playing basketball

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.