playing basketball

Haven't played a real game in 15 or so years.

Used to love playing when I was in high school though.

aww

ive played a few times at those courts in the panhandle (this is what they call that little strip extending out from golden gate park right) when visiting my sister

Yeah that used to be a good pickup game spot (also down at Dolores Park too IIRC.)

been a couple years. we've been trying to organize a game for about a month now and everyone has endless excuses - bad back, got jazz tix, hangnail, moon is waning, feeling old at 30, etc

dude just go down to where people play and get next - i usually go w/at least one friend - but theres no need to bring a complete game w/you - that is the beauty

havent played since sr year in hs, havent put any effort into it since jr year

this used to be my friends favorite pastime but theyve all gotten too fat & lazy, same as me

While jhoshea is OTM that it's to get in pick-up games, it's a little harder to do if you haven't played in ages and your instincts and shot are totally pathetic (esp. pickup basketball can get a little intimidating IMO.) Still pick up a ball and practice your shot and you'll get it back eventually.

just play in shitty games til u get yr confidence back is all

or if yr feeling brave just get pwnd for a little while

i played a couple weeks ago after a 3 month+ layoff; i tried to stay out of games just shooting by myself but got cajoled into full on 5 on 5 sos i wouldn't look like a pussy, and surprised myself with how well i did. just played lowkey, concentrated on defense and hit a couple open jumpers. panting like a dog though, i need to start running again.

i have glass ankles unfortunately, since my teens it seems like i can never play regularly for more than 2 months before catastrophe strikes. i never had hops to begin with so no biggie, my shot is still there

Yeah, I'm a smoker + I hairline fractured my right ankle a couple years ago and never really had it treated = I will probably never play in a pickup game again in my life. Which sucks.

haha i've probably fractured mine or worse half a dozen times, i don't know what it would take to actually have them looked at by a doctor, now one of my ankles clicks just about every step i take but it doesn't really hurt anymore. last week i thought about picking up some 9.99 starburys to replace my tim duncans (!), i don't learn i guess. can't bring myself to buy nikes but the non-sweatshop shits suck for the most part.

god, mine still hurts like hell, particularly in the winter and occasionally just fucking buckles on me and I nearly fall over. This is most awesome when crossing streets.

i play when i can, which isn't much these days. my handle has left me completely. more than one dribble with the left is an adventure.

i use the racquetball court at a gym that doubles as a b-ball half-court. i'd rather use an outdoor court but i don't know of one near me. hadn't really played in years but my shot came back pretty quick

i love playing pickup basketball #1 advantage of free gym @ college

i am only okay but soooo much fun

actually i just thought of one court that i could probably walk to. just need a ball pump

I'm saving my body for old age. Hard cuts to the basket are not part of the program. I like to walk too much to chance it.

just camp out and shoot threes

I will fuck you all up. I hadn't played all that much in the last few years , but started playing more often recently with this dude from work. He works out every day and runs full court games at his gym 6X/week. I SUCK at decision-making in a 5on5 game, but made him eat his trash-talking words in 1on1. He's Mr Testosterone and takes shit way too seriously, which is pretty annoying but I still have fun.

just remembered this is like a 5 min from me but the names on the wall make it look like some "locals only" shit.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/188/442365195_d1b606bf52_o.jpg

lol n e 1 here got mad ups??? i'll be the first to admit i can't even come close to dunking

http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2006/11/WMCJ.jpg

i can barely touch rim and my hands are smaller than 95% of girls I've known. So nope, can't dunk neither.

melo's old cloverdale court is featured in nba street

http://sportsmedia.ign.com/sports/image/article/746/746257/carmelo-anthony-street-cred-20061115032614378-000.jpg

http://sports.ign.com/articles/746/746257p1.html
http://www.baltimorestories.com/main.cfm?nid=1&tid=291

i think i can get like halfway up the net or some shit on a good day

i once did like a rub dunk on a crooked outdoor rim. it was not pretty. my brothers got the good genes.

thread title makes me think of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0yoPVAOJTk

grazed the rim once or twice back in high school days. how tall are u guys? i'm about 5'11 and i can probably barely touch the net now

oh come on, even a 5'11" with laimbeer hops could easily touch net. (I'm 6ft, 170. Just like AI!)

I rolled my ankle something fierce at a pick up game on saturday. swelling is down now but I’m still listed as day to day.

last week i thought about picking up some 9.99 starburys to replace my tim duncans (!), i don't learn i guess. can't bring myself to buy nikes but the non-sweatshop shits suck for the most part.

-- tremendoid, Friday, April 25, 2008 9:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

dude no youve probably heard this but everyone says those shits fuck up yr feet

its pretty sad cause what a great - lol right after they came out and people started complaining abt their feet marbury was all wtf i wear them theyre great - of course he was out w/a foot injury at the time

shaq has some wicked cheap shoes too http://payless.resultspage.com/shoes/Shaquille

my current dedicated basketball intended for tennis foot environment http://i30.tinypic.com/rbilbn.jpg

i played almost everyday from 8 to 19 but the last time i played was about 13 years ago in york beach, maine. i was abused by some 6' 7" 17 year old. my tar-coated lungs just couldn't get it done. it was embarrassing.

my heart would probably explode if i tried to play a full court game today.

eh yr a wirey guy right - i bet you could get back in shape pretty easily - it the extra weight thatll really hold you back

wiry, skeletal, whatever. mid 30s, smoking for over half my life now, not sure i could actually get back in shape. i'll bet i could still nail the open j though.

"either you slangin' crack-rock or you got a wicked jump shot"

annoying playground ball trend, pt 1: you score 15 or so quick points in 21 or 32, and then mofos start playing "defense" on you ie hacking like mad
annoying playground ball trend, pt 2: 3 other dudes playing, you come in, and no one wants to play 2 on 2, just 1 on 1 b.s.

omg ive been so on fire the last couple days - yesterday i mustve shot like 15/22 over the course of three games of 4 on 4 to 16 - hitting crazy threes off the dribble off balance floaters layups high of the glass everything - against good players too!

i'm going to try and get back out there this weekend. hope the ankle holds up.

do you have any sort of brace? i bought one a couple years ago, but I think it's too small cause there's more pain with wearing it than without.

yah prob too small - do you do any sort of strengthening exercises? def worthwhile. weird muscular over compensation/weakening as the result of a single injury is often what leads to the chronic variety.

i don't have a brace. i was just gonna go with a tape wrap and see how it feels.

it doesnt count if u only play against white ppl btw

well duh

LOL! i play against a lot of filipinos. i dominate the boards but the dudes kill me with their quicks. i pretty much suck. it all about the cardio workout for me anyways.

for the record canky where i play its abt 50/50 white/black w/one puerto rican dude whos better than everyone

"some of my best teammates have been black!!"

haaaaaaaaa

Other than games I or a friend organize, I'm usually the only white dude at the courts. Last week, this white dude I didn't know approached me and wanted to play against two black dudes who were at the adjacent court. They scored the first 5 buckets, and then my "teammate" goes "oh that's it. I quit. I thought I could still play, but I can't". MOTHERFUCKER! What kind of person does that?!? I'm competitive enough of a person for that to drive me up a wall. The other dudes were good (one was a dead ringer--style-wise and body type-wise--for Grandmama. plays on his JUCO team), but they weren't THAT good. I didn't even get a chance to make halftime adjustments, dammit.

quiting halfway through whaaaa - sometimes you lose - then you just play again wtf

exactly. it's not even like we were getting all our shots blocked/our cookies tooken or something. played make it/take it, so we only had about 2 offensive possessions. Larry Johnson Jr whupped my ass in 21 and 32 (is this just a Chicago thing? same as 21 one but w/o free throws. we didn't play it when I was young, but it's very prevalent now). But I didn't care, I like trying to defend someone 1on1 who's too black, too strong.

ive never heard of 32 - hows that different from 1 on 1?

you've heard of 21, tho, right? one on x? make a shot, you get either 3 free throws (3 n out) or unlimited (all day). 32 is obv up to 32, no FTs. Perfect for those who love to ball handle and drive but have no shot, even from 15 ft and uncontested.

ah yah i was forgetting abt the multiple player dynamic

we called that 21 game 'poison' for some reason

see we called poison the version where you'd go back down to zero if someone tipped in one of your misses (obv stopped playing that once we hit puberty and tip ins were no big deal)

Does "NO B.S.A.!!" ring a bell for anyone?

Boy Scouts of America?

that version of poison reminds me of what we used to call 'tip-in', which starts w/ free throws (1 pt apiece) and then tip-ins were worth 2, but all tips had to be made in the air. scoring a tip-in got you to the line no matter who was next, but anytime the ball was grounded it would then rotate to the next player in line. if you went over 21 then you went back to 11 or 0, depending on who you were playing with

we go play hoop

where

I wish I still had buddies to play ball with. :(

where the choom gang @

walking through london fields yesterday toward the market, with an empty sack in my right hand, i see a guy wrapped up in watch cap and track suit and shooting around on one of the hoops in london fields. these hoops are hilarious because they are mounted in GRASS - that's right, there's no hard surface to play on, just beaten down dirt. i couldn't resist joining him so i dropped my empty sack, asked to play, he had never heard of "horse" so i told him how to play that. he was pretty good, named pedro, from spain. then we did 1-on-1 and after 15 minutes i wanted to puke.

haha awesome!

i played 2 on 2 w/some kids in a town in the mekong delta once - they were pretty good

my 1-on-1 offensive skills are deplorable - there's a whole syntax of body fakes that weren't even in the frame when i was playing ca. age 10

one on one is kinda tedious

yeah there's no chess involved, it's ENTIRELY about the psyche-out and quickness off the dribble whereas my game is entirely about the, uh, pull-up jumper, the uncontested layup and the bounce pass

Senior year of college we used to be able to get enough players for a weekly 5 on 5 full-court game. Some of my very favorite college memories are from those Fridays. I wish I still had time and enough friends around to play regularly.

i played a bunch of pick up this summer

tracer lets play! I am not very good.

ive been playing about twice a week with some friends, its good times - when i was a teenager i used to play alll the time - im only 5'9 though so its taken a lot more work than i expected for me to get back into it than ppl who get boards easily

btw do you guys play 21?? around here we would play 21 with tip-outs - so fun, and it makes rebounding a lot more about elegance and less about 'tallest dude wins'

everyone apparently plays "32" now, which removes the only non-1on1 skill from play ie free throws. tip outs, like you tip someone's miss and they go to 0? I hope you mean you used to play that way when you were 10?

