58 pages • 1-hour read
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “Fourth Quarter: City As Its False Self”
Part 5, Minutes 12:00-6:05 Summary
The fourth quarter begins by discussing the nature of conclusions in all forms of human narratives. Abdurraqib assures the reader that this story ends the way it would “if you were writing it for a child” (239) with a celebratory city and community, exhausted into peace by the cathartic glory of a victory. This type of peace can come after a winning sports game, a funeral for a beloved figure, or even after a protest, but it comes from a community that believes, however briefly, its “people to be invincible” (242).
The narrative shifts to discuss the common phrase Abdurraqib used in his childhood: “ball don’t lie” (243). This phrase means, generally, that people get what they deserve, that talent must be displayed through the spectacular shot of a ball for that talent to exist. It was a commonly used phrase after an opponent fumbles, a piece of trash talk that carries a lot of meaning with it. Another meaning might be that cruelty always catches up to its perpetrator. Abdurraqib wonders what truths might be told about Columbus as a city, what kind of ball it deserves.
Abdurraqib then discusses the NBA Finals of 2016, and how it perked up the old hopes of his Columbus community. At that time, he was living with his partner in New Haven, Connecticut, 640 miles from his old home. The drive took about nine hours, but Abdurraqib found himself inventing reasons to go back to Columbus. His partner was unhappy, but he couldn’t help trying to come home again and again. He recalls that the drive there felt tortuously long, but the drive back felt almost instantaneous. However, he didn’t make it home for Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, in which the Cleveland Cavaliers almost won, but then lost in the fourth quarter.
This reminds the author of the last time the Cavaliers were on the edge of glory, which was the 1975-76 season, 40 years before LeBron James entered the basketball world. They had several players, all of whom were notable enough on the national stage to have nicknames. The Cavaliers sold out the auditoriums in Columbus and surrounding cities, and the sense of community was palpable even dozens of years later, as Abdurraqib remembers his elders discussing the old team with wistful affection. He notes, however, that “you aren’t supposed to look behind you if what’s in front of you is already good” (259). People felt so loyal and loving towards the old team because the Cavaliers struggled for the next couple of decades, and life in general didn’t get easier for anybody in Columbus.
Abdurraqib recalls watching Game 7 in 2016 in a “tiny bar in Connecticut” (264) surrounded by strangers. He draws a parallel between this feeling of loneliness and a man named John Scalish, who died in 1976. Scalish lived and died in relative obscurity, except for the fact that he was the “last great don of the Cleveland Mafia” (265). His power, competence, and dedication to “keeping the dealings of the mob secret” kept Cleveland safe (266). Scalish believed, according to his compatriots, that keeping the city safe and the operations discreet was the only way to sustainably operate. When he died, the power vacuum led to two of Scalish’s rivals starting a car bomb war. 36 car bombs went off in Cleveland in 1976, as a direct result of the death of Scalish. Danny Greene, an Irish mobster and eventual government informant, was the target of the bombings. Abdurraqib uses this anecdote to point out that cities, communities, and humans are never simple or idealized. Nostalgia, he argues, is not a longing for a good place, but simply a familiar one.
Part 5, Interlude 7 Summary: “A Timeout in Praise of Legendary Ohio Aviators”
This timeout is comprised of two poems, titled “Scott Mescudi, Cleveland, Ohio (1984—)” and “Guion Bluford, Westlake, Ohio (1942—).” The first poem discusses altered states of consciousness and how they interact with time and space in seemingly extrasensory ways. It refers to the rapper Kid Cudi, who said in one of his songs that he sees ghosts. The speaker argues that haunting is not always sinister: sometimes ghosts hang around because they love the living too much to leave.
The second poem covers the life of Guion Bluford, one of the astronauts in the successful Challenger flight of 1983. The speaker then states that some people believe that humans came to Earth from the outer reaches of space, and only those first people would be of consequence to the moon and stars.
Part 5, Minutes 5:45-0:01 Summary
The author begins this section by describing a trip he took in 2016 from his current home in New Haven, Connecticut, back to Columbus. He was traveling to go to a Cleveland Cavaliers game, but also to pay his respects to Henry Green, a young Black man recently murdered by Columbus police. The blood from Green’s death still stained the sidewalk, and members of the community left candles and flowers at the location to honor him. Abdurraqib points out that the police who murdered Green were in plainclothes and were supposed to be surveilling the block, not engaging with anyone.
