I was two kinds of basketball player as a kid, the one who messed around on the hoop in his backyard, sometimes with a few nerdy friends, and then the other kid, who dreaded practice every day after school and rode the bench on Friday nights. Neither version was totally accurate. By senior year I was six foot six, still too skinny, but a slasher; my nerdy friends spent much of the time trying to stop me from going baseline and dunking on them. Yet still, on Friday nights, when I put on my varsity uniform, I hoped the coach wouldn’t send me in the game, and sat on my hands on the sideline to stop them from sweating at the thought that he might. He rarely did. Even at the time it felt to me like a failure of character, and I was frustrated with myself that I didn’t seem capable of showing in the real world the qualities or abilities that I thought I possessed in the privacy of my backyard, or my imagination.…