played a couple weeks ago for the first time in about six months. my right forearm, among other muscles, was sore for days just from shooting the ball. lol old

i skipped work yesterday to go to this park i found south of the city past ravens stadium. four full courts, all nets intact somehow. its also got four baseball diamonds and a skatepark. pro-tip: don't wear wallabees for b-ball

hahah

i haven't played in a while but i'm going home for thxgiving pretty soon and that always means playing ball with hs bros (most fun ever)

we play 21 a lot mostly.. not sure what tip-outs are though

basically if someone misses a shot you can jump, grab the ball before it hits the ground and score before you hit the ground, then you get 2 pts and the other person goes down to 0. it adds a wild card element, haa. we did it when i was younger but i dont know why granny d is opposed to it now

cause it's way too easy! games would never end.

im just saying, for a dude like me who doesnt get a lot of boards when you have like five 6-foot dudes jumping up for the ball it makes it a lot more fun for those of use w/ on-point jumpers who arent able to do layup (miss, rebound) layup

well if it's fun and it works, that's all that matters. playing 21 with tip-ins is what caused me, ie skinny 6ft tall, to become to become good around the rim.

ok yeah i've never played 21 w/o tips as deej outlines

i played 2 games of full court yesterday - i died zomg - also i sucked cause i never run 5 on 5

it was awesome tho will def be returning to this weekly game - i srsly couldnt remember the last time i played in a gym

to my credit tho this dude was just shredding us then i switched to him and shut him down on some rondo type shit

yeah i play 5 on 5 full court so infrequently that I'm always rusty as fuck when I do. Playing with gym rats who are 5 years younger than me is pretty humbling. But the skills on the defensive end are always there (half the game is 90% mental). When all 10 are amateurs and not used to playing with one another, 5 on 5 is too many people on the damn court. There's invariably a big guy who wants to run iso from the top of the key, and one or two guys who have no concept of positions and sets.

i was actually pretty impressed w/some of the dudes 5 on 5 acumen - every time i play tho im like how do 10 lol hueg lightning fast nba players fit in this space

i know, right. makes you appreciate someone like AI who's able to regularly get his shots off in the lane. last series of games i played nearly all the dudes started for their HS teams, and I knew that going in, but I failed to realize that since they're so much younger than me, HS was just a few short years ago for them. Worst part was having a terrible, terrible game, and then being informed that our warehouse location was not usable anymore and there'd be no more games. No redemption :(

thinking about joining xsport for the winter almost solely for the hoopsage.

(large public gyms kinda give me the wilies)

played a few times this week - pretty fun - was not as rusty as i thought - but damn basketball is so tiring - theres really nothing u can do to get in shape for it

I find that pretending I'm Steve Nash when I'm on d helps me keep from feeling tired

also, sometimes doing lots of suicides helps your conditioning, but it's a pain, as you have to do lots of suicides

this shit is so fun. fuck is up with dudes my age who are more into playing golf?? a)plenty of time for that when i'm old and decrepit b) it doesn't cost $50 to play ball for a few hours c) it's sorta frowned upon to block someone's golf shot.

i've played like 10 times in the past two months - honestly the most fun shit ever - nothing beats the feeling of having your shot being on

havent played since last week but i play pickup here at uconn 4-5 times a week when i'm not crazy w/ exams. im gonna try to play more this summer than i usually do but when i go home it's usually golf/tennis time, plus i cant really get a good game in my town

what town do you live in? i think about moving out to the southwest somewhere, away from an urban center, but then i'm like wait, never mind being able to find a job, what would i do for hoops competition??

Been playing, mostly 2-on-2 with my similarly rusty friends. My game was on yesterday, relatively speaking.

But I wanted to ask for non-$$$$$ shoe recomendations. Been playing in Nike skate shoes or NB trail runners and my feet ain't having it.

Are you playing outside? I tend to just buy the cheapest ones at big box sporting goods stores - usually for under $40. I like low-top shoes, cause I feel high-tops restrict your ankles too much and transfer a lot of that lateral stress to your knees, which weren't really designed to bend sideways - your ankles, on the other hand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3doDhXLYtUM

;)

http://racquetdepot.com/images/medium/new_balance_ct1004bk_mens_tennis_shoes.jpg

^tennis shoes, but if I don't feel like wearing my hi-top KG's (best bball shoe I've ever owned. endorsed by the american podiatry society!), I'll wear them to hoop. you can find the black ones for about 1/2 the price of the white ones.

was getting discouraged the last few times I hooped. body couldn't do what i was telling it to, WHITE guys were blocking my shot. but the other day I was scoring the vast majority of my team's points without forcing it, and my guy only scored once in 2 games.

yeah, I play outside.

thanks for the recommendations guys.

making an appointment to play basketball and then having it start raining just as you get there is ;_;

didn't stop us tho

thx for popping me in the nose today, really aggro mid-50s elbow-swinging dude :(

its how we did it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzn2MV8YfQw

^saw this dude score 45 pts in a HS conference title game tonight (keep in mind they play 8 min qtrs). played with him a few times a couple summers ago at one of the courts in my hometown, dude is QUICK and very crafty, also has great vision. him and his boys--one of whom is on his HS team with him--held court for 2 hours or so, pretty much embarrassing the rest of uss. committed to USC when he was 13 (!) but that's off now that Floyd left.

An overflow crowd of 1,500-plus was treated to the main course on Friday as Boatright erupted for a personal-high 45 points - including a mind-boggling total of 35 in the fourth quarter and overtime -

So that's 35 pts in a 12 minute span, against a team ranked 8th in the state. His team isn't in the top 20.

i play 2 or 3 times a week at the Y downtown. it's pretty competitive and my body's usually aching the next day (lower back) but it's one of my favorite things in life so well worth it.

got not one but two charlie horses today. kinda frustrating when it seems like you're the only one who even tries to make an effort to play by the rules.

find myself yelling at people for not playing defense, which may be a little overboard for the Y, but it annoys the shit out of me when everybody else is busting their ass on d on one dude's fucking it up w/ his laziness. k i'll mellow out now.

no i def hear you on that

play pickup at the gym all the time at school. im on break now and played this morning at my JCC - not as good of pickup as the kids at the city Y but a couple of these dudes could play

besides go to class and study play bball is all i do basically

played with a really annoying guy yesterday. on defense, if you were driving he'd body check you and then pretend nothing happened. on offense, he'd drive, call foul, then launch floaters with 10% chance of going in - basically ensuring that his team would get the ball back no matter what. lol @ playing in places not in america

this old 5'5 paulie walnuts looking dude i play with calls foul if u play any defense whatsoever but everyone just tolerates it, just joe being joe. he's automatic from 3 pt. so people def. don't mind having him on their team, kick out and win. he must honestly think steals are illegal

lol I think everybody has that kinda guy at their gym. yeah this guy was also 5'5ish (though I'm only 5'7ish). I dunno I grew up playing no blood no foul, so it's really frustrating to have to give the ball back to him after he runs into you and calls foul.

is it just the courts I've been going to the last few years or are most bball players raging assholes?

I think maybe if I played with dudes more my age (32) it'd be different, but there's so many testosteroned-out d-bags I've encountered lately that it's soured me on pickup games.

couple weeks back: I hacked dude on the arm when going for a steal. I immediately apologized. His response: "get a fucking life, dude". um, ok?

f that shit

dudes i end up playing with are usually super cool Filipino bros

your mistake was in apologizing

also playing w/out a life, big transgression there

technical

some courts are bad

oops, there's always 2 sides to the story.

that response could be qualified by some type of play that could be considered cheap or weak, esp with the hack.

nah that dude was being a sociopath w/everyone, trust me

its always a variety of dudes in this court called life

i mean if you're gonna be up in arms anytime someone slaps you across the arm when going for a strip, prob shouldn't be playing. this was about 1 minute into my 1st game, never seen dude previously, so it wasn't a straw/camel's back thing, either.
in the non-asshole yet still d-bag dept, another dude recently refused to take out his earphones when playing. now I know what playing w/a deaf teammate would be like.

some courts are bad

― mookieproof, Friday, August 6, 2010 6:24 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mookie u play in bk?

not really -- the only court i know of with regular games only has them in the morning on weekends. and i can't go for that

ive played for years at dekalb n carlton, sweet neighborhood sitch, not sure id seek it out if i didnt live around the corner tho

is it just the courts I've been going to the last few years or are most bball players raging assholes?

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Friday, August 6, 2010 3:54 PM (7 hours ago)

def the opposite for me. you get douchebags but they're usually white dudes straight outta high school with shit to prove

the comraderie i encounter in most pickup games, even at high levels is pretty cool actually

yah i pretty much agree

not abt the post collegiate white guys, just to be clear, not sure abt all that

finally found a really good regular pickup game in my hometown in the winter...just in time to go back to school (where i can get good games 24/7 so no problem there). sunday afternoons at the city YMCA are a gold mine, couple dozen really good high school players and 20-somethings playing all day long - was the only white dude there too which is always a plus

i'm awesome at shooting as long as there's no dribbling involved

cmon watch earl the pearl monroe

just start spinning

i got out there last week and this weekend, on this concrete court. mostly shooting alone then on sunday 7 dudes show up they all know each other but are reuniting from since 10 years ago or something. anyway they were cool everybody played well i shot well and then i get pushed into butting heads with this other dude, i got this boxing gash right under my eyebrow gushing blood, but it stopped pretty quick i dunno. i didnt get it checked out yet...

i made 39 straight foul shots today /braggin

damn bro

on one of those pizza hut mini-hoops

played full court yesterday, won like 8 straight games, fun, sort of rusty, hit some threes

xp haha when im just shooting around i usually have to make 10 str8 free throws before i can go - made my first 10 and wanted to see how far i could push it. got to 39/39 then only made 24 of my next 34, but then made my next 22 for 85/95. ive never been 90/100 so i really wanted to get that but missed the next 2, settled for 88/90 which i think is my best

hella streaky

88/100 i mean

where'd u play ice cr?m

at the jcc in newton mass lol

have played at the jcc in park slope too, not jewish btw

haha i've tried to play at the park slope y, but it's pretty crowded and, sad to say, probably out of my league at this point

yeah y's tend to be p hardcore in general

An overflow crowd of 1,500-plus was treated to the main course on Friday as Boatright erupted for a personal-high 45 points - including a mind-boggling total of 35 in the fourth quarter and overtime -

So that's 35 pts in a 12 minute span, against a team ranked 8th in the state. His team isn't in the top 20.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Saturday, March 6, 2010 9:47 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

saw this Boatright kid play again today cause he's scored 55 and 63 in games this season. had like 36 in a loss today. totally in the AI mode, including the attitude. in for a rude awakening courtesy of jim calhoun next year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAVjcGH7ao

AI mold

he seems quite deliberate and under control and ryan boatright is an ill name

watching superior high school players kill the competition is p fun

totally in the AI mode, including the attitude

also the "not passing"

he looks alright but don't really know where he fits, looks much slower/dumber than shabazz and is kinda small to take playing time away from lamb, smith, or combs

guess it sorta depends on whether kemba goes pro

kembas got to declare right, tho i guess lol lockout so

god i hope not, we could be incredible next year if he stays

don't think he's really ready either but if he wins player of the year idk why he'd stay

why are we talking about this in the "playing basketball" thread tho

cause i played w/him once in a pickup game
yeah he doesn't pass much but he has pretty good vision and ive seen him make some pretty sick passes. just has no talent around him. his team's bigs missed about 7 point blank shots in the 4th qtr alone yesterday.