Abdurraqib draws parallels from Green’s murder to the 2014 protests against police violence in Ferguson, which resulted in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Columbus had never had protests to the same degree, but Abdurraqib muses that the peace might be because of “magnificent lies that some in cities tell themselves” (283). He remembers his elders assuring one another and the children that while things weren’t perfect, Columbus was far from the worst place to be Black. He wonders if LeBron or other sports legends, from towns like Columbus, might have something to do with that perennial optimism. The experience of being an underdog requires hope that victory is still possible. Otherwise, an underdog is just a victim of insurmountable odds.
Abdurraqib introduces Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black child who was murdered by the police in 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio. The police justified the murder because Rice was carrying a toy gun. Abdurraqib remembers his own fondness for replica weapons like water guns at that age. He speculates that the fascination comes from wanting to embody the most powerful thing they could conceive of, without having to grapple with any of the gruesome outcomes. He notes that the police seem to be able to accomplish the same thing, able to murder the people they’re supposed to protect and face no consequences. Darren Wilson, the officer who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, protested that Brown terrified him. He stated that “I felt like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan” (298). Wilson, in that moment, was able to put on the guise of a child, though he was an armed adult with a uniform and a badge. Rice, meanwhile, was never allowed to be seen as a child, even though he was one. Abdurraqib notes that “This weaving in and out of childhood is a convenient weapon, one not afforded to everyone” (298). He reflects that his memories of his childhood are uncomfortable because of how aware he was that he never appeared to be a child to the larger community: as a Black boy, he was always a threat. This merges into a discussion of the nature of the cities of Ohio, and how their beauty and promise come with despair and pain just under the surface. The name of his beloved team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, represents this dichotomy. A cavalier is both “the defender of a king” (301) and a word for someone who shows too little concern for others.
Abdurraqib then describes a commercial for Nike that LeBron James starred in. In the commercial, LeBron speaks quietly to a huddle of teammates, but magically, everyone in the auditorium and the city surrounding can hear him. LeBron eventually stirs up a parade in celebration of the Cavaliers, leading the masses in chants of “hard work / together” (306).
Abdurraqib realized, after the commercial ended, that he was crying, not just of joy but of envy. “When LeBron came home, all I understood in the moment was that he could return and I couldn’t” (308) states Abdurraqib.
He imagines the city he would return to if he could: his childhood, riding bikes with his friends to an elementary school with a basketball court. Shooting hoops with his friends, enjoying the moments of hope with no consequences for failure. He remembers the profound love he held for his friends and community, and muses that if outsiders looked at their joy and saw evil or crime, then they “were our enemies” (314). The pains and traumas of his childhood made people’s faces blur together, so his childhood feels like a perpetual, never-ending game of basketball, “the kingdom of a ball descending from the sky while I stand on an unevenly painted foul line, waiting with my arms open” (317).
Part 5, Interlude 8 Summary: “A Brief Postgame Scouting Report in Praise of Legendary Ohio Aviators”
This final section, comprised of two poems titled “LeBron James, Akron, Ohio (1984—)” and “Hanif Abdurraqib, Columbus, Ohio (1983—),” acts as a brief biography of the two main figures in the book.
LeBron’s poem discusses the mutable nature of fame and kingship, and warns that defeat comes for everyone, but “the executioners / have yet to find a weapon / that will do the trick” (319).
Abdurraqib’s poem defines him as a somewhat angelic figure who “never dies in his dreams,” has both survived and orchestrated apocalypses, and has been resurrected so many times, it’s no longer surprising to his witnesses (319).
Part 5 Analysis
In Fourth Quarter, Abdurraqib roots his conclusion in contradictions: glory shadowed by grief, pride undermined by injustice, and love for a place tempered by its persistent failures. By weaving together the legacy of LeBron James, police violence in Ohio, the longing for return, and the shaping force of community, Abdurraqib situates himself—and the reader (addressed in the second-person)—within a city that is, in his view, sacred, worthwhile, and profoundly broken.
