playing basketball

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.

let's get to it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5969183/

been a year since i broke my wrist and i think im retiring for good. i kinda left it open in my mind that i might try again but every time i get the itch (often) i just think about the pain and rehab and how much it jacked up my life for a while and then i talk myself out of it. my old crew still texts me to come play and makes me sad. my wrist still isnt right, prob like 85% mobility and still gets achy.

playing at 82 is some life goals man, im hanging it up 40 years earlier...