercurrent of intimacy. I'yard not only talking about physical or romantic intimacy, though the natural language and the song and the tips of fingers and the vocalism in an ear are all mighty vessels for the hustle. What I'm getting at is how the hustle requires a type of knowing. Knowing of oneself, of course. But besides a reading of an other, rapidly, before they tin realize that you are acting upon that knowing. I am not the best hustler because I exercise not know myself as well every bit I desire to, which leads to a series of ongoing cocky-hustles. Like setting my alarm for seven thirty when I've already crossed well beyond the midnight hr, immersed in the glow of my phone. Simply it'due south the hope I think I'yard chasing. Similar my dear pal, looking at a bracelet reflecting off the sunlight, dancing on her skin.

White Men Can't Spring dissects the hustle solely as a game of optics. Billy Hoyle used to hoop in college but now makes a living hustling streetballers. He's white, wears baggy shirts and a astern hat to the courts populated past Black players who are taller, fitter, dressed for the game. Just, nigh importantly, he's white. Sidney Deane is Billy's initial, master target. Sidney is talented, loud, boastful, approaching a extravaganza of a nineties streetball archetype. Depending on the viewer, 1 might enjoy in the moment when Billy beats Sidney twice in their commencement come across. The second fourth dimension, revealing himself, whispering, "I've hustled a hell of a lot amend players than you" in Sidney's ear before Sidney misses a jump shot.

For all of its other moving parts, White Men Can't Jump relies on teasing out the function of a hustle that I am nigh fascinated by in real life. The part that relies on looking, and how a person responds to that looking. At that place are many means people tell on themselves, i of them beingness how they choose to react based solely off of what their eyes tell them, and how that connects to what they inherently believe. In the film, we are to understand that Billy'south hustle is constructive because the Black players are incapable of seeing who he is, and by the fourth dimension he has been fully rendered, information technology is likewise late. The Sidney/Billy pairing works because of this—on every court, Sidney disarming two opponents to saddle him with Billy as a teammate, Sidney sinking into the performance of begging to not have to play with the white doormat who looks similar he can't make a shot, and so on.

The theme of eyes and perceptions appears again in the plot line of Gloria Clemente, Billy'south girlfriend, often fed up with his reckless behavior, which has them on the run from people he owes a gambling debt to. While Billy and Sidney clear coin off the courts of the city, Gloria studies to go along Jeopardy!, where she eventually makes it and nestles herself in between two white men. She gets a question wrong and then gets one right. The thickness of her accent envelops the reply "What is Mount Vesuvius?" but the judges requite information technology to her. She so goes on a run of correct answers, hitting her stride with "foods that begin with the letter Q." When she gets into an exceptionally expert groove, one of the white men throws up his easily, not aroused but exasperated. She has come into focus for him in that moment.

Much of White Men Can't Jump'due south playing with racial dynamics loses my interest when it moves away from the way appearance tin exist used to hustle and into attempting to unravel cultural differences. White people mind to music only don't hear it, and so on. Baton's disability to dunk isn't all that fascinating (the title of the motion-picture show shows its hand, later on all) but his desire to testify to Sidney that he tin can dunk is, that desire so overwhelming that Baton wagers $2,500 on it, only to miss iii times. Ane affair about a hustle is that if yous are in too deep, for too long, information technology is possible that you might gain a misunderstanding of your limits. If y'all brand a life around the rush that exists at the end of the trick, it tin be easy to lose yourself in that feeling, in how people must see you, walking off on the shoulders of your victories.

One of the terminal public readings I did was in Wisconsin. I accept this vintage Allman Brothers sweatshirt that I like, essentially merely the comprehend of their album Eat a Peach blown up to an almost overwhelming size. Eat a Peach isn't my favorite Allman Brothers album, only it has some of my favorite Allman Brothers songs on it. I wore the sweatshirt to the reading, and during the Q&A, an older white human asked nigh the sweatshirt. Rather, he asked about the person wearing the sweatshirt. "Is that an Allman Brothers sweatshirt yous have on?" was the first office. So, pulling the drapery dorsum, "What'due south the deal with y'all wearing it?" And, though I promise not to linger here besides long either, I know the move, even when people believe that they're nudging gently. The people, always white, who want to quiz me on "certain" music and so feel flustered when I don't oblige. The people, always white, who insist that I rework an articulation of appreciation for a musician to fit their ain understanding. I take this and come up to the conclusion, once again, that hustling is easiest when you lot are in a room people don't believe y'all to be in. All you have to do is show up and decline to give the people what they desire.

But, of grade, Billy dunks at the stop of the picture. A game-winning douse. A triumphant douse. I don't recollect this scene has always been surprising, even as I call back dorsum on it today. Billy becomes who a viewer might have wanted him to exist the whole time. This is the part of the movie that turns on a familiar axis. Whether or not it is openly admitted, information technology appears, often, that there is a hunger for a white, American-born basketball star in the NBA. Amongst the media, amongst some basketball fans. And I don't hateful but a good player. I hateful a swell player. It is the Nifty White Promise syndrome, baked so firmly into the DNA of American culture that there are people unaware of when they're bowing to information technology. When a white player emerges who might fit this mold, words similar swagger outset getting bandied about.

I've been thinking through this a lot, non simply considering the NBA finds itself firmly in the midst of this bicycle once again, thanks to the play of Tyler Herro, of the Miami Heat. This one pocket-sized and specific piece of the larger machinery of an American hustle requires an elevation and a prioritization of whiteness. To ready the trivial nature of basketball and its great white hopes aside, I have noticed people talking almost empathy once again. "Radical" empathy, I believe it is being called from time to time, though I'm not entirely sure what that means. I'm supposing it means overcoming the threat of personal harm for the sake of niceness. Niceness, too, is a hustle, though I will maybe have to approach that another time, when there aren't tanks lining the downtown of the urban center I live in, awaiting armed fascists who might seek to break into the statehouse or who might seek to yell on a sidewalk, or who might seek something in betwixt those two extremes.

The incoming president said, "America is non what we saw today" on a day when in that location was violence. Every bit the aforementioned tanks poured into town, my city's mayor stood behind a podium and said, "This state is meliorate than what nosotros're seeing today." The hustle is that everyone talks well-nigh the today as a unmarried day that materialized, untethered, with no connectedness to any history before it or whatsoever history that will come up after information technology. Every bit if a moment is non within a complect of moments that ascertain a place. Every bit if a identify is not defined, at least in office, past how eagerly and comfortably it retreats to violence every bit a type of language. To make a myth of a land is a misguided extension of kindness, merely it is likewise a hustle. People who believe so richly in the inherent goodness of whiteness that they believe empathy alone will grow the hearts of fascists are both hustlers and easily hustled. Trapped within the oral fissure of a predator, a true hustler will talk about the glow of the predator's teeth every bit soft, romantic lighting. I suppose I now have to take back what I said nearly not being opposed to hustles. The stakes were different then. I idea we were hither together, simply talking virtually Billy Hoyle. And and then about the ways that optics can fool the willing, and how America is nearly e'er willing. I would apologize for us ending upward here, only I've already told you: I'1000 a bad hustler. I don't even trust myself.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio.