Pine Time

The Memorial Day holiday has kept me off the court all weekend, so I've been enjoying watching the NBA play-offs instead. These conference championships are often the best games over-all, since the teams tend to know each other pretty well, and rivalries are intense. As I said before, I don't really have a "favorite" this year...although I do find myself rooting for the Heat -- a nice mix of experienced veterans and a talented young Dwayne Wade, plus a coach who knows what it takes to win Championships. And I've always been a big fan of the Glove -- delighted to see GP play so well in Game One of that series, and to continue to play strong "D" and make big shots in the last three games as well.

Knowing how to keep your head in the game when your butt is on the bench is a very useful skill to develop. It gives you a chance to cultivate your powers of Observation, Recognition, and even Decision-making without any of the pressures of actual performance. Plus you get to see what both your teammates and your opponents can actually do as well (without any worries about having to do it with them or having it done to you), which makes it a lot easier to play together when you DO finally get on the floor. Anticipation can make us seem quicker even when we've lost a step or two; I often know what the player I'm guarding is going to do before he even knows it himself, which allows me to be there waiting for him. Obviously, the map is not the territory -- some things can only be learned by doing. But I will say this: the better you know the contents of the map in your mind, the easier it is to navigate the territory on foot.

There's a certain pleasure simply to appreciating the beauty of the game from a distance: to seeing it as pattern and a performance rather than an event requiring that you participate and perform as well. Of course, there's also a danger to developing this capacity TOO well. Don't EVER want to get caught standing around "watching the paint dry" when you ought to be making a play. So get it out of your system WHILE you're sitting on the bench, so you won't ever be merely an observer on the floor.

Have you ever noticed how some of the most successful coaches -- Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Larry Brown to mention three of my favorites -- were players who spent a lot of their playing days on the bench? Not to slight their talents, but there's something about sitting on the bench watching and figuring out how to keep up with guys who are bigger, faster, taller and more talented than you that gives a player a different kind of mentality, and turns them into both students and teachers of the game. Or at least that's my theory. Well, one of them at least....

"D" Up!

And my shooting slump has now gone from sublime to ridiculous: last night I managed to take the ball away from a guy at half-court when he got a little careless with it, and was headed back the other direction for an uncontested lay-up when I glanced back over my shoulder to find the defender and see if anyone was running with me, took my eye off the ball, fumbled it a little as I went to pick up my dribble, and by the time I was able to get a handle on the pumpkin (sorta) my momentum had carried me under the basket and I ended up laying it up off the BOTTOM of the front rim...and even this pathetic description makes it sound a lot more graceful than it was. All because I got it in my head that it might be more fun to make some sort of fancy Steve Nash-style assist to the trailer rather than simply taking care of business and scoring the ball the easy way. But what the hell. Pick-up ball is as much about style-points as it is the score. Unfortunately, I didn't score any of either last night.

It's always a tough call in forums like this whether or not to change the names in order to protect the guilty. As a kid I was taught that you NEVER rest on the defensive end, while hanging out under your own basket while your teammates played "D" without you was about the worst sin a player could commit. Pick-up ballers, on the other hand, are notorious for shooting first and asking for forgiveness later (if at all), as well as playing "drive-by" defense while looking to cherry pick on the offensive end. Too many pick-up games are lousy with this type of player (some obviously more egregious than others). The guys I play with are no exception. Some of them get it; a lot of them don't -- and it's always a joy to play with the former, and frustrating to get teamed up with the latter.

Really good players at every level understand that good defense CREATES good offense: turn-overs lead to easy baskets, while the intensity of putting pressure on the ball and challenging every shot, the teamwork of trapping and giving help, the aggressive athleticism of hitting the boards, making the quick outlet pass, and running the floor, all carry over in the other direction. Not-so-good players are always trying to create shots for themselves off the dribble, and would rather force the ball up with three guys hanging on them than make the easy pass that leads to good ball movement and an easy basket for one of their teammates. But even when these shots go in, they are often momentum breakers rather than momentum generators. And frankly, they don't go in that often. But (perhaps to their credit) these guys rarely remember their misses.

It always gives me a lot of pleasure to make a great assist -- and sometimes I worry that I set a bad example by making passes I probably shouldn't attempt simply because I see something creative and know I can get the ball there when a lot of players can't. And still I make way more turnovers than I should. I also get a big kick out of screening bigger guys off the boards and pulling down rebounds they think by divine right belong to them; I enjoy playing good help "D," calling out the screens and the switches, getting back to defend effectively against the break, and dropping down out of nowhere from the weak side to slap away what some poor soul thought was a wide-open shot (although this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to).

But the biggest pleasure I get out on the court is matching up against a "legend in his own mind" and taking away their pet shots and moves, forcing them to their weak hand, denying them the ball, and generally frustrating the hell out of them by not letting them do anything they like to do. Sometimes I even talk a little trash...although trash-talk is not really an old-school value. But even we oldtimers have to change a little with the times.

Even good defense in a pick-up game tends to be a little catch-as-catch-can: you just don't have the opportunity to work on complicated traps and presses, so the double-teams tend to be a little hit-or-miss, and the rotation out of them rarely as smooth as one would wish. Good passing teams, who keep their heads up and their eyes open, can take advantage of this. But isn't that how I got started on this topic in the first place?

MVP

Meet the newest fan of the Jacksonville University Dolphins. Friday afternoons I generally enjoy a light, "shoot-around" workout at my health club, followed by a jacuzzi and a sauna, and then an espresso at my favorite cafe, where I write in my journal and start to get focused in on the shape and content of my message for Sunday morning. Often I'm all alone in that part of the gym at that hour on a Friday afternoon, but last Friday I noticed a young man working very hard on the other court, so after I'd finished with my own lazy workout, I wandered over and offered to rebound and pass for him if he wanted to work on his catch-and-shoot. Turns out his name is Mike DiBendetto from Belmont: a second-year walk-on guard for the Dolphins. Quick, great work ethic, nice soft touch on his "J"...just feeding him the ball wore me out, but I guess that's the difference between 19 and 49. In any event, I'm kinda looking forward now to following his progress next season. Good Luck Mike!

My own shooting slump came back with a vengeance Sunday. Nothing went down for me, and I mean NOTHING -- jump-shots, little bunnies in the lane, treys, wide-open lay-ups...short off the front of the rim, flat off the back of the rim, half-way down and around the rim before kicking out again...it would have almost been comic if it hadn't been so tragic. And embarrassing. These were not bad shots either -- typically wide-open looks that most nights I would have drained without thinking...and perhaps that's part of the problem too. Thinking. At times when your shot isn't falling the only way to get it to fall is to keep shooting, but you also start to worry about shooting yourself right out of the game with a long string of missed attempts, and then when your teammates begin to doubt you and start forcing up their own shots rather than sharing the ball, the whole thing comes apart and you find yourself sitting on the sidelines thinking some more about why things aren't working. You start to shoot with hesitance rather than with confidence, and then you really ARE toast.

I have a few little shooting triggers I try to keep in mind when I'm playing, but I try also not to think too much about them either. The first of these is to Balance the Brain -- to keep all that extraneous self-doubt quiet and just let the flow of the game come to me and through me and help me find my rhythm again. My body remembers how to shoot, and has done it successfully tens of thousands of times; it's just my brain that sometimes gets in the way. The second is to Sharpen the competitive Edge -- to amp up my energy a little, so that I'm shooting to score rather than shooting not to miss. And the third is Focus on the Target -- to concentrate my attention on the little hook holding up the net on the front of the rim, and to feel the ball release off my fingers with good rotation, as I define the arc of my shot with good follow-through.

But the most important trigger is MVP: Mentally Visualize Perfection. It's about getting the image of a good shot inside my head, so that it drives out all those horrid bricks of recent memory. Imagining the perfect shot -- or even just "seeing" the ball through the hole -- really does help me forget the misses and put them behind me, in a way that is much more effective than simply "telling" myself "don't think about it." That works about as well as trying NOT to imagine the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man...