cause i played w/him once in a pickup game

oh nice!

btw my alma mater has been #1 in the state for like 5 straight years, has 2 div I recruits on the current squad including the reigning Ms Basketball...kinda interested in catching a game but as a 32 yr old male feel like everyone would be staring at me like "ok who let the molester in?".

eh i dont think anyone really pervs on lady ballers

id be curious to see how good a top girls team is

ive seen broadcasts of them in the state tourney and its like "wow these girls are very competent".
seems like about 95% of hs players don't stand out due to lack of athletic talent or bball skills so much as not being able to produce under the lights. you get a sense of how crucial poise/clutchness/not being rattled is to being a successful athlete. obv that's key in college and pros but the gap between the haves/have nots and the rarity of the haves is much more dramatic.

eh i dont think anyone really pervs on lady ballers

right but she kinda cute. ms bball that is:
http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/77250/morgan-tuck

shit didn't realize the pg is ranked even higher nationally
http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/73085/ariel-massengale

my best friend, who practices with the girls, was just telling me how insane their recruiting class is for next year

uconn's i mean

BATTLE WOUND

http://i52.tinypic.com/2ckjzr.jpg

wtf were u playing Bruce bowen

ha no i was playing defense, dude is drivng to his right and i go for the steal, he lowers his head into mine, hello facial laceration & 5 stitches

damn son!!

haha so baller. i once went to the infirmary due to a 'bow from cherokee parks, but did not need stitches

waaaaaaaaaait you played ball with cherokee parks???

Is this on ballers w/ randoms?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/124/417257141_9f31d43412.jpg

Thank god it is!

This one however does not appear to be:

http://a729.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/55/l_486f981d58716cbf8811d92cf02a6a50.jpg

damn kev

I hate that I suck so bad at this sport. I'm an okay shot and can usually hold my own one-on-one, but I'm a damn turnover machine in a game. No D either :(

I've been teaching myself to play after not even trying for like 15 years and never having been any good. So far I've played in a couple of 2-2/3-3 games and it was pretty bad. Dudes were nice and were basically humoring me. I play at the Y so it's not an ultra-competitive vibe even though there are some serious players there.

I have an obsessiveness that is helping me improve though. I often do little no-dribble ball feel/handling drills around my apartment, and when I practice shooting I tend to kind of lose track of time. I've at least gone from "has this guy ever seen a basketball?" to "this guy sucks at basketball" I'd say.

I'm really retarded though. Like I'll get a drive/burst-of-speed going and then realize I have no sense of where I am in relation to the hoop. I also find that even though I consider myself in decent shape, I tire out a lot faster than I would have thought. All the stop-start and arm waving and jumping is a little different than just running on a treadmill.

i know it's easier said than done (esp since it was my downfall in organized hoops), but try to be more relaxed/don't freak out when you get the ball. i think the natural instinct is to play in a frenzy to compensate for lack of skills but that rarely works for most guys, at least not on the offensive end.

pass until you have an easy shot is a practice that will bother exactly none of yr teammates

i barely play anymore since my Y started renting the courts to grown-ups playing kickball and dodgeball :(

laaaaaaaame

yeah they're the fucking worst

i kind think its sweet that people who arent 'into' sports are getting to play them via 'irony' but they shouldnt be displacing actual sports

there's a nice new rec center right down the street from me. 3 full-sized courts yet there's only open gyms from 2-4 M-F and 2-4 on Sunday, cause the rest of the time there's volleyball games and like tykes playing with huge purple balls or some stupid shit. so of course the open gyms are PACKED on Sunday and empty during the week.

I also find that even though I consider myself in decent shape, I tire out a lot faster than I would have thought. All the stop-start and arm waving and jumping is a little different than just running on a treadmill.

― hey boys, suppers on me, our video just went bacterial (Hurting 2), Sunday, February 13, 2011 12:57 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

I forget the name for this but this is because there are two kinds of cardio - low-intensity, long cardio and the high-intensity, short cardio. jesus where is my mind. anyway, running on a treadmill doesn't really translate onto the court too well. try doing suicides

(those are running exercises, btw, hurting)

k3v k. you are a goddamn warrior on the court!

^^^^

ha ty ty, sucks too cuz i was on a really good team and had my A game last night

waaaaaaaaaait you played ball with cherokee parks???

couple times. he was/is huge, which is one thing. but i played against bobby hurley once -- who is a couple inches shorter than me -- which was a truly humbling experience.

i kind think its sweet that people who arent 'into' sports are getting to play them via 'irony' but they shouldnt be displacing actual sports

― ice cr?m, Saturday, February 12, 2011 2:44 PM Bookmark

truth bomb

waaaaaaaaaait you played ball with cherokee parks???

couple times. he was/is huge, which is one thing. but i played against bobby hurley once -- who is a couple inches shorter than me -- which was a truly humbling experience.

― mookieproof, Sunday, February 13, 2011 7:19 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i really cant imagine what itd be like for me to play against former nba guys -prob something like playing against five year olds - except you know from the other perpective

well they weren't in the nba at that point just yet

the thing that remains amazing to me is that okay, cherokee parks is huge and there's nothing you can do. but hurley was this pasty white kid from new jersey. and it wasn't like he was raining 30-footers on me. i was backing off like seven feet off him and he went around me like fuc. and however much you love the game and however much you shoot, i don't know how you get *quick* like that

under what circumstances did u play against these dudes, were they at duke together

i recall some coach saying hurley was the best ball handler like ever, prob has a lot to do w/quickness in a basketball sense

yah hurley was my year, parks two years younger

ah so

Bobby hurley is such a great white bball player name

bobby hurley, a coaches son

So I hate to be all liveblogging my basketball attempts, but I'm noticing significant progress. It's kind of amazing what you can accomplish with a little bit of obsessively-focused practice. I've been focusing on short shots just to get my form down -- maybe 10-20 feet. I'm starting to pretty consistently hit the shorter shots and with less effort. I've also been feeling a difference in my ball-handling. Working a lot on just basic repetitive crossover dribbles, precision dribbles, extra focus on the left hand, etc. I actually find a lot of drum practice ideas remarkably adaptable to bball (various permutations of left-right combinations, rhythm dribbling, etc.)

Also the Y only has open court at certain times, largely in the morning, so bball has been a great workout motivator generally since I want to get there to shoot around and then I just lift or do other stuff after. In the best shape I've been in in a long time.

Anyone want to recommend me a low/mid xtrain type shoe? I've been playing in running shoes, which is probably a bad idea, but I don't want a big bulky hitop bball shoe.

playing in running shoes is a terrible idea - no lateral support at all. the first time I sprained my ankle was because I was playing in a running shoe.

you can find bball lows or mids - I usually go to modell's or w/e equivalent sporting goods store you have and just look for the $40-50 specials. I find Converse to be the best 'fitted' to my foot but that's cause I have wide feet. adidas pinches...

otm, get basketball shoes, new running shoes have a lot more lateral support than the older designs but yeah not a good idea

Yeah I just want something that I won't feel retarded in if I also want to do a short run on the treadmill while at the gym

thats why i play in my asics sometimes tbh, dodged ankle problems and such but they give me these lower back spasms if i play too long. no recs, i don't know from shoes unfortunatlely

i've been playing in kobes for the past 14 months or so - not recommended if you have ankle issues but i've got good ankles and they're real lightweight

well not the same kobes for 14 straight months

yeah my ankles are good, sounds good

would like to hear you say that after you come play me

;)

lol

btw the air max turnaround los look fucking beautiful. Although I probably can't justify spending $70 on a secondary pair of athletic shoes right now.

http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1230423234/rondooo.jpg

too much time on twitter: last night i made a pass almost just like this (i'm not good enough to be pulling these off in my sleep or anything but it was an ill pass) and one of the first things i thought of was "yo that's like what my twitter picture is!"

So I've been practicing pretty consistently several times a week, in addition to regular workouts, and I'm feeling a lot of improvement in my shot and handling. I feel like I'm ready to give a pickup game a shot, even if just to get my ass kicked a little. I really don't know much about how these things work though. I have all these stupid questions, e.g., if you're playing one point per basket, is a 3-pointer still one point? What kinds of fouls do people typically call/not call, and do you have to be as careful on defense as NBA style (assuming it's not a playground-style game)? Are people going to expect me to roughly play a position?

3-pointer is still one point
fouls are called when a shooter is hacked and maybe if a dribbler is really hacked
offensive fouls and over the back fouls are not called
you will be expected to play man-to-man defense on someone roughly your size
offensively, bigger dudes with no shot will get low. that's about all for positioning

shots from behind the three point line are generally counted as 2 tho its not uncommon to just ignore the line and count everything as ones, the particular rules youre playing by are generally negotiated before hand and can include what score youre playing to, if you have to win by 2, if youre playing half court what shots you have to clear (everything, only shots that hit the rim, the rim and backboard) what the clearing line is (foul line or 2pt line) and various other minutia

fouls are called less than the nba, generally only if someone strongly affects your shot or like knocks you over if youre dribbling, guys will complain abt other things like moving picks or w/e but in more of a hey watch that way than an actual game stopping foul call - two of the things that ruin a pick up game fastest are dudes who call too many fouls and dudes who foul too much - so its a delicate balance as far as just how physical to play / what to call

lol 3pt line cultural discrepancies

id recommend 3 on 3 as the best beginner game, its more controlled than full court 5s and you have more space to do your thing, while at the same time you have two other guys team so the situation wont be as reliant on you personally as it would be in 2s

cool ty

concur w/ all that

been playing rondoball the last week or so - messed up a nerve in my arm playing water polo intramurals a week ago and bizarrely have lost some of the strength in my wrist - i can still dribble fine and shoot relatively normally within 15 ft but outside of that is pushing it and 3balls have been airball city in warmups. it's beginning to get better - i shot around just now & i'm able to shoot foul shots almost completely normally now and can hit rim consistently (lol) on 3s if i really get my legs into it. v strange. something v similar happened last year also right after water polo but was way more severe, lost grip strength in my right hand, couldn't palm a ball or play tennis for a few weeks

dude stop playing water polo wtf!

i kind think its sweet that people who arent 'into' sports are getting to play them via 'irony' but they shouldnt be displacing actual sports

― ice cr?m, Saturday, February 12, 2011 2:44 PM Bookmark

tho i admire yr sporting multifariousness xp

i'm def not playing next year lol this is too weird, plus we won the league this year so i won't want to as badly next year

lol hurting i am a straight up jock at heart - i play lots of sports & am good at lots of weird ones - check it:

http://web2.uconn.edu/recreation/intramurals/fall2010/Badminton_Singles/index.php

lol niice

lol 3pt line cultural discrepancies

once played with this kid from detroit long ago who put the ball between his knees and insisted this was like an in-game timeout. i don't even remember why he wanted to do that. no one there had ever heard of this and i have never encountered it anywhere else

"oh the international sign for in-game timeout sure"

where im from we usually just said time out

weird, i know

I averaged a double double on the streets

About 10 turnovers and 11 missed rebounds per game

on the playground this girl we didn't like used to shoehorn herself into the games during elementary school and she insisted that when you got the ball, if you shouted "SPOT", you could take an uncontested jump shot, and that she knew this was true cuz her dad played basketball.

she ruined sports

I learned to shoot from Curly Neal instructional home videos. so I actually have decent form. just can't do much else

fucked around an got atriple double

hurting you just gotta ~feel~ the game

to paraphrase cracked magazine, who the fuck keeps track of their rebounds and assists in a street game?

air max turnaround lows came in the mail today, whoop whoop

and today they fucking shredded my feet. Ordered some basketball socks -- didn't realize the lack of extra padding would be a problem.

