You hear the chain net before you see it. That metal rattle when the ball goes through. Nobody plays basketball on the street with a nylon net. A nylon net is for gymnasiums and suburbs. The chain net is the sound of the city keeping score. A ball through a chain net on a summer night on a court with no lines is the best percussion instrument ever invented. Better than a snare drum. Better than a hi-hat. The chain net is music that only happens when somebody makes the shot.

The basketball hoop on the playground is bolted to a pole that is bolted to the concrete that was poured over the dirt that used to be a vacant lot. Every court in New York started as a vacant lot. Somebody cleared the glass. Somebody poured the concrete. Somebody bolted a rim to a pole and the vacant lot became a stadium. The backboard is wood or metal or fiberglass and it is always cracked. The crack is not a flaw. The crack is a feature. The crack changes the angle. You learn the crack. You bank the ball off the crack and it goes in and you know something about that court that a stranger does not. Home court advantage is just knowing where the crack is.

The court has no referees. No coaches. No timeouts. No instant replay. The court has a chain net and a cracked backboard and the strongest opinions per square foot of any place in New York. Call your own fouls. Argue your own calls. The court is a courtroom where everybody is the judge and nobody agrees and the verdict is the next basket. Winners stay. Losers sit. That is the constitution of the playground. Three words. Winners stay losers.

I played guitar on the bench next to a court on Houston Street one afternoon. Nineteen sixty-nine. Five on five. Full court. No shirts against shirts. I played between games when the teams were arguing about who had next. One of the players told me to keep playing because the music made the wait shorter. I played for two hours. Every time a game ended somebody said keep going. The basketball court made me a jukebox. I did not mind. A jukebox that takes no quarters and plays whatever it wants is the best jukebox on the block.

You drive past a basketball court at midnight and the light is on and somebody is shooting alone. One person. One ball. One hoop. The chain net rattling in the dark. That person is not practicing. That person is praying. The basketball hoop at midnight is a church with a chain net and a congregation of one. The shot goes up. The shot comes down. The chain rattles or it does not. And the person picks up the ball and does it again. That is devotion. That is what devotion sounds like. A chain net at midnight. Over and over. Until the light goes out or the sun comes up. Whichever happens first.