Looks like lots of good hoop ahead in the NBA play-offs. I'm going to miss Tony Parker and the rest of the Spurs, but both the Dallas/Phoenix and the Miami/Detroit match-ups promise to be very exciting. Don't really have a favorite team, but I do hope Gary Payton plays well. All four of these clubs play great basketball, and I'm really looking forward to watching them play. When I'm not out playing myself, that is....

Sharing the Ball

Broke out of my shooting slump last night, at least in a small way: swished two good looks at open "J's" - one from the short corner on the right baseline, and the other (a game winner) from the right elbow - and had a break-away lay-up off a steal as well. But I missed at least four other driving shots too: a reverse lay-up (that should've been automatic); a tough left-handed finger-roll on the right baseline (when I got caught too far under the backboard); another easy right-handed lay-up where I had to hang in the air a little to avoid a defender (and just took my eye off the rim); and finally a little bunny in the lane that I just flat-out missed. Oh gosh - and then a HORRIBLE brick from beyond the arc that I don't think I even bothered to aim. But the point is that I got to the gym early, took the time to stretch and warm up properly, didn't try to force anything that wasn't really there, but instead stayed focused on doing a lot more of the "little things" and trying to get into the flow of the game itself. Which is why, in addition to these meager six points, I also had half-a-dozen rebounds, half-a-dozen assists, a handful of steals, and even a couple of blocked shots (at one point one of my teammates even called me "the Enforcer"). Oh, and a handful of turnovers too. But turnovers are a dime-a-dozen in this league: hardly even worthy of a mention.

Organized teams with actual coaches who regularly play (and practice) together not only have set plays and defenses, they also communicate in a systematic way. In a pick-up game, this is all mostly catch as catch can. Calling for the ball is pretty much a matter of volume ("Gimmie the ROCK!"), and beyond that typically it's every man for himself. If you're lucky your teammates will at least call out the screens ("see it" or "pick left") and maybe even the switches ("get mine"/"got yours"), although actually asking for "Help!" is sometimes considered lacking in manliness. I guess some guys feel it's better to give up a lay-up than to admit out loud that they've lost their man. I don't agree with this philosophy, BTW, and am constantly both giving and asking for help. The one big advantage defenders have over their opponents is that there are five of them and only one ball.

Of course, the best way to overcome that advantage is for the team which has possession of the ball to share it. But often this becomes difficult in pick-up games because teammates don't really know or trust one another, and they don't really communicate all that well either. So rather than balancing the floor and let good ball movement create good scoring opportunities, pick-up games too often degenerate into four guys calling loudly for the ball with the fifth trying to avoid the distraction of people shouting at him while creating a shot for himself off the dribble. This works best when the players are at least smart enough to let their most talented player do the majority of the ballhandling, and their opponents are too stupid to trap him and rotate back.

Teams who make the effort to balance the floor, who routinely move well WITHOUT the ball (attacking the basket, screening away and filling back), and who aren't afraid to look for the open man and make the extra pass will generally have a lot more success than teams that don't. Even just calling for the ball by location ("look left," "trailer") or calling out a teammate's name ("give it to Jeff!") is a big improvement. I tend to call for the ball visually rather than verbally -- raising both of my hands above my head with outstretched palms when I'm open, and keeping my hands down while pointing to the open player (if I can see him) when I'm not. A hand raised as a target while posting up or cutting through the lane is another common signal. I also try to signal that I'm available to set a screen by raising my left hand in a clenched fist to shoulder height (which was how I was taught), and will occasionally call for a pick (or try to move players around on the floor) by pointing to wherever I want it (or them) with the index finger of my off hand. Not everyone understands or appreciates my finger-wagging though, so I try not to do it very often.