Anyone have tips on increasing my general 'court IQ', even for 3-on-3? Finding it hard sometimes to figure out how to position myself on offense. Obviously the #1 answer would be play more 3-on-3, but 3-on-3 games at my court don't get going that often -- it's usually either random shoot around or full-court 10 man pickup games.

From the pinch post make a controlled drive down the lane. Make a shot fake or lean into your defender, then take a quick step back away from the defender. Dribble back and jump behind the ball. Pick it up in front of your shooting knee with your shooting hand on top of the ball and balance hand under the ball. Shoot a jump shot. Maintain balance by picking up the ball at your knee and exaggerating the follow-through of your shoulders, head, and shooting hand toward the basket to counter any tendency to lean back on your shot.

lol j/k i think just like general principals like go to where the other players are not, if youre not open pass the ball immediately and move to a spot where you might be open, find out where youre effective from and go to that spot, generally lots of activity and ball movment is good, like go for every rebound, youll be able to get a lot that you thought you couldnt

also pick and roll/pop - set a pick and then move right after - you will probably be open

Yeah, the two things I seem to be alright at so far are (1) boxing out and getting rebounds and (2) playing aggressive D

When I have an open lane to the basket I tend to rush or spazz out though. Probably just need more experience.

you should practice layups, take a few dribbles then jump and extend yr shooting arm fully in one motion letting the momentum of yr body softly loft the ball off the glass, once you get comfortable w/that you wont be so tempted to spaz, prob greatest utility as far as practice time goes

yeah whenever the full court's available i'll do fast break practice where i start on one end, dribble up and lay it in. go back and forth about 10 times and you'll be nice and winded. good for ball handling and layups.

yeah some main points of advice i could give:

move a lot without the ball on offense. set picks for the better players at the top of the key, and set off the ball screens for shooters. when you get the ball, RELAX. make smart passes rather than cool ones - think about making high pecentage plays. don't dribble unless you've got a plan about what you're going to do with it. if you're open and you're confident you can make the shot, take it. other than that, make short, low-risk passes

this might sound condescending but when i'm playing medium-quality pickup i'd much rather have someone on my team who's not necessarily a scorer but i can trust to play adequate defense, get rebounds, and generally not fuck up than someone who thinks they're a lot better than they are - ie takes way too many shots, dribbles for no reason and gets trapped, is over-aggressive on defense & leaves their man, etc. play within yourself, until you've been playing for longer and are confident in other parts of your game

seriously just ~playing smart~ is something everyone should work on

like these past couple weeks where i've been without probably the best part of my game - my jumpshot - i've actually been playing really well still. i've noticed i'm taking higher percentage shots, making a higher pecentage of my shots, and getting more assists.

don't dribble unless you've got a plan about what you're going to do with it.

this is so key

yeah that should be on a banner hung across gyms across america

haha feelin everybody on the 'just relax' tip

seriously just ~playing smart~ is something everyone should work on

― kl0p's son (k3vin k.), Thursday, March 24, 2011 3:44 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

playing on a team thats collectively ~playing smart~ is so joyful and flowing, and usually winning

btw the worst ppl on the court are dudes who call for the ball every single time

the most vile savages are 'player coach' types imo

i love short guys who insist on playing point but can't pass at all

would you rather they played in the low post?

i'd prefer that they freakin get fucked!

lol

feelin the player coach comment unless the dude is really good and gives genuinely good advice. ive played with dudes who have said things that legit had an effect on me, but played with many more who were annoying/wrong. i save my "coaching" for trash talk to the other team lol

communication and occasional advice are fine, its just when guys are habitually babbling on every play and feel like theyre being meaningful - and lol i feel like the most effective/obnoxious form of trash talking is when you act like youre giving sincere advice abt what the guy youre guarding is doing atm like 'thats right protect the ball keep it low use your body' it really can throw a dude off - tho its not something i really do as it just comes off kind of lame and weird

haha last night this guy was checking me up top all game and pissing me off and i was letting him know - later he was one on one on a fast break and i block his layup and i let him know he should keep the ball high on those if he wanted to score

Good stuff all, ty. Must say I enjoy playing D -- there's something satisfying about realizing that your man is starting to get annoyed at the pressure you put on.

yah i really like defense

trash talk pointers:
"are you going to shut up when you lose?"
"i am going to beat you there [points]" [then does so]

what are some good places to play at in DC?

i used to play on p street between 15th & 16th

also o & 26th

one of my only happy memories from middle school was being forced to play in a 5 on 5 game w/ a buncha the jocks and bullies even though we were supposed to play two separate half court games according to the teacher.

I got picked near last, somehow due to either anger or having a chip on my shoulder, i scored 10 points in a very short game, and put back a tip-in right in my nemesis's face towards the very end (he was like way shorter than me).

the adams morgan courts at columbia and 19th get decent games too.

So, anyone want some Nike Air Max Turnaround Low 10.5 barely used for cheap?

lol wha happen?

so do people play either of the following games on the playground still

21
Knockout

21 def if there's not enough people for a game. good way to work on some skills you don't use that often in a real game.

knockout in gym class maybe

They turned out to not quite be the right fit and fucked up my feet pretty bad. I've had blisters and wounds that have not healed for over a week. Too narrow in front and pinched my toes together, but stiff on the sides so they wouldn't spread like most of my shoes have.

xpost I always liked 21 because I have no ballhandling skills but I have a competent jumper and am taller than most of my friends.

damn Hurting that sucks.

I wonder if there are enough NYC people for an eventual FA3o3 game

you, icey, me + erstwhile ilxor yanc3y play

sleep is pretty fucken tall

would pay some $ to see jw play

So in terms of more mildly lame liveblogging, I've seen a couple of big improvements in my game lately -- first a few days ago I realized my jumper was showing some consistency, and then yesterday I realized I had developed enough ball control to actually one-hand a layup straight off a dribble, i.e. bring the ball up with the dribbling hand only -- not the most impressive thing I know but it felt good

now do that w your opposite hand

i still can't do a layup w/ my left hand, but then again my left arm/hand is pretty pathetic

the one move I mastered was the running one-handed jumper. usually from about the free throw line. however, get me to do a hook shot and it probably winds up smashing someone in the face

so i was playing today at chelsea piers w/a friend and it was dead just us two playing one on one and some children then a bunch of employees of the place started showing up and shooting around on the other court so i was all to them hay we should get a game and they were like we have one set up just waiting for people and i was like whatre you playing maybe we could jump in and run full and they were all yeah maybe in a v non committal strage way - so then like 20 minutes later they let the singer for the strokes in the side door and he was not v good

i feel like there are at least two other thread i couldve put that amazing anecdote on but i chose to bless you the beloved contributors to ilh

Wait so did you run full court with Julian Casablancas or not?

And were you like "damn, that shot was a little HARD TO EXPLAIN"

did they let you run full? cause that's terrible if they didn't

also i hope you kicked that guy's ass

no they wouldnt let us play! it was 5 employees and the dude playing 3 on 3 per some celebrity arrangement - my friends did play v leonardo decaprio there once but i was not in attendance

the worst part was i just really wanted to get a game minor ny celebrity or no

although obvs if i did play v dude i would mention it everytime i heard the strokes until the end of time

Shame I was hoping u got skool that dude

hes tall like 6-4 or so but seemd p slow and not that skilled - he was dressed as you might image a stroke would dress to play basketball

haaa

headband?

one time when the real world dc was going on a couple cast members showed up to my gym and ran full court and were embarrassingly bad. one guy kept falling over bc he was wearing sketchers or some shit. two camera dudes were running around trying to film the whole thing.

that is like . . . america

More 3-on-3 today. It's interesting to learn a sport almost from scratch -- I feel like I'm Johnny 5. Like today I kept having all these basic realizations, like "Oh, if I stare straight at the guy I'm passing to for too long, someone is going to read my pass," or "Hey, if I move this way, I draw my defender out of the way so my teammate can drive to the hoop." I started to feel more the sense of the three as a unit. I was still pretty bad but I had some clutch rebounds, a few layups and putbacks, and I made a difference on D although my man was pretty fast and hard to stay in front of. My in-game jumper is still complete garbage.

YMCA pickup ball can be kind of hilarious too. The first game I played was with a couple of maybe college-age guys and a few maybe 12-15 year old kids who kept calling me "sir." An old-timer with a good fancy hook shot jumped in later too. There was this one wiry as fuck kid who was probably 12 or 13 and was by far the sickest shooter out of any of us -- just putting up threes like nothing to the point that you couldn't take the pressure off. At another point I had to guard this little runt kid with basically no skills, and I pretty much took all the pressure off him but they still wouldn't pass to him.

Class 1: managed to run the court for the full 30-minute scrimmage. Pulled my neck. Ow.

Been playing occasional one-on-one. Managed to beat a so-so teen who was slightly shorter than me. Have figured out a few things, e.g. starting to get the hang of "planning" what to do when you dribble, also in one-on-one how to vary your attack to throw off your opponent. E.g. I managed to get a couple of good right-side drive layups, so when the kid caught on I pulled a simple spin move. When he caught onto the spin move I used a spin fake and went back the other way.

Today I played one-on-one with two different guys who were clearly miles better than me and it was no contest at all, but it was good practice I guess, at least for trying to stay in front of someone bigger and faster than me.

ice craem have you found that indians always go to the right?

btw question: one dude kept saying "watch the travel" -- I thought as long as I was dribbling it didn't matter how many steps I took or how much my feet shuffled, and I couldn't figure out what else I might have been doing wrong. Is this something that a lot of people are confused about?

you carrying?

