playing basketball

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

used to say that shit all the time as a youngin too and now it makes me want to die

loool. it comes for everyone

walking down the street today there was a little kid with a huge backpack dribbling a basketball in front of me

he was pretty good! not super easy to dribble between your legs when you're like 4'6"

i was considering whether it was appropriate to compliment him when he banged one off his heel and it bounced across the street. at least he paused to look for traffic

Not sure if it warrants a new thread but my 8 year old is really into balling and I’m wondering if other parents (looking at Spottie) have had any luck with teaching cool skills without bumming their kids out. Right now I’m just working on dribbling HARD with both hands. Also making him change pace when he’s dribbling. Then we play pig like 5 times in a row. Any other suggestions?

at young ages to me its all about just keeping them interested and feeling the itch. then add things incrementally to see what clicks. if you push hard too fast and they arent the type to respond to that then nothing will work. my oldest i really tried all kinds of tactics (not just basketball, but other athletics and music stuff too) and he just would not care past a certain point. he enjoys it while hes doing it but has no interest in improving on his own time. my middle son really responded to challenges and learning new things, when he was about 6-7 we were shooting around and i started some loose drills and he was really intent on learning and mastering. id then see him on his own working on the things we worked on. or id show him player highlihgts and hed go try things out. my youngest is the same way and its really great cos they have eachother to play with now and that does more for their improvements than almost anything else. we'll be watching some hoops and after a few minutes one of them will get the urge and they'll call out the other one outside to play.

as far as drills i usually do things that involve all three of the offensive fundamentals; passing, dribbling and shooting. so ill start under the hoop, have them pass to me from around the three point line, then pass back to them and ill close out on them and have them pump fake then dribble to another spot and shot, either all the way for a layup or just the elbows or wherever.

we play lightning/knock-out a lot as a family and that gets everyone involved. can never go wrong with horse, 21, around the world. i play lefty to even the playing field a bit.

Yeah I’m all about not burning him out, but it’s basically the only thing he’ll listen to me on so trying to keep him excited. I was always the big kid playing the 4 or 5 and never got enough ball handling practice so working a lot on that. I should probably work on the passing more but second graders don’t really do spacing

my son is 10 and got super into playing one on one with me and a neighborhood friend in the driveway last year. the best way to get him to actually care about building skills was to have them come from not me, so we watched a lot of youtube videos on teaching kids to shoot and dribble and the like, and then when we were playing i could say "remember how that video said you should try to ___" instead of me just saying it, which he'd be more likely to get agitated from. wish i could recommend specific ones but there wasn't like one guru who we fell for. when we played one-on-one he wanted me to play hard but also didn't want to get decimated every possession, so we got in the habit of very creative handicaps -- i could only play d with no arms, and then later with only my forearms, elbows pinned to my sides, lol. only other tangible advice that worked for us was keeping the hoop at 8 feet, it's easy to burn out when many of your shots are airballs, plus you're focusing everything on just getting the ball up and can't really devote any attention to form.

love your guidance spottie, and good luck Heez!

oh def agree about the rim height and add making sure you have the right ball size to that equation as well. we're up to 10' now and the size 6 ball.

also agree about learning from other sources. at a certain age they dont want to hear it from dad any more.

we also put a little nerf like hoop up on one of the doors in the house and they are using that constantly

nerf hoop def key for basketball radicalization

Yeah except he won’t go to bed until he ends on a make and that can take a while

ball is life

It’s funny he really ignores me when it comes to anything else just got a thirst the bball knowledge

take what you can get!