About New York

At Age 31, Hanging On to the Ball

DEREK WOOTEN has the basketball. He is standing on a Brooklyn park's asphalt court, known to him since he was 7. Behind him, the elevated D train, squealing. To his right, the Marlboro Houses, looming. And before him, a netless hoop, seducing from 20 feet away.

They get some good games going on this court in Bensonhurst, with players coming from the Marlboro projects and from Coney Island who twirl and dunk with the same effort it takes to breathe. But there is no five-on-five this morning, only Mr. Wooten and another man, shooting jump shots with a wet basketball, while the wind snaps the city flag against a nearby pole, and the smell of fried dough wafts from a Dunkin' Donuts.

At 31, he has played hundreds, no, thousands of games here, shooting from downtown one possession and then driving hard the next, and so what if he's 5 foot 9. He knows every ping in the metal backboard, every bump in the pavement -- even the owner of those abandoned sneakers over there.

And he knows that he has more behind him than just the D train.

People who watch him play often ask where did he play in college? Man, what are you doing here, they say, you ought to be in the N.B.A. with Stephon -- as in Marbury, as in that kid from Coney Island he used to play ball with.

"And that hurts," he says. "Time's going by too fast."

In this corner of the city, basketball can be the great false god. Prowess on the court is worshiped over prowess in the classroom and then school's out: game over. But at a time when many of his hoop peers are working menial jobs or just hanging around, Mr. Wooten clings to the belief that he has a shot at the pros. He wakes up thinking about it.

"Age don't make no difference," he says, sounding as though he's trying to convince himself as much as his listener. "I'm healthy. I can run through guys, put the ball in the hole, get the team involved. And I'm gifted. Why not?"

Fifteen years ago, Derek Wooten terrorized opponents; he was that good, and that tough. He and his twin brother, Dexter, used to run the courts, and woe to anyone who complained about a bloodless foul. Dexter played at Lafayette High School -- though he missed some games after being shot in a schoolyard fight -- while Derek played the point at Lincoln High School.

But Derek Wooten dropped out of Lincoln just as Stephon Marbury was coming in. Then the years sneaked past in the Marlboro projects.

ONE minute he was 17 and dreaming of playing in the N.B.A.; the next he's 31, with a couple of kids, but still dreaming of playing in the N.B.A. -- in part because Mr. Marbury made it, and he knows that man's game.

Mr. Wooten says he spent a lot of time -- a lot of time -- over the years trying to find a college that suited him best. He says he worked at a McDonald's; as a messenger; as a maintenance worker; as a porter at an Edward's supermarket; as an escort for mentally retarded children. He leaves out the 18 months he served in prison for attempted burglary.

"I wasted a lot of time," he says.

Now, though, he has a plan. For the last three years he has been taking classes at a local branch of Touro College, he says, and is one semester away from earning an associate's degree in human services. After that, he hopes to go to a Division III college where he can earn a bachelor's degree and play basketball.

"I know somebody's going to pick me up," he says. "That's a guarantee."

So he does push-ups and squat thrusts in the bathroom of the apartment he shares with his mother and brother, and joins the basketball games down at Seth Low Junior High School -- when he doesn't have class -- and comes to this park, alone, to pirouette past phantom defenders.

All the while, he keeps in the back of his mind his encounter with Mr. Marbury at some function in a Coney Island playground last summer. The two men hugged, he says, and Mr. Marbury whispered these words: Keep the ball. Don't lose it. Because you never know.

If Mr. Wooten understands how slim his chances are of leaving the projects by way of the N.B.A., he does not let on. As the wind whips and another D train grinds past, he launches the ball into the air.

It sails through the hoop, in Marlboro affirmation.