I mean hard to say what is happening without seeing you play. but could be that you're cupping/carrying the ball too much. there are NBA carries used for misdirection & crossovers that everybody generally accepts, especially on the playground, and then there are the "I'm trying to protect the ball" carries that everybody calls.

oh yeah maybe I am unwittingly carrying

weekly clinic is kicking my ass

sort of getting a handle on screen aways and give and gos but most of the time it's just kind of like "DAH DO SOMETHING"

scary chinese girl kept yelling at me I'm like "u know this is a beginner class right?"

lmao

ice craem have you found that indians always go to the right?

― mookieproof, Tuesday, April 26, 2011 10:55 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

haha forlornly watched some children playing basketball through a chain link fence yesterday, they were noticeably worse than their american counterparts, prob much better at cricket tho

Can anyone give a link or recommend a book or something with a good basic explanation of positions? I don't really understand any of them except point guard.

positions aren't really important unless you're running a particular offensive set (or are playing zone defense), which you presumably aren't in pickup. but i'm sure there's stuff on youtube about hoop strategy.

yeah, it's more for my NBA knowledge actually -- like I just want to understand what guys mean when they say so-and-so is playing 3 or whatever.

in theory,

1 point guard
2 shooting guard
3 small forward
4 power forward
5 center

it's more fluid than positions in most other sports, tho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball_positions

you wanna have some big guys and you wanna have some small guys

incidentally all my life I have been really thick about running/executing any kind of play in any sport. It's like there's some category of intelligence -- the translating-guy-yelling-at-you-into-doing-physical-stuff intelligence, that I lack.

i could still run the offensive set we used against man-to-man defenses in high school 22 years ago

in pick up u dont really run plays anyway so w/e - i mean maybe a lil pick n roll if youre feeling ambitious

but turn towards the ball

ballers around here are so lame - how do i have to go to 4 parks to find a good game on a nice saturday afternoon? what are ballers doing besides playing basketball? idgi

i'm playing great right now too

what are ballers doing besides playing basketball?

hangin w/ randoms

lol

i'm spoiled at school when i can go to the gym any time any day and get a good run

move to nyc dawg

btw so amped to return to usa and try some dirk style one leg jumpers

move to nyc dawg

― ice cr?m, Thursday, May 26, 2011 12:32 AM (15 hours ago)

this is a pretty major reason why i will be living in a city, any city, once i finally graduate for real

btw so amped to return to usa and try some dirk style one leg jumpers

― ice cr?m, Thursday, May 26, 2011 12:33 AM (15 hours ago)

i've been fucking around with the slow-motion ballerina one-legged fallbacks in shootaround, tons of fun and surprisingly not terribly difficult! gets pretty tough past 17 feet tho

pick up culture in nyc is unsurpassable anywhere imo fwiw, just like so many games everywhere

like these are the neighborhoods which ive played basketball a bunch in: e village, chinatown, battery park city, ft greene - and thats just cause those were places i was near - when i was in sf for a couple months i had to like drive to find a game, boston is a lil better but still not up to nyc levels, basketball seems p non existent in colorado from what ive seen

So I started to find my game today -- totally destroyed this dude in one-on-one. Basically I'm good at maybe three things -- overall endurance (because I'm in pretty good shape), staying focused on defense, and short/mid-range jumpers (I've been drilling these about an hour a day for at least a month). The dude I played was a little fat and out of shape, though he was a good inside defender and had an ok shot. So I did two things -- I moved around a lot on both offense and defense early on to get him tired, and I kept backing him into the post like I was going to go inside and then stepping back for short jumpers (with some variety to avoid it becoming too predictable). I was hitting everything - it felt amazing. The dude was like "damn, you've got a jumper." Lol I guess so, I guess so.

nice1 dude!

Unfortunately not everyone is going to let me take as many open shots as this guy did. Need to develop some moves.

when i was in sf for a couple months i had to like drive to find a game

― ice cr?m, Monday, May 30, 2011 10:30 PM (3 days ago)

rong

I play about 3 times a week. I got in good with a couple medical students nearby and they have a gym on campus. I organize all the games, send out emails etc and now we have a consistent run of about 12-15 dudes. 6 of them played on some collegiate level and the rest of us can hang. I play pg, always look to pass first. My pride and joy is my soft left around the rim which I have been working on since 1989, and my 8-10 foot bank shot is gwap.

idk steve shasta there was a dece game on the panhandle besides that, was not a vibrant basketball scene ime, maybe youre a super ballin dude tho lol

too many wites maybe???

^^this is a major problem with being away from school

wbiw spottie

wbiw ?

I dunno what SB is either, everyone's getting SB'd around here and I have no clue whats happening.

Hey Sansky, next time you come to SF, let's run a quick game and I'll send your sad saggy ass back east where you can enjoy your rainbow color of wackassery. if I skunk you then you have to permanently change your ilx name to SuperBallin Shasta's Bitch lol.

SBS'sB

SB is suggest ban, ppl are usually joking when they say that - if 51 people actually SB you then you get banned from posting for 30 days

wbiw i just made up, it's a variant on wkiw (would kick it with) - would ball it with

who is sansky im confused, anyway i if you are referring to me i will be totally happy be lead on steve shastas tour of epic san franciscan street ball spots, might be out there in like august

Thanks for clarifying. If you come to PHX we can ball it up for real.

haha, i forgot who you were! everybody come to SF and I will take you all on singlehandedly.

ilh tourney 2011

I'm in, I'll be home in Salinas around Christmas time so I can swing by and drop some knowledge on you chumps.

played todays, hella rusty, missed every shot possible, it was fun tho my team had sweet ball movement and we won a bunch in a row

cr?my are u back? i would like to ball w/u some time w/the understanding that i am old, haven't played in like a year and a half, etc.

on the other hand, i'm 6'4" and have historically been awesome in my first game after a long layoff before deteriorating into utter crap

yeah im only around for a couple weeks but thatd be rad

well, my schedule sux for now (working evenings sun-thu) but lemme know when you play i guess

hey dude playing today at 4ish courts on dekalb and adelphi in ft greene!

fuk the rain

I would be down to play some time too if you're willing to humor me. I'm only 5'9" but my mind is tall.

Anyway I'm doing nothing but bar study, so I'm flexible, and I don't live too far from ft greene.

This was my # btw:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/Why-these-players-chose-the-sport-8217-s-least-?urn=ncaab-wp3343

(I am not a 7-footer either btw)

54 - that's my number

basketball seems p non existent in colorado from what ive seen

one of my proudest pickup game moments was passing through Glenwood Springs CO, seeing a pickup game in progress, and whupping them (we were all white btw)(other proudest moment was black dude saying "you must have some black in you somewhere). it was like some dude from Brooklyn entering a emcee cipher in Omaha.

least proudest: rolling up to random rich kids' (we were about 5 yrs older) driveway hoop w 3 females in tow (1 being my gf) and challenging them to a game of 2 on 2 and losing. our excuse was that we were high as shit but still.

playing high is exhausting. one of my friends dropped 30 in high school game drunk though.

my college friend would go to games drunk while in hs but he was a benchwarmer. while in college, we played w/his hs teammate who was on U of I's team but never saw the court cause of academics. only time I played with someone so athletic you think you're playing perfect d, you're in perfect position, there's nothing he can do...and then he's flying over you and dunking. some humbling, depressing shit.

It's weird how inconsistent my shooting can be -- like one day it feels like I have a perfect jumper and the next day I'll be all over the place. I don't know if that's just everyone or if it's partly a product of learning late. Some days I just feel like I have stiff hands.

historically, after a long layoff, i shoot ridiculously well in my first game. then i gradually get worse and worse for the next month or so, then go back to what i actually am/was (which is a decent but not great shooter)

how's the left hand, hurting?

I can shoot, I'm just terrible at moving without the ball, so when I do catch a pass, I'm often not in good position to shoot.

how's the left hand, hurting?

― bite this display name (k3vin k.), Friday, June 17, 2011 8:08 PM Bookmark

As a shooting hand or as support? I definitely do notice that I shoot better when I get my left hand more under rather than on the side of the ball, which is sort of counterintuitive for me but good to remember.

do you also do the thing the pros often tell you to do where you look at the back of the rim as you release the ball? that usually helps my accuracy/foot placement

You mean when I'm practicing nice soft jumpers by myself or when I have a hand in my face?

But no, I don't think I particularly do that. Maybe I should try it. There are days when I feel like I can just "put" the ball into the basket, at least with shorter jumpshots, and other days where I feel like my hands just do their own thing. Some of it also seems to be rest -- I think I don't get enough sleep, and when I do my shot is way better.

xp i meant dribbling actually - one of the best drills is just to bring two basketballs out there and try to run up and down the court dribbling with both hands, eventually moving backwards and laterally and changing directions quickly. a good 30 minutes of that and the forearm on your weak hand should be real sore - it's a great way to work on ballhandling and strengthen your weak hand

Oh yeah, I've been doing some two-ball drills. Lol @ 30 mins. I'm sore after like 3.

One thing that helped my shooting was to not shoot for the rim, but for an imaginary hoop high above the rim where the ball should go through at its apex. you get some nice arc.
played for the 1st time in a year. 7 dudes who apparently meet every friday at the school right across the street from my place. perfect. was freakin fools like mj (actually, got called manu 5 mins in. cause of fakes i think?), couldn't miss, got a couple blocks...then lost my wind and huffed n puffed and half-assed my way through 3 of the 4 games.

feel like i need to wear a shirt that says "I AM 33 YRS OLD" when i play w/teenagers and 20-somethings. i def look a lot younger than my age.

It's weird how inconsistent my shooting can be -- like one day it feels like I have a perfect jumper and the next day I'll be all over the place. I don't know if that's just everyone or if it's partly a product of learning late. Some days I just feel like I have stiff hands.

― mississippi delta law grad (Hurting 2), Friday, June 17, 2011 7:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh everyone is streaky, but i mean you def dont have a perfect jumper lol

i played a super physical set of games the other day, totally bruised over here

i hate that guy who always TOO physical. and you really can't say shit cause it's streetball y'know? talkin bout dudes who foul literally every 5 seconds.

ha yeah totally, this time it was like we all sunk to that level simultaneously and no one got mad so i guess it was ~fine~

the flip side of that guy is the guy who calls fouls on like every play - call ocasional meaningful irl fouls and everything is cool

yeah last year i played with this guy who had 3-4 inches and 50 pounds on me, and kept calling me for fouls as he was trying to get post up position

there are some who play basketball who struggle with the concept of flesh coming into contact with other flesh

yeah srsly fouls only on shots or if you get like viciously knocked over xp

anyone who calls non-shooting fouls is a total lame and 95% of ppl understand this thankfully

agreed. i couldn't believe dude was calling not just non-shooting fouls, but off-ball fouls.

was he calling 3-seconds and lane violations too?

illegal defense

i remember when I was a kid I actually timed quarters, instituted timeouts, did standard free throws, all this regulation shit.

still threw the ball down the street when something happened that I didn't like

no wonder nobody wanted to play w/ me

i just teed you up bro

ejected!

about to ~play basquetbol~ in a matter of minutes

thinking abt playing today, not sure, might wait til tomorrow

man i can't go a day without playing you're crazy

i basically cant play back to backs regularly at this point, rip my youth

aw

:(

i just played 2 hours of pretty intense tennis and i went out of my way to drive by the park on my way home to see if anybody was playing

thats rad, tho ive prob never been that active is part of it too, prob get more exercise now than i ever have what w/the running, just cant take the impact of basketball on a daily basis

sometimes i'll do the tennis-bball back-to-back thing too. there's some good games at the court adjacent to the tennis courts where I spar w/my sis. only reason i could do this, stamina-wise, is cause sis and i don't play full-on tennis games, basically just hitting it back and forth fairly leisurely. i still feel like some sort of athletic renaissance man afterwards.