Of course, the eleven "scoring spots" I mentioned in an earlier post all have proper names as well. "Point!" "Corner!" "Elbow!" and the like on the ball side; "Skip!" (for the far wing) or "Cross!" (for the far corner) on the help side. The weakside elbow is sometimes called "Pig!" (after a play called the "Blind Pig" in Tex Winter's triangle offense), while I like to call the weakside block "the Wormhole" (or simply "Worm!") in honor of Dennis Rodman, who made his living there. It's amazing how quickly guys will pick-up terms like this in a pick-up game, if you simply keep saying them often enough.

Ironically, the teams which share the ball best either know one another well enough to trust that when they give the ball up they are likely to get it back, or don't know their teammates well enough NOT to trust them, and share the ball out of habit because that's the way they've learned to play. One of the proudest moments I've ever had in a pick-up game came almost a decade ago now, in a very competitive gym where the winners kept the court as long as they kept winning, and often 30 or 40 guys would be sitting around waiting for "next." So obviously the best players tried to stack their teams with as much talent as they could, since losing typically meant sitting for an hour or more.

The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves. One night I got on a team which consisted of myself, another guy about my age (forty-ish), his fifteen-year-old son, and a couple of fairly athletic twenty-somethings with lots of hop but only modest skills. We were up against a team of very talented players who had already won five or six games in a row, and by that point were playing very well together even if they were getting a little tired. We took advantage of our fresh legs to run them a little harder than they really liked, spread the floor to create space for our two twenty-something "slashers," trapped hard on defense, switched and rotated, and used our good inside position (and wide butts) to force their shooters to shoot over the top, and to screen their rebounders off the boards.

Finally won the game (to everyone's amazement) when one of our slashers kicked the ball out to me on the left wing.... I immediately reversed the ball to the father at the point, who made the quick extra pass to his son on the opposite wing, who drained a wide-open three in rhythm to send our opponants to the showers. None of us had ever seen one another before, and after losing the next game we never played together again. But for that brief moment, we were the best team in the gym. All because we knew how to share the ball....

BAFFLE and ROAR

Bad news in the local paper Friday about last Tuesday's Town election; the ballot measure that would have funded several new playing fields and tennis courts (and in the process converted the old tennis courts across the street from me into two new outdoor basketball courts) failed to win passage. The difference between the Yeas and the Nays was only 11 votes, (which means that a swing of only six voters would have resolved the issue the other way). Naturally, a recount is in the offing...and I remain optimistic that we will still see some variation of this proposal again at a future election if the recount fails to change the outcome. Still, it's a disappointment. I was looking forward to playing on those courts sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, my shooting woes continue -- once again shot 0-fer ballgame last night, and to make matters worse my "D" was crap too. But what the heck...it's just a game....

****

When I was coaching at the Boys & Girls Club on Nantucket, I tried to come up with acronyms that would help my players learn some of the basic principles I wanted them to play by. For the half-court game it was BAFFLE: BALANCE the floor ATTACK the basket: FILL back to the ball; FAKE out your opponent; LOOK for the open man; EXECUTE the EXTRA pass to EARN an EASY BASKET. For the fast break it was ROAR: REBOUND the ball; OUTLET quickly; ATTACK (we do a lot of attacking in my offensive schemes) down the middle; RUN the floor and fill the lanes.

Floor Balance is (or should be) a relatively easy concept. There are basically 11 prime scoring spots on the floor: the point, the wings, the corners (all of which potentially take advantage of the three-point line), the elbows (the corners formed by each end of the foul line and the sides of the lane), the blocks, right at the rim (generally known as "In the Paint") and at the "Charity Stripe" or free throw line. Pick-up ballers don't really need to worry about this last (since the only time we tend to shoot free throws is to get into a game in the first place), and in a lot of places each score only counts for one point anyway. But the basic idea is NEVER HAVE TWO OFFENSIVE PLAYERS STANDING IN THE SAME SPOT AT THE SAME TIME! You would be surprised how difficult this is to achieve sometimes, which brings me to the next topic...

