playing basketball

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.