I'm kinda embarassed at how quickly I get winded playing basketball

nah if you aren't beat after you didn't have a good run

played for 3 hrs today btw x_x

kid guarding me tonight, every time I went up to shoot: "You scared."

me, the first time: "I know that, but do you have to say so?"

best response: "are you going to shut up when you lose?"

Nah he was on another level from us - think he was just pissed that he got left out of the real game on the next court and had to play with scrubs.

ah the dreaded B court

Can someone explain to me the weird two-handed throw style of shooting I occasionally see in pick-up players who actually seem pretty good?

Nothing to explain, just make sure YOU DONT DO IT. People develop horrible shooting habit from their youths and never really work out of them. Then they play so much that they kind of good and consistent at it, like Barbosa.

I had a friend who was really good and shot a high percentage from 3 point range, but shot with his LEFT foot forward, near impossible (if your right-handed of course) if you haven't ever tried it. But no one ever told him it was wrong until it was too late.

You'll see all kind of weird stuff out there, but if you're starting with a clean slate then its best to learn the natural fundamentals.

still threw the ball down the street when something happened that I didn't like

― why i am an anarcho-sandwich artist (Neanderthal), Saturday, June 18, 2011 4:23 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark

One of THOSE guys huh.

I'm kinda embarassed at how quickly I get winded playing basketball

― why i am an anarcho-sandwich artist (Neanderthal), Saturday, June 18, 2011 3:26 PM Bookmark

This is actually something I've worked on a lot. Lately I played a couple of full court games and I was at least valued for always running down on both ends. If you're the only other guy on a fastbreak you're a lot more likely to get a pass/easy score.

Last game I had one of those freak games where I hit everything but a lot of it was weird glass shots that were obviously wild. It was sort of funny.

i need to hydrate better when I play too...

I stock up on $1 balance bars and sometimes $1 energy drinks at Trader Joe's. I do feel like it makes a difference to stop in the middle for one or the other, although maybe it's just the vestigial effects of all that gatorade marketing from my youth.

Sorry not energy drinks but 'electrolyte' sports drinks.

right, yea....drank those a lot while I was working out.

I think I might be getting to be known at the YMCA as the weird guy who's always on the court. I'm probably in there 4-5 times a week, mostly just practicing myself although pretty regularly getting in on one-on-one or three-on-three. Bar study schedule makes it easy to do that. The other day I actually beat some alright but a bit sloppy high school kid -- one of those guys with some natural ability and moves but who obviously doesn't drill fundamentals enough. I beat him pretty handily, like it was a game where I could let him score a little and still be sure I'd win.

Today I played in a weird-ass 4-on-4 game that included this gruff-voiced, overly aggressive dad who looked like a tugboat captain and his short, pudgy but impressively good sons. The dad was really fucking tough on his sons and was enjoying winning a little too much, and the whole thing just got uncomfortable. I also got smacked in the eyes super hard, but I seem to still have my vision although they feel a bit sore.

4-on-4 is the worst

yeah it's fucking irritating. So much clumsiness with rebounds, cuts, etc.

the dreaded box-and-none

4-on-4 full court is great though but i like to run when i play

eight or nine years ago some of my former college im teammates and i went to iceland to play in a basketball tournament run by icelandair and this travel agent (lol at that site).

it was in mid-january so it was relatively cheap. we were in our early thirties, but mostly still in decent shape and we had a little size -- for a pickup team anyway.

i think there were 10 teams in the tournament? one other one was from the usa -- they were terrible. the rest were various icelandic teams. one team (we were told they were from some hillbilly fishing village) played as brutal a physical game as i've ever seen -- they had near-fights in almost every game they played.

we made it to the finals, which was pretty good considering how hung over we were. the team we played featured Petur Gudmundsson as my opposing big man. dude was in his mid-40s, his knees were shot, but it didn't really matter because he was 10 inches taller than me (i am 6'4"). plus he was a really nice guy so i wasn't going to headbutt him in the groin or something.

i was never a great back-to-the-basket player anyway, but he was so huge that i couldn't drive around him, or step back far enough, without getting apologetically swatted. the other guys on his team, we were told, were former iceland national team players, which may not be saying much in a country of 300,000, but they were v. good, let alone for guys in their 40s.

iirc our player with the least business doing so ended up heaving up wild threes, but it didn't really matter, we'd have lost anyway. i still have the runners-up t-shirts we got, somewhere.

anyone seen my jump shot?

xp thats a good story!

agreed!

found my jumpshot

Can someone explain to me the weird two-handed throw style of shooting I occasionally see in pick-up players who actually seem pretty good?

― mississippi delta law grad (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 22, 2011 8:52 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Nothing to explain, just make sure YOU DONT DO IT.

ha no do it!!! the 'greg kite' like when youre in the low post holding the ball above your head like you're surveying the court and then oops still deadly! it's hard to get an arc on it, seen (old) dudes shoot outside this way sorta but i bet it makes you way more set-shot dependent over time

NO

OH

shoot correctly or be forever clowned upon iirc

i got shots that shit is funny tho teenagers don't even have a frame of reference. they just know they're watching a streetball technician in the flesh

Just got back from playing. Had one of those nights where things were flowing. There's something to be said for 'being in rhythm.' You hear announcers say it, but unless you experience that, its hard to understand what they're on about. It happens on occasion where the whole night is like this ethereal wet dream of basketball prowess. You can see it when NBA players have it, and its amazing how often they DO have it, and crazy how often we EXPECT it. When things just swing right, your body centered, in unison with what your hands are doing, youre bouncing, dipping, rolling left and right, catching an edge on your defender, getting your lead shoulder just inside his and driving at will, floaters, up and unders, baby hooks, the options are there, pass/shoot, either works cos its killing season, its rolling so well you dump a few no look passes, threading needles, slippin screens, ice grillin the competition, acting like its a normal thing, whispers in the corner "who is this kid," drive again, defenders off balance, its feeling so sexy in your hands you pull up from anywhere, arm in perfect position, body straight up, flip the wrist and its in before it even gets there.

I remember watching Arenas around November/December of 2006, he was on one of the greatest tears Ive ever witnessed, every night was like this for him, he was draining 35 foot game winners weekly and turning around before the ball even went in, he already knew it, thats some magical shit if you ask me. Tonight I felt that, a sliver of it, on a much smaller stage and nothing at stake, but I felt it, and it reminded me of why I still make time in my busy schedule for basketball.

blocked 2 jumpshots in one possession tonight

#dwyaneing

I never block shots, ever. Maybe 2 a year.

i don't normally block jumpshots either, i'm not that tall - i usually faceguard pretty well tho - but i'm pretty good at stripping/blocking layup attempts in transition

i havent played basketball in so long :(

I'm down to once a week now. NBA season usually gets me all pumped to play more but...

Since I moved and no longer have the YMCA, my playing is down drastically. The nearest court is a POS extremely uneven blacktop court with netless hoops, and there's almost never anyone there. There's one at McCarren that slightly better -- surfaced but still a little uneven and no nets/chains. As the weather turns cold I won't be playing much at all.

not sure where u r in willmsbrg but ive played at the courts on metropolitan and marcy right up against the bqe, was dece

i haven't played in a year ;_;

http://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/monks.png

shaolin dunk

had a great day today at the Y, when i'm home from school sunday mornings there are the best runs i can get and i was the best player out there today

City league starts up this week for me. Excited, need some new kicks though.

this'll be my last semester at school full-time, i gotta find a league or regular game next year or i'll gain 20 lbs in a month for sure

City leagues are fun but you have to find some bros you love playing with or its a waste.

I broke my right hand middle finger 2 months back swiping at a ball (hit the dudes hip). Still hurts and is crooked but somehow its made my shot better.

Got a new TF-1000 for Christmas too.

i'm 22 but feel 40 - i jam fingers at least every other week, my ankles are sore as hell after every run, and i have some rotator cuff w/ my left shoulder where i go for a steal with my off hand and pop my shoulder outta my socket or something - excruciating pain for a few mins, then i can play again, but it'll linger & be sore for a few weeks, to the pt where it's hard to finish with my left. if it was my right my life might be over

i have to get in balling shape by the end of may -- and i *am* 40

Whats at the end of May?

an extremely wealthy friend from college has signed up our former intramural team for the school's fantasy camp.

i feel kind of weird about it, for a number of reasons, but still. it will probably mostly involve older dudes who were never that good to begin with, but i don't want to embarrass myself.

mookie's a dookie, spottie

Ahh cool, good luck with that!

Weather was nice enough a few times lately that I went out and shot around and did some drills and stuff. The court by my house is one of those uneven blacktop courts with no nets, which kind of sucks. I definitely feel way more sore after playing on blacktop. Miss the Y and miss the student schedule that let me play pretty much any day I wanted.

Also wish I could take another clinic - probably will hold off with the baby coming. By the end of the last one I was considerably improved.

whoa granny d i forgot you played with boatright!

i didn't think he'd be getting this much run as a freshman. really wanted to go to the game in south bend with a huge FREE RYAN BOATRIGHT sign.

ok so i just ran with @ndre drumm0nd for a hour and a half and played my best ball of the year by far, everything was falling, my passes were perfect, everything was working. he hit me for a contested fastbreak layup to end one of the games and we did a hip-bump thing!!* i felt so cool haha

*http://thechurchofbriantology.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/lsu-byrd-lafell-bump.jpg

i think for me the ultimate show of respect was he wanted me bringing the ball up after he saw i could play, cuz normally he'd just play all 5 positions

that's awesome.

any inside scoop about his draft status?

haha no. my hunch is he's gone though

Cool story. A jumping hip-bump with a pro is now on my bucket list.

