The narrator begins by saying that he's the best basketball player on his school team. He's tall, skinny, and has braces on his legs to help him walk. He doesn't think that playing basketball is such a bad idea, though. He says that his father taught him to play basketball so that he could exercise his legs. He thinks that maybe playing basketball isn't so bad after all, since he was born with a deformed hip. He asks if he'll give up playing, and the kid says that he won't. The narrator is so drunk that he can't even touch the kid's basketball. He grabs the kid by the arm and tells him to grab his ball and run away. He tells the kid to run away because he can "burn" the ball. The kid runs away and the narrator beats him up.