Throughout this section, Abdurraqib represents memory as both unstable and transformative, highlighting The Role of Memory in Self-Understanding. For Abdurraqib, Black childhood is not only a recollection of innocence but a terrain marked by misunderstanding and misrecognition. He juxtaposes his own childhood memories with the murder of Tamir Rice by Cleveland police in 2014 to highlight the ways in which neither of them was “allowed to be seen as a child” (298). Abdurraqib’s childhood memories are corrupted by the knowledge that the world viewed him through a lens of suspicion and fear. The adult weaponization of his boyhood identity—paralleled by Darren Wilson’s stated infantilization of himself in the murder of Michael Brown—shapes not only how Abdurraqib remembers his past but also how he constructs his sense of self.
Through this lens, Abdurraqib frames his memory as a political act, recovering the denied humanity of himself and others. This activism also extends to more joyful recollections, which are likewise touched by loss and longing. He recounts riding bikes with his friends to an elementary school basketball court—an image of untroubled joy—only to reflect that others saw this same joy as a threat. His memory of the “never-ending game of basketball” (317) represents an imagined space of communal innocence and belonging, forever inaccessible from the vantage point of adulthood. Yet it is within these memories that Abdurraqib comes to understand who he is—a man shaped by grief and resilience, exile and belonging.
As the memoir draws to a close, Abdurraqib’s return to Columbus reinforces The Impact of Place on Personal Development. He continues to represent Columbus as a character with its own motivations and desires—an amalgam of the people that have lived and died there—an identity independent of the narrative ascribed to it. For Abdurraqib, Columbus is a city that insists on its own decency, even when the evidence contradicts it. The murder of Henry Green by plainclothes police officers—committed under the guise of “surveillance” (280)—is one of several ruptures that challenge the city’s narrative of safety and progress.
Abdurraqib’s attendance at both a Cavaliers game and Green’s memorial underscores the duality of his return: a pilgrimage of both celebration and mourning. The city he returns to is not the one he remembers. Yet his need to return, his emotional pull toward Columbus, reveals the depth of its formative influence. When people ask if he will leave Columbus, he answers, “I have carved out a corner of these skies and they are mine” (229). This statement crystallizes the paradox of his attachment: the city may be flawed, even false, but it remains his.
Abdurraqib consistently resists simplifying narratives of Black greatness, reiterating The Tension Between Black Excellence and Ordinariness. For him, LeBron James represents the pinnacle of Black excellence in Ohio, yet Abdurraqib’s relationship to LeBron is one of distance and envy rather than uncomplicated admiration. The 2016 Cavaliers Finals run reignites hope, but LeBron’s triumph also intensifies Abdurraqib’s sense of separation. In watching the Nike commercial where LeBron rallies the city, Abdurraqib realizes he is crying—not from joy, but from the recognition that “[LeBron] could return and I couldn’t” (308). While LeBron’s return is mythologized, Abdurraqib’s is fraught with history and pain.
Abdurraqib’s identification with those who never leave Ohio, the “misfits” who populate a post-LeBron Cavaliers roster, and the children who linger in his memory underscores his desire to ascribe excellence to ordinary acts of survival and resilience. His favorite player is not the universally celebrated LeBron but Boobie Gibson—talented, inconsistent, and fully human. When Boobie “was on, he could make you believe” (218), but his vulnerability after a missed shot speaks to the dignity of ordinariness. The author’s love for Gibson mirrors his own efforts to recover from shame, poverty, and incarceration—not through grand gestures but through the daily, grinding work of survival.
The poems in this section reinforce this interplay between public achievement and personal survival. Scott Mescudi (the rapper Kid Cudi) and Guion Bluford are honored not just for their achievements, but for what they symbolize: transcendence that remains tethered to Ohio soil. In the final poems, Abdurraqib portrays LeBron as a king not yet conquered, while describing himself in mythic terms: “[Abdurraqib] has been resurrected so many times / that no one is surprised anymore” (319). Here, he defines excellence in his own life not by fame or athleticism, but by endurance, reinvention, and the refusal to disappear.
Through recollection, Abdurraqib recovers what was once lost to neglect or erasure. Through his relationship to Columbus, he confronts the pain of loving a place that wounds. Through his reflections on LeBron and Boobie Gibson, he reclaims a vision of Black excellence that includes the overlooked and the ordinary. The false self of the city is not just a civic illusion—it is a mirror of the nation’s refusal to fully reckon with its history. Yet within this fractured space, Abdurraqib insists on making a home, fashioning meaning from memory, and honoring the community that continues to struggle towards victory.
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