Played on the same team with ik3 di0gu for a few games a couple years back. My whole purpose was to drop the ball off to him in the post and not get burnt on D, did alright but no hip bumps. Told him I was a Warriors fan and was sad he was traded (was right after he got dealt to the Kings), he gave me an awkward nod and sympathy laugh, probably cos I was a Warriors fan tbf.

haha nice. drummond's def the best player i've played with. i think i said this last time i played with him but his hands are SO HUGE. and he's deceptively quick and has a pretty decent handle

Yeah you can really tell the difference when playing with legit ballers. Even dudes that played like junior college ball are on another plain, let alone some D1 experience or higher. Much of it does have to do with height and mass, its such a major advantage. ik3's chest was like 2 cinder blocks jammed next to each other, massive man.

Just got through a stretch of 4 intense games in a 36 hour span for our regional single-elimination tourney. We lost by 8 in the finals but gave it a good run. 2nd place two years in a row. I averaged 8 points and 11 assists and maybe grabbed like 1 rebound for the whole tourney lol. Been feeling the itch to play a lot more these days, well that or golf.

a spottie is a point guard?

2 of my friends and i came in 2nd last weekend in uconn's annual 3-on-3 tournament - we played real well but ran into some serious size in the championship game. really wanted to win that title one of my years at school, tho, :/

Yeah man, pg through and through. Ive pretty much got the ball in my hands all game just dribbling around scanning the floor. 8 point average is pretty high for me tbh, not that I cant score, but we have some other high-efficiency scorers that are better to get going.

2nd at a big school like that is awesome, I bet they have some serious ballers. You graduate this year then?

i graduated with my 4-year last year - i'm in pharmacy school, so i've got another year and a half. i play point too - was more of a shooter in my earlier days but playing with better players (& therefore taller dudes) combined with a weird hand/nerve injury have made me into more of a pure point the last couple years

i also play golf, but not as often or as well as i used to

Cool, k3v the pharmacist. Yeah injuries change everything. Had left ankle/knee surgery a couple years back so I play way more conservatively and flat footed now, always worried about it in the back of my mind. Got the old man style down.

Golf is probs my best/better sport. Played competitively throughout my childhood/teenage life. Only play about 10 times a year now :/ Lost the passion for it when I was about 19 and now I'm finally kind of excited about it again, maybe sparked by getting the new TaylorMade R11 for Christmas.

haha nice. i don't play nearly enough to be any good anymore but i used to be a 10 handicap or so, and still love playing when I get the (rare) chance and enjoy watching too. altho bball is my favorite sport, tennis is probably my best - i'm a 4.5 when i play USTA, if anyone knows what that means

baseball was my first love as a kid, of course, and softball is the intramural sport i care most about here at school - my friends and i won the men's league last fall, adb we're going for the sweep this year with the co-ed tournament coming up next weekend.

no clue what the 4.5 means, but sounds cool. 10 is a really good handicap! I had mine down to a 6 at my best, but yeah, in the same boat as you now. I had to stop playing baseball in little league cos you cant play baseball and golf at the same time, successfully anyway. Softball is great fun, wish I had more time to play, but have to pick my battles.

4.5 is just a level of play when it comes to USTA-sanctioned leagues and tournaments

You still play at all?

man I think I'm retired from basketball, haven't played in so long, rip

haha my team came in second in our college 3-on-3 tournament, uh, 20 years ago. in the final we played these two young guys who could jump out of the gym and this tall guy in his 40s who was rumored to have once played for the cavs.

it was make-it take-it and we got the ball once. cavs dude was laughing in my face as he stepped back to drain threes, but at least i didn't get dunked on, i guess.

i think we won some tube socks for finishing second.

lol rumored to have once played for the cavs the bastard

playing against people who are so clearly better than you is always kinda funny and disheartening, theres this point guard style guy who i used to guard occasionally, he was short but v strong, which also to some extent describes me but this guy was just so next next hed drive on me and id foul him and it just wouldnt make any diff hed just go straight through and score like nothing happened, i could only shrug

after playing today i jumped up and got my second knuckle above the rim, haven't been able to do that in so long!

Thats awesome, I've never touched rim :(

i mean i can graze the rim whenever i want for the most part but my legs hadn't felt good enough to make it that easy in like a year. how tall are you, spottie?

5'9 or so.

Had another tourney start tonight, won both games to get to the finals (had a bye first round) for next Friday. Some huge chump threw the ball at my teammates head while he was on the ground, got heated.

having a 2-month-old baby makes it almost impossible to get a workout in, let alone basketball

http://www.babywhiz.com/images/lg/7821.jpg

UUUUUHHHHHHHH!

just played with half the basketball team dudes, played intense D and hit some key shots/drives. it was me, olander, a walk-on i know, and two of my other friends and we held court from 630-830. in our first game i locked down the other team's best player and we ground out a close, physical win. then boatright's crew had next, and the walk-on told me to D boatright, and i played him really well all things considered. dude is SO QUICK to his left - i played really well on him and knocked the ball out of his hands twice and generally frustrated him, getting up in his face on the perimeter and crowding him, but he beat me to my right a couple times really nice, like there's really nothing you can do, one second he's in front of you and all the sudden he's at your right hip, and you're done. we beat his squad though and beat a couple other good teams, one with deandre daniels and roscoe smith on it. hit a clutch 3 down 10-9 one of the later games, probably my biggest shot. i'm dead x_x

fuckin awesome

Cool!

thinking about retiring from the game of basketball, because i'm never going to play as well as i played tonight

good idea imo.

you took a dribble with your left hand?

; )

found a decent weekly game with a bunch of med students

@HoffmanBball
When there's a pickup game going on and I'm shooting on a side basket, I take close range shots so the ball doesn't bounce onto the court.

lol this account cracks me up

We won the championship game tonight! Kept them at bay all game with a 10-12 point lead. Good team too, I wasn't sure we could beat them. I played well, only missed one shot and that was my first one.

We came in 2nd for the last three years so obv it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfoxsfhi-kk

congrats!

Want to congrat u but don't know what your +/- or TS% was or how many possessions you wasted on mid-range jumpers :/

Congrats :)

Thanks! Been on a mental high at work all day, even though it's insignificant.

fyi compu I was a +18 with a TS% of 76.4

Not too shabs

not much mid-range either. My closest nba parallel is andre miller. point guard with post game.

Joined up with lunchtime pickup game with coworkers, first time I've even touched a ball in 10+ years, 15 or so since I actually played for real. First week shot 100% (lol two fastbreak layups), but then followed that up with something like 1 for 6, 3-4 turnovers, 1 rebound, 1 steal. My right hand dribbling remarkably OK given the layoff, but since I only have an ump shot now, I'm doing my best to drive where I end up throwing up a wild layup because I keep expecting more contact. Anyway, mostly playing again to recover some aerobic shape -- could taste blood I was heaving so hard the first game!

congrats spottie!

Thanks!

Leee, 10 years plus! That's too long.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-game-of-knockout-awesome,20614/

hahaha otm

i have never played a game of knockout outside a gym class.

>:|

we should have an ILH irl knockout game

nah, 21

^^^^

Too much math involved. :/

33 then

one of my best friends from HS played pickup with andy roddick last night

My 2013 "You'd Want to Play Hoops With Them" All-Stars: Marc Gasol, Tim Duncan, LeBron, Durant, Mike Conley (starters); Manu Ginobili (sixth man); Stephen Curry, Pau Gasol, Shane Battier, Jason Kidd, Greg Monroe (bench); Pablo Prigioni (12th man). Two Grizzlies in the starting five!

Wow probably should not have chosen an 87º day to play my 2013 inaugural game of hoops. Balled out for the first five or six possessions and then steeply declined from there. Surprised that I could get to the rim but hoooooly shit I missed so many bunnies.

Then played 1-on-1 and was so tired I was doing that zombie defense where your only goal is to stay vaguely in front of the ball. Heh, then did the thing where I get back to the apt and spend a good ten minutes panting / wandering around the apt trying in vain to get back to baseline heartbeat / internal temp. And trying to remember how long I have to wait around to smoke a cigarette w/o it completely grossing me out.

going to nc next week to play ball for five days

it's gonna be bad. i think i'm down to only a couple hundred post moves

also i've been told that the competition is really dickish. looking forward to someone calling three seconds and then repeatedly shouting 'respect the call'

better that kind of nitpicky dickish than the proving one's manhood kind.
i am the king of missed bunnies. part of it is stiff rims but no doubt part is mental at this point cause i have a soft touch in practice.

http://i41.tinypic.com/29okcp5.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/8zr2ih.jpg

this is my local court. boggles my mind that given the quality of it (real nets! glass backboards! sporttec or whatever mat over the concrete! the view, the consistenly great weather, free lights until 10pm) that there's hardly ever anyone there :(

o shit breakaway rims

kinda promised myself that if i ever won the lottery i would supply the basketball courts of nyc with nets in perpetuity, but wtf children stop hanging on them

Damn Granny that's a pretty nice mtn view 4 ballin. Looks like the kind of place you could ball -> do some nice nature wandering to cool down.

My missed bunnies were 100% due to not even getting one practice shot up before playing, which made shooting anything an adventure in muscle memory. First play on D I had my back to the ball and Houdini'd an incoming pass into a steal, which is about the only thing I did the entire time out there. Also: a net! Someone put it up today; will be surprised if it lasts a week.

Also wouldn't mind if this thread morphs into WDYBBallCourtLL.

Nice court! Outdoor courts are tough tho with the double gorilla rims. So tight. You HAVE to shoot near perfect and rebounds are anyones game. Makes for a totally different kinda of ball really.

I sprained (I think a level 2 sprain) my surgically repaired left ankle 10 days ago and was really bummed about it. It had been nearly 5 years since the surgery without any injuries.

ugh ankle sprains. did you get it repaired cause of ligament damage from sprains or what? I think I need surgery on mine cause it's always super tender after a litany of sprains over the years (my fav one was due to geniuses making a public court where the concrete ends RIGHT at the baseline and there was a few inch dropoff).

yeah would like to see pics of other ILHers' "home" courts. hooping or nature wandering pretty much my 2 hobbies atm.

Yeah I sprained it 8 times between 2002-2007, two of those being severe. Caused bone spurs on both sides and extensive ligament damage. Also tore the meniscus in the same leg due the ankle and how I played on it. Got all the surgeries at the same time which I would NOT recommend (bone spur removal, ligament repair and meniscus).

haha the 'few inch dropoff' kinda thing gives me nightmares. one of my sprains was when I was golfing... I walked off the tee box to my cart and stepped on a racketball sized pine cone. I swear Ive never been more pissed off in my life.

http://vimeo.com/65081192

Cool

Indeed, waiting for dl confirmation email.

hah i knew bobbito would be behind that

apparently m bibby is known to frequent my court (mom has house in town), tho no one I know has seen him there in awhile. y u scared, m?

i may have just blown out my knee u_u

oh damn! How bad?

brand new nikes + immaculate gym floor + too old for this shit, riggs + pivot = torn acl

wasn't even touched, i just turned and my foot stayed behind. ~pop~

sorry to hear. that's horrible. good luck with recovery n that. gonna do surgery?

damn, sorry mooks

the coach of the usa olympic men's basketball team called me today to see how my knee was doing lol

the whole thing is a little reminiscent of the eddie-murphy-in-whiteface snl skit except re: socioeconomic status

waaaaaaaait what? Coach K?!!

yeah i tore up my knee at his fantasy camp (courtesy of a k-rich college friend of mine in celebration of another friend's recovery from colon cancer)

ahh, makes sense. Still thats awesome that he called you!