Attack the Basket/Fill Back to the Ball. Not only is the basic idea to Balance the Floor, the IDEAL is that no one should EVER be standing still. The fundamental principle of movement is simple: pass the ball to a teammate and cut to the basket, thus executing the old-fashioned give-and-go. As the spot you just left becomes empty, a teammate should fill it by coming back to the ball (or, more accurately, to the now-vacant spot one pass away from where the ball is now). An alternative is to pass the ball and then screen away for a teammate, who attacks the basket instead. But the point is not to crowd the ballhandler, while at the same time forcing the defenders to move their feet to defend the basket, and giving the ballhandler a easy replacement/outlet if the return pass to the cutter (or a strong drive to the basket) isn't open.

Fake out your Opponent. If the defenders can anticipate where the ball is going to be passed, they are in a much better position to defend against it. So it's important that the ballhandler's teammates give him plenty of options, and that the ballhander avoids "telegraphing" his passes. Just remember, the point is to fake out your opponents, NOT your teammates!

Look for the Open Man and Execute the Extra Pass to Earn an Easy Basket. Your opponents can't be everywhere at once. As players move and share the ball eventually somebody is going to be left alone without a defender. Find him and get him the ball! There is always, Always, ALWAYS a good, wide-open shot three good passes away....

That is the BAFFLE part of the program. ROAR is even easier.

REBOUND the ball. You can't run without it. The art of rebounding is a topic for another day, but all offense begins with gaining possession of the ball.

OUTLET quickly. This is probably the most important factor in a successful running game. You want to get the ball out from underneath your opponent's goal and headed toward your own as quickly as possible.

ATTACK down the middle. This forces your opponents to defend the basket AND both sides of the court at once.

RUN the floor and fill the lanes. Ideally, the ballhandler should attack down the middle, with potential cutters on both sides of him, a fourth player trailing the play for a pull-up jump-shot or a second attack off the dribble, and the second trailer (usually a big man, and often the original rebounder) ready to finish late and hard, straight down the center of the lane at the rim.

What people often forget is that good running teams who share the ball well don't have to beat ALL of the defenders back to the basket; they just have to beat ONE of them. Likewise, the transition from ROAR to BAFFLE ought to be seamless; if the lay-up isn't there just balance the floor and keep passing and attacking until it is.

But the best thing about his sort of "system" is that it's organic -- there's nothing complicated to learn or practice or remember. Which makes it perfect for pick-up games. Learn it yourself, and then teach it "by precept and example" to the guys you play with regularly. But that's a topic for another day as well.

ORDA on the Court

All competitive activities have their "X's and O's" -- the strategies that lead either to victory or defeat, and the tactics and techniques one uses to achieve them. Pick-up basketball is no different. Basketball itself is a very simple game: like its cousins (soccer, lacrosse, hockey, water polo, and many others) the object is simply to put the ball in the goal more often than your opponent does. The gimmick is that the goal is 10 feet off the ground, and you aren't allowed to walk with the ball -- you either have to bounce it off the floor or throw it to one of your teammates. One of the things I really love about pick-up hoop is its wide-open potential for creativity and improvisation -- no coaches or elaborate defensive schemes, no set plays other than the classic give-and-go, the pick-and-roll, and a handful of other basic patterns. But this doesn't mean it's all just out-of-control chaos. Like Jazz, effective improvisation occurs within structure. And the more this structure becomes second nature, the easier it becomes to make the improvisation flow naturally.

