Ready to go

Rock's final NBA season was winding down. He stood in a hallway before a game at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, chatting with two other old veterans, and they laughed about their relative lack of fitness and their teams's lack of prowess.
One of the players asked Rock how many games he thought his team could win.
"We have an outside chance of twenty," he said. "I mean, we're bad, but we're not the Knicks. We can still run a few basic plays. We know what a pick-and-roll is."
It occurred to him that it was bizarre he had somehow lasted in the NBA this long. He almost used his age as an excuse for his diminished skills but stopped short. No one had ever played a significant professional sport past the age of fifty, other than the hockey player Gordie Howe. Surely no one knew Rock was fifty-seven. That alone would have made him famous. The thing is, he could still play a little. He was ready to go.