The Dreamed Basketball
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For my cousin Juanma<br />
and those Extremadura summers<br />
that heard our childhood dreams<br />
A. C.<br />
THE SUPER HOOPERS VOL. 1<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Basketball</strong> Tournament of Dreams<br />
First edition: February 2024<br />
© Text: Alberto Casamayor Otero, 2024<br />
© Illustrations: Palma&Kako, 2024<br />
Translation from Spanish: Carolyn Louise Black, 2024<br />
© Editorial el Pirata, 2024<br />
Sabadell (Barcelona)<br />
info@editorialelpirata.com<br />
editorialelpirata.com/en<br />
All rights reserved<br />
ISBN: 978-84-19898-07-4<br />
Legal deposit: B 11169-2023<br />
Printed in China<br />
All materials used come from responsibly managed forests.<br />
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Copyright protects the creation of literary works; therefore, it’s an important element to stimulate<br />
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THE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT<br />
OF DREAMS<br />
Written by<br />
Alberto Casamayor<br />
Illustrated by<br />
Palma&Kako
Over<br />
heeerrrre!<br />
I’M JOEL,<br />
I’M NINE YEARS OLD,<br />
AND UNTIL A FEW WEEKS BACK<br />
I DIDN’T EVEN<br />
LIKE BASKETBALL.<br />
BUT HERE I AM…
My field goal percentage is soooooo low that<br />
any one of my teammates would pass the ball to<br />
an orangutan before they’d pass to me.<br />
1<br />
Bermúdez, who’s point guard of my team and my<br />
best buddy, makes a fake, but he’s really unlucky;<br />
the ball bounces off his foot, and he loses it.<br />
Bounce, bounce, the ball’s coming in my direction.<br />
Five seconds to go.<br />
I catch it.<br />
Why have I spent the whole game asking for it?<br />
I’m scared to death!<br />
<strong>The</strong> crowd roars, a lady flings up her arms, and<br />
the salami goes flying out of her sandwich.<br />
<strong>The</strong> coach yells:<br />
“Shoooooooooot!”
I’m shaking all over.<br />
<strong>The</strong> tallest player in the other team, who looks<br />
about the height of three giraffes to me, stretches<br />
out his arms to block the basket.<br />
Four seconds!<br />
I turn around so he doesn’t take the ball from me.<br />
Shoooooooooot!
With my back to the basket, I shoot.<br />
<strong>The</strong> whole world seems to move in slow<br />
motion: <strong>The</strong> ball rises and curves in front of the<br />
scoreboard and stopwatch.<br />
Two seconds!<br />
It starts to fall.<br />
I realize it’s not going anywhere near the basket.<br />
We’re going to lose the championship.<br />
Shoot!<br />
Shoot!<br />
No! Not him!<br />
No! Not him!
But wait up, wait up… I told you I didn’t even use<br />
to like basketball.<br />
Do you want to know how it all began?<br />
What brought me and my buddies to the big<br />
final of our town's Youth <strong>Basketball</strong> Tournament,<br />
sponsored by Meaty Beans, ‘<strong>The</strong> veggie burger of<br />
your dreams’?<br />
Well, let’s go back in time a little—you don’t want<br />
to miss this bit.<br />
BOING!<br />
8
JOEL<br />
2<br />
That’s me.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re’s nothing I like better than Mr. Prodigy comics.<br />
He’s my favorite superhero because he can escape<br />
from any kind of trap,<br />
no matter what.<br />
I dream of going to<br />
a comic convention,<br />
but my parents<br />
are both freelancers<br />
so they don’t have<br />
the time or money<br />
to take me.<br />
Badly-combed,<br />
wavy hair<br />
I’ll let you in on a secret:<br />
When I’m in my room,<br />
I make little balls<br />
from muffin liners<br />
and throw them<br />
into the waste basket<br />
with my back turned!<br />
And they often go in.<br />
Well, actually, just twice…<br />
in my entire life…<br />
Ketchupstained<br />
T-shirt<br />
9<br />
Mr. Prodigy<br />
comic<br />
Injury from<br />
last game
It’s the first Thursday of the school year, a few<br />
weeks before the shot I was telling you about, and<br />
I'm in my physical education class.<br />
We’re changing in the locker room when we hear<br />
that our teacher—who we all call Pithicus, or<br />
πTQs, because he’s supposed to have been around<br />
since before dinosaurs walked the Earth—has<br />
retired.<br />
“What a tragedy,” I say to Bermúdez.<br />
“Yeah, he was an understanding kind of GUY; we<br />
passed the class without really having to TRY.”<br />
Bermúdez and I think physical effort is overrated.<br />
And Mr. Pithicus agreed.<br />
If we managed to stay in line and run around the<br />
schoolyard without hurting ourselves, he gave us<br />
good grades.<br />
Even if we didn’t run, as long as we didn’t hurt<br />
ourselves he still gave us good grades.<br />
A deep voice shakes the locker room walls and<br />
fluorescent ceiling lights.<br />
<strong>The</strong> voice yells:<br />
10
HEY!<br />
My name<br />
is EVANS…<br />
…and you can call me<br />
Evans, Mr. Evans,<br />
or, if you prefer:<br />
Eh! Vans!<br />
We’re going<br />
to get in shape.<br />
Aaaall out<br />
in two lines!
We rush out like rats from a sinking ship and get<br />
a real shock.<br />
Facing the parallel bars, a circuit’s been put<br />
together which includes jumping over a vaulting<br />
horse, somersaulting over a beam, hanging from<br />
some ladders, and climbing up those ladders to<br />
reach a rope which we have to use to get up to the<br />
ceiling.<br />
I have no idea how it happened, but for the first<br />
time in my life, I’m at the front of the line.<br />
I’m Joel,<br />
I don’t know<br />
if the other teacher<br />
talked to you<br />
about me…
No, Mr. Pithicus clearly didn’t talk to him about<br />
me. I swallow hard and look at the vaulting horse.<br />
I swear I order my legs to run and jump, my<br />
hands to grip the vaulting horse and push me up,<br />
but…my legs are shaking so much that I stagger<br />
jerkily to the vaulting horse.<br />
I want to jump, but I don’t have enough<br />
momentum. My sweaty hands slip and…<br />
He’s crashed into<br />
the vaulting horse!<br />
GH!<br />
UGH<br />
One thing seems<br />
pretty CLEAR:<br />
Gym is going<br />
to hurt a bit<br />
this YEAR.<br />
Everything’s spinning. If I almost break my neck<br />
on the first day, how am I going to survive an<br />
entire year of gym?<br />
13