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It was a shameful mistake to make, at least for someone with my reputation. As the 24/7 on-call IT department in the family, I handle everything from switching HDMI inputs to teaching my aunts how to close apps on their iPhones, basic tasks that undersell what I would describe as a pretty comprehensive understanding and utilization of modern technology.
The scope of my idea should reveal that, as I am surely one of the few people to think of a crossover between OBS, the broadcast software preferred by most video game streamers, and oncology. The plan was to screen record my mom's Zoom visits with her doctors at MD Anderson, partly to develop an archival resource to return to as I continued a crash course in mixed acinar neuroendocrine carcinoma, but mostly to preserve every available frame of my mom's radiant face.
And she was radiant that day. It was April 7, 2022, a month after her 65th, and final, birthday. She was in the midst of a maintenance chemotherapy after her first line of treatment produced 70 percent shrinkage in her primary pancreatic lesion. Her appointment was with a supportive care specialist, the palliative wing of the legion of doctors following her case. While the oncologists treat the cancer, these doctors treat the symptoms (of both the cancer and the cancer treatment) in hopes of maintaining some semblance of a quality of life, an endeavor you come to learn is just as crucial as the search for more time.
Sometimes these doctors are referred to as pain specialists, though it should give you a good idea of how my mother was feeling at the time to know that the only prescription she received that day was to go outside and let the sunshine wash over her eyes for at least 15 minutes a day, an instruction she was already fully complaint with when she took the dog on an impromptu walk or went out to run some errands.
Most of the conversation that day was about Selena, the Queen of Tejano Music who grew up and flourished in my mom's hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas. The doctor was a big fan and peppered my mom with questions about the festivals they used to hold in Corpus in her honor. My mom promised she would bring him some memorabilia on her next trip to Houston.
I don't know exactly what was said, of course, because I forgot to enable the mic in OBS, so there is no audio on the recording. Sometimes I watch it anyway to relive that appointment. It was a whimsical interlude in an otherwise woeful stream of increasing tumor measurements, poor prognoses and blunt lectures about potential side effects. She's smiling so much that the glow off her face melts the context away. When the doctor jokes that they will have to dance cumbia at her next in-person appointment, even the silent video can't stop me from hearing her laugh.
Almost nothing I learned during my mom's 17-month battle with cancer is more true than the idea that this disease is the most omnipresent, destructive force in the world that doesn't occur to you at all until it hits close to home. I'm still not sure whether I should feel guilty for skipping over any mention of cancer prior to becoming intensely familiar with it or if that reflex serves an important purpose in keeping us sane.
But once you've dealt with this disease first hand, you feel an immediate, intense connection to everyone whose life was similarly derailed or deteriorated. As someone who covers basketball mostly from an analytical or tactical perspective, my mom's journey created an entirely different sort of connection to the sport, which features so many young men around my age who have lost their moms to cancer. Ricky Rubio, John Wall, Anthony Edwards. You have a different understanding and appreciation for a player's emotional burden when you know that they've sat next to their mother in an infusion chair.
Mavericks center Dereck Lively II is the latest NBA player to face this trauma, losing his mom to cancer in April in the midst of his rookie season. Prior to my own mother's diagnosis, I would have been prone to thinking something like "it's good that the Mavericks are still playing and that he will the playoffs to focus on as a distraction" or "at least he has his teammates around him to keep his spirits up". But those are shallow consolations. The truth is, you can distract a mind, but not a soul. The truth is, without your mom, you could have 12 close friends and 20,000 ardent supporters around you and still feel like the loneliest person in the world.
And there is no place on the court lonelier than the free throw line, especially when the opposing team is so certain of your lack of mettle and accuracy that they are willfully and strategically placing you there in a complete departure from the spirit of the game. In a way, the sweltering pressure of the moment seems insignificant to the real-world tribulations you have been forced to overcome, until you're forced to wonder who will be there to alleviate your agony if the ball caroms off the rim.
It's an embarrassing, torturous psychological tactic that the Thunder employed on a 20-year-old with a fresh, limbic wound. Trailing by four points with six minutes left in Game 3, OKC coach Mark Daigneault had his team intentionally foul Lively, a 51 percent free throw shooter, four times before the clock ticked under two minutes.
Lively missed three of the first four free throws, prompting Jason Kidd to remove him from the game. But he only sat for one defensive possession, for the Thunder quickly grabbed two offensive rebounds and got a putback layup that cut the lead to three while Lively was on the sidelines. With four minutes to go and two minutes of potential hacking left, Kidd put him back into the game, knowing that his defensive value exceeded the risk of empty possessions at the charity stripe.
Kidd was rewarded for his trust in the rookie. Lively was intentionally fouled two more times in the next minute of action. He made all four free throws. After the game, Lively was asked how he regained his composure during those exasperating moments at the line.
“I know my momma got me,” Lively said. “She’s watching me. I know she’s telling me to make the damn free throws, so I’ve got to step up and make them.”
A few years ago, this would have exemplified a feel-good story, a rare moment in sports writing where you can inject a little emotion in a column at a small cost of objectivity. On Saturday, it made me cry. There was not an objective thought in my head. I was elated for Lively, succeeding in an extremely necessary way that had nothing to do with time and score, relying on the strength and self-confidence that his mother instilled in him. It would have been the same had he missed the free throws, in the way he regathered himself in the aftermath of an obvious failure. But sometimes the ball going through the hoop means a lot more than a point or two, and sometimes the ball is simply meant to go in, as if someone above is guiding it through the net for you.
Down the stretch of Game 3, the only force that matched Lively's steely nerves was the absurd, humorous image of Chet Holmgren chasing Lively around the floor in a futile attempt to foul him. Holmgren's cartoonishly long arms were outstretched as he was locked in an almost purposely slowed gait, like a parent chasing a toddler around the living room while pretending to be the tickle monster.
As he stepped to the line, Dereck was encouraged and empowered by his mom's voice. When he watches this play back, I know Dereck will be able to hear his mother's laugh.
Nothing in the world could be more soothing.∎
