A hot summer’s night, sky littered with pink rags of cloud gives way for a burgeoning meeting place a sanctuary, the blacktop basketball court. A place for young men with hoop dreams and those of us like myself just trying to get the ball. Street ball is the most quintessential form of the game. You are paired with several other players of varying skill sets and ability that you have no palpable connection with. You can’t “gel” with your team mates that’s a sentiment held by the high school teams and comp leagues in there sparkling gyms sipping water that does not enhance the way pipe tainted park water does. You have to fend for yourself against much better players and find your own skills. So that’s where my journey begins.
I suck at basketball that is what I preface every game with. My shooting is sporadic at best and laughable, hell, condemnable at worst. At points I have trouble catching the ball an illness I blame on my glasses and my phobia of things coming at my face. I can dribble confidently in my right and ok in my left but my crossover is my only “move”. So why am I out on a June night when the heat blankets the city trying to keep pace with college juniors on a cement court with NBA threes? It’s an experiment.
The guy in the purple tie dye shirt does not like to pass the ball. He doesn’t know how to use a screen either. The kid who went to my high school whose name I don’t know who I didn’t even know played basketball is tall. He is a rebounder but also has a surprising turn around post shot that makes me ooh and ah and the other team cuss. After the third sprint to stand I give up screening for purple tie dye guy. He obviously doesn’t grasp the idea of running around and instead just dribbles back and forth left to right over and over again. He is an exhausting player and when he hits one pretty jumper he thinks he’s Kobe and just fires shot after shot. Kareem, doink, verve, plop, bang, all sounds the rest of the shots make as they miss the basket, but 1 in 10 goes swish, so go shoot 10 more{the flawed logic of a cocky player). The reasons I am out here? I want to get better. I’m trying to find some solace, and I’m looking for friends.
So the second game comes and a group of studly looking college kids who obviously thought they were the shit in high school roll up in the back of someone’s brand new Ford with an American flag on it. You know the type, they can talk, and they can ball but when they meet the quiet strong type it’s not much of a competition. This team passes and I disappoint. Two whiffed off the tips of my fingers discourage the looks to the oversized fresh faced kid with glasses and Hamby down Jordan’s. So I do my job. My skillset, I set screens. This team understands a little more about the wall I set with my birthing hips and I get a few good screens off. These kids are having more fun. It is trash talk it is constant barking jabber back and forth almost thick enough talk to shield from the thick blanket of heat around us but not quite. A last second layup ends our interaction and they hop out of the park and into their pickup. Off to the next conquest.
So goes the park. A mixing pot, the summer symbol of America and the American dream. So I leave and go home and sleep and now write this. This is the first of a really “bloggy” series of entries about playing pickup basketball in parks all the way through summer on Fridays and writing about it on Saturdays. I am looking to get better to make friends and to prove to myself that I can keep up with the kids in the park. The blacktop is however even more like the American dream though, through the optimism cheer jibber jabber and sly jazz of summer, failure is also everyone’s right. So we strive on point guard’s carving through the sharp defense striving towards the hole.
I am slightly discouraged to do this by the late Frank Deford who wrote “sports blogging is the equivalent to pole dancing” so I guess I’m out to prove Deford wrong. I hope you read along and enjoy if you have any comments or criticism comment and let me know.