There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Third Quarter marks a tonal shift in Abdurraqib’s narrative, becoming deeply introspective, meditating on the emotional benefits and consequences of longing, protest, and survival. Through a combination of personal recollection, cultural critique, and poetic inquiry, Abdurraqib constructs a narrative that reveals how the past shapes the self, how place bears upon identity, and how both greatness and despair coexist in the everyday lives of Black Americans.

Throughout Third Quarter, memory functions as both an obstacle and a guide—an unstable terrain where longing, guilt, and growth intermingle—emphasizing The Role of Memory in Self-Understanding. Abdurraqib opens with a meditation on longing, describing it as “a needless complicator,” a type of suffering that obscures clarity rather than offering it (170). This definition sets the emotional tone for the chapter, in which memories—especially those tied to failure, absence, or shame—become central to self-awareness. Memory is not a stable archive, but a dynamic process through which identity is continually revised and reclaimed.

Abdurraqib uses personal memories of his incarceration and probation to highlight the interplay between institutional surveillance and internalized doubt. Like a Begging Song—where the singer simultaneously admits fault and asserts entitlement—Abdurraqib’s interactions with the justice system reflect a tension between remorse and hope, performance and pleading. Through this lens, his memories offer a framework for interpreting his present self as someone in recovery from societal judgment, familial disappointment, and internalized guilt—a self-awareness that deepens in his recollection of incarceration. He connects his memory of his brother visiting him in jail, looking at him “with a mix of shame and fear” (219) to his memory of his love for Boobie Gibson—a marginal player on the Cavaliers with both evident talent and flaws in whom he recognized pieces of himself. He identifies with Gibson’s visible disappointment after a missed shot, seeing himself in the “villain who stays a villain even after his punishment” (219). Through memory, Abdurraqib not only traces his past errors but also reclaims them as part of a larger journey toward self-redemption.

Abdurraqib uses setting as both a backdrop and an active force in shaping his consciousness, highlighting The Impact of Place on Personal Development. In this section, he portrays Columbus, Ohio, as a crucible of identity, grief, loyalty, and survival. While other Black men—LeBron foremost among them—leave Ohio in pursuit of opportunity or fame, Abdurraqib remains. His reflections on the city’s complex emotional and symbolic geography are layered with ambivalence. He recognizes its limitations, but also its fierce grip on his identity. He acknowledges that he has “carved out a corner of these skies [so] they are his” (229) and that “the city still owns him” (242). This duality represents a recognition of what has been earned through persistence, hardship, and memory.

Abdurraqib’s attachment to place appears in his emphasis on the cultural and political significance of protest. When he discusses the burning of LeBron jerseys after he left the Cavaliers or the fires set during protests of police violence, he reframes these acts not as senseless destruction but as forms of resistance and grief, noting that “Fire is a type of song too” (198). His metaphor underscores how public defiance often becomes the only available language in a place where suffering is ignored. Protest, he argues, is not revenge, but an insistence that suffering be acknowledged, noting that many “have mistaken being in a place for having control over it” (201). Place does not passively shape Abdurraqib—it’s an active force that must be negotiated, survived, and occasionally confronted and fought against.

While LeBron’s rise and departure from Cleveland remain emblematic of excellence, Abdurraqib is more interested in those who stay behind, pointing to The Tension Between Black Excellence and Ordinariness. His attachment to the post-LeBron Cavaliers—described as “an aimless disaster of a team” (216)—reveals his commitment to celebrating the flawed, the hopeful, and the real—those who do not ascend, yet whose presence still carries meaning. Boobie Gibson, in particular, becomes a totem of imperfect beauty: a man with talent, heart, and inconsistency, whose very failures render him human and beloved. Abdurraqib’s meditation on the interwoven forces that define Black life in America depicts place as something not merely inhabited but also survived, challenged, and cherished. Black excellence is not confined to the LeBrons of the world; it is equally present in the flawed, the ordinary, and the resilient.

The motif of “The Begging Song”—a musical form rooted in contradiction, where vulnerability coexists with defiance runs throughout Third Quarter, culminating in the city of Cleveland’s begging song to LeBron: a desperate anthem of longing masquerading as loyalty. The song, while awkward, is deeply human, and Abdurraqib appreciates it for the effort it embodies: “I do love a song that appears to take effort” (194). Here, longing, performance, and community pride intersect in a complex web of emotions, illustrating how Black communities navigate the pain of abandonment and the rituals of survival.

In the poetic interlude of the Timeout, Abdurraqib invokes the legends Virginia Hamilton and Toni Morrison not as distant geniuses, but as local anchors of dream and imagination. Morrison’s line about a character who “talked about her dreams like they were real” (212) is especially resonant, highlighting how Black excellence often involves maintaining belief in the face of disenchantment. He presents these poets and storytellers as aviators—figures who levitate beyond material constraint, yet remain rooted in the cultural and geographic soil of Ohio.