Hows it feeling?

that's pretty nice of him to call you. hope you're back dunkin on fools in no time.

i had 2 huge annoyances playing a few days ago.
1) ultra ballhog on my team. I feel bad if I go 1on1 for a whole possession 1 time, do not understand guys who do this all game long. My man just left me wide the fuck open and dude would still not pass. To me, or to anyone. I've played w/this guy before, and it's not like he does it cause his teammates suck, doesn't matter if KD were on his team.
2) 5'6" guy w/ridiculously precise jumper. I'm not exaggerating by saying he was about 20-25 from 3. One of the best shooters I've played with. Esp annoying when you play 2s and 1s instead of 3s and 2s, which I hate cause it inflates the value of long shots. I wasn't guarding dude except a couple time on switches but hoping he's up at the court again, I like a defensive challenge (he was quick on the dribble too so you couldn't just play him for the J)

Ballhogs are the worst kind of people, in my experience anyway.

I pulled off Wade's bring the ball over the defender's head euro steppy move tonight :D

OMG second week in a row that I got my Dikembe on -- despite being 5'10", I just about never blocked any shots in my salad days because no hops, and then one last week defending a jumper, and then THREE today, including one on the ballerest guy in our pickup game. Hopefully made up for my 2-3 boneheaded passes and load of bricks. I've become a no-rebounding defensive specialist!

nice!

:D

Also banked a couple shots in... from pretty much head-on to the basket.

haha those are more embarrassing than anything. I still havent played since my sprain. Being extra cautious.

I NEVER block shots either. Maybe a handful a year.

at 5'9" if i ever get to play against competition my own size it's a defensive revelation

I play against Asian dudes, so there you go, lol.

I'm 6'1" and will get referred to as a "big" at times. Which is cool if I'm the biggest on the court, not so cool when there's one other guy who really is a big and I have to guard him.

When you're out-bigged all you can do is fall back on good positioning, boxing out and hoping your man can't shoot worth a damn.

I love playing against taller guys. especially the ones that don't really know how to use their bodies.

Last night I forced a guy 5 inches taller than me into multiple bad shots, including one that hit the back of the backboard; it was my only consolation after missing 5 shots in a row. My experience is that average pickup player is not used to someone who both tries on D and knows what they're doing on that end to some extent.

I got stuck on a few rotations guarding a dude who has probably 3 inches on and me and, I unno, 70 pounds, he just did a simple pivot in the low post and all I could do was say Ooof.

Yeah exactly xp. Get a dude with game or someone that just understands basic post positioning and it's no contest if they have height on you. Like I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to guard z bo.

My experience is that average pickup player is not used to someone who both tries on D and knows what they're doing on that end to some extent.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, 29 June 2013 11:08

this imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gWxHFMog9w

haha. player coach gets under my skin the most. corollary to tall guy who only shoots 3's is any guy who only shoots 3's and plays no D, doesn't pass, ugh.

'respect the call'

heard all of those jokes before but it's well done

lolled at the player coach -- "banana swirl!" I have definitely played with *that dude* a couple times. Sometimes it's in the form of incomprehensible hand gestures followed by frustration that you don't get the incomprehensible hand gestures.

"this is streetball man"

the "old guy" usually has more game than the dude in that video though. Bad knees but crazy shots.

old guy at my court is 6'7" and played in college. annoying cause somehow I'm always the 2nd tallest guy and have to guard him or some other oaf.
the other day my local player-coach shot an airball and tried to play it off as a pass to me, "you gotta be ready for that". everyone started laughing, so then he played off that playing-off as a joke.

it's pretty cool though, I've worked up a network of 10 or so dudes to text for a game and amongst them and random drop by guys there's only been one dick. ratio was like 10x higher when I played in Chicago area. ~chillvibes~ man.

ime the old guy is also more likely to play a little dirty

the player coach is the worst especially when hes also the old guy

Hahaha playing at new place in Bronx, did a little 2-on-2 yesterday's, totally got matched up with Player Coach. Kinda loved it but I was abusing this dude inside and wanted Player Coach to take some shots just because idk it's just mellow basketball and wasn't trying to make anyone look bad. PC kept yelling at me to go inside and take him and getting irritated when I would take the pass and then pass it back out.

PC knows the math

What was funny is that he was also The Dad and had his kid there with him. He jumped in and just wanted to play one game; but, after we won the first one, he yelled to his kid to hang tight, daddy was gonna play one more game. And then another one after that.

Think he might've had some history w/ one of the other dudes and just wanted to twist the baller-knife a little bit.

haha

http://store.apple.com/us/product/HD748LL/A/infomotion-94fifty-bluetooth-basketball?fnode=39

Haha what the hell

lol thought it was gonna be an app that tells you where pickup games are going on on yr area

wtf is that? I read it and still don't get it.

yeah me either

prob tracks bounces etc idk

you bounced the ball 764 times today... CONGRATS!

U bouncin' GOOD

bounce faster bonce slower bounce more

continuously plays http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_It & u cannot disable this feature

http://instagram.com/p/imgnhSMAcR/

no one in the gym today, so i worked on a couple of new moves

Awesome! quick moves

it took me a good 20 minutes to get the shammgod down, it goes against every natural instinct

its v unnatural, I've only tried it a few times but never in a game situation. Doesn't seem like something I would use. I use the white chocolate around the back to myself all the time tho.

nice moves, u rly shook ur defender, how is casper irl btw (or ird in his case)

the defender was ur mom but she was too tired after the first video we made, if u know what i mean

the little spin was me imitating parker and the lefty shammgod was supposed to be manu

why was my mom playing basketball after filming a porno with u? what a weird date.

she's a grown woman, she knows better than that.

2 things that suck about pickup ball
1) total lack of charging. certain guys seem to not even have a concept of it, and will relentlessly ram into you every possession.
2) 1s and 2s as default scoring mode rather than 2s and 3s. And the math geniuses I generally play with don't get how "1s and 2s" mode gives more weight to behind-the-arc shots.

in my pickup world people generally dont play with twos

tho i secretly like to cause theyre fun to shoot

Lol who the fuck calls a charge in a pickup game

^ every once in a while when someone stands in one spot for like 3 seconds and gets pummeled and subsequently hurt he MIGHT get the call.

ones and twos is great for when there are lots of people waiting to get on the court, keeps things moving. But yeah it really adds a ton of weight to outside shooting

charge is ok to call if it's super obvious but the offense should get the ball back

if you push someone over w yr off arm or like barrel into someone then try to call the foul on them

i like to call three seconds and then yell 'respect the call' over and over until everyone quits

haha otm

lol 3 seconds and back court are two things that are not allowed to be called in open gym

yeah there is no backcourt

really i feel like backcourt is always called, or sometimes three quarters court, a regional pick up conventions map would be interesting

ha I've played in a handful of states from Colorado westward and never ever played where that was called.

its also kind of looked down upon to call traveling unless its like super obvious.

maybe its just a new yawk street ball thing *shrugs* *dunks*

backcourt is a dumb rule tho that shldnt even exist in the nba

i've never seen backcourt or three seconds or palming/carrying called, altho some fuckers do nothing but carry

could probably count charges on one hand. and one (1) time i played against a pickup zone defense lol

hah man i have a group of friends I run with and we have one squad if we are all playing together we can do zone cos we all get it. But all it takes is one knucklehead and it all comes crashing down.

backcourt is a dumb rule tho that shldnt even exist in the nba

― lag∞n, Wednesday, January 8, 2014 10:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

works as another defender though for a trap which is cool cos traps are cool

ha i have def seen the zone attempted many times but it only ever lasts from one play cause you cant really just do that shit on the fly

yeah you have to know the dudes

team getting burnt, ok lets do zone ill stand here you over there, uh ok never mind

pickup triangle-and-two

haha

btw got my knee scanned and NO TORN MENISCUS! v excited to get playing again this weekend.

i have basically retired since i started this thread rip my career

get back at it

naw ive proved all i needed to, my name is etched on B game halls of fame all across the land

aww

ha

Are you guys taking """"charges"""" on playground concrete

The fuck is wrong with you people

wtf are you talking about

tried my shammgod out tonight in front of a pretty nice crowd (first day of classes) and KILLED a kid with it

nice!
I can do all kinds of dribbling shit out there by myself...then get in game situation and struggle with anything more than basics, argh

people stand around watching your pickup games? or are those people waiting to get in a game?

yeah first day of classes so there were a million people at the courts

waiting to play

waiting for kevin to blow their little minds

btw if you didnt yell SHAMGOD did not count

Also dudes who play in open gym that like hustle beyond belief and full court press by themselves and get all up in you but then are like "what, me? just playing chill defense here what's the issue".
― Spottie, Tuesday, 14 January 2014 09:09

i am basically this guy and i'm still surprised by how much it pisses people off, especially if they don't respect me on offence

― micah, Monday, January 13, 2014 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wrong thread so posting back in here.

Yeah I don't mind hustle, I'm probably just jealous of the constant energy.

those guys usually jump out of their skin if given any sort of fake

I keep getting matched up against this 6'6" athletic and skilled guy (I'm 6'1"...and at least 10 yrs older than this guy). Half of me likes the challenge, half of me wants to be able to take a normal shot every now and then, maybe get a few rebounds, would be nice.

hustle guys are fine until they inevitably undercut you

Yeah the undercut always ends in arguments/blows

It's like the ONE major no no in pickup ball

hah one of my besties in high school didnt really understand how to play basketball but was super athletic and strong and had so much engery, my friends all understood what his deal was and could play with him but when wed get pick up games people were just aghast at his behavior lol

man, I already miss my brief, weird, obessive pick-up basketball run -- I had shittons of free time to work on my game and workout, so I went from being pretty much zero to being passable in a short time. Got in the best shape of my life too. I feel like some of the stuff I learned left me, like I can't remember how to make my body do some of the moves and cuts I could do when I was in better shape, but it'd probably come back if I worked on it again I guess.

it'd probably come back if I worked on it again I guess

i thought this too before i got old

haha, yeah you just have to adjust as you get older. learn new skills and rely on "bball IQ" and what not. Really on the fundamentals more. I love playing against high school hot shots cos you can school them a million different ways and use minimal energy doing it. There's a reason a prime age is like 26-29 cos even tho they may be faster and more spry/energetic at a younger age they generally just don't have the experience.

playing against/with high school kids is so tedious and the literal worst

^^^^^