It begins with with the fundamentals of competition itself: seizing the initiative; quickness and agility; superior strength, skill, power and endurance. Seizing the Initiative means forcing your opponent to react to you, rather than reacting to the actions of your opponent. We sometimes think of this as "the element of surprise," but this is only once aspect of initiative. In basketball we sometimes speak of "controlling tempo" which is less about surprise than it is forcing your opponent to play at your speed. Yet even this is a little deceptive. Seizing the Initiative is most accurately understood as controlling the cycle of Observation, Recognition, Decision and Action (ORDA) -- seeing what is happening on the floor, knowing what it means, making the right choice and acting on it. If you and your teammates can execute this cycle more rapidly than your competition, over and over and over again, over time you will eventually gain the initiative, control the contest, and ultimately defeat them. While they are trying to react to whatever you just did, you are already doing something different, which makes it very difficult to catch up. Not always, of course; superior strength and quickness also have their place in this equation. But as Princeton's Pete Carril puts it, "The Smart Take from the Strong." Experience trumps Athleticism (almost) every time.

Not that Athleticism isn't highly desirable. Quickness and Agility are very important competitive factors, and very closely related to the ORDA cycle. Anticipation makes us faster, while the physical ability to execute quickly might just allow you to outrun an opponent who is a step ahead of you mentally. The legendary John Wooden of UCLA used to say "Move Quickly but never Hurry" (or something along those lines), suggesting that quickness and agility are mental as well as physical. The same is true of physical strength, skill, power and endurance. Basically, stronger and better-conditioned players will be a step faster at the end of the game, even if they start out the game somewhat slower than their competition. The point is to force your opponent to play the game YOUR way, which means playing to your strengths and their weaknesses. The "court sense" that allows you to see the whole floor, recognize the mismatches, find the open player and get them the ball in a place where they can put it in the hole...combine these with old-fashioned values of competitive instinct and "the will to win," and you have the secret to victory at every level, from the playground to the NBA. And if you can figure out how to translate the metaphors, in every other aspect of life as well.

Dress for Success

Dressed up a little for last night's run, having already done my small part Monday night to improve the quality of both my own and my teammate's basketball wardrobes by cleaning out my basketball closet and giving away (OK, getting rid of) dozens of things that no long fit or which I no longer liked. And then last night I really went over the top: authentic Vancouver Grizzlies jersey with matching shorts and warm-ups, personalized with my own name and number....

Some years ago I aspired to a vacant pulpit in Vancouver BC -- a beautiful city in the part of the world where I grew up, but also in a foreign country (thus also giving me the opportunity to become an authentic expat close to home). Knowing that the Grizzlies were moving to Memphis, I went on-line and bought the jersey while it was still available, with the thought of lifting it up from behind the pulpit like I was a first round draft pick on the Sunday the congregation voted to call me as their minister. Of course, I didn't get that job and this never happened...so instead I bought the matching shorts, and now I sometimes wear it on the court. Not often, of course, since it really is too much. But sometimes too much is just enough...and there seems to be something about knowing I'm overdressed which makes me want to rise to the occasion.

Still not shooting all that well, but I did knock down the winning three again in the first game we played: a nice catch-and-shoot "J" from the left wing (my favorite spot!) as my defender rotated back. Don't know how often I've seen this: miss the wide-open looks by a mile, but with a hand in your face the ball swishes through the net. I'm certain it's all about shooting in rhythm, and the "muscle memory" that comes from lots of practice and learning to let your body do the thinking. Anyway, that early jump shot set a nice tone for the rest of the run -- some nice assists, fairly solid defense, but of course more than my fair share of ugly turnovers too (including a VERY embarrassing dribble of the ball off my foot after juking my defender and driving around him on the left baseline). But at the end of the day, I went home covered with sweat and with nothing hurt or broken. Which makes last night a GOOD night....

Letting the Game come to YOU.

My shot hasn't been falling all that well lately, so I've been putting in a little extra time at the gym working on it. Everything I put up seems to be falling a little short, or rolling off the inside of my index finger whenever I try to put a little extra UMPH! in the release. I've been blaming the problem on my new eyeglasses, but I know in my heart that the problem is really in my legs. That and the fact that a lot of the guys I play with now aren't really all that great about sharing the ball, so I rarely get a clean spot-up look in rhythm.

These days I mostly like to shoot the "trey," which is basically a complete reversal of my game from my younger days. Back in my prime I was pretty much a quick-first-step-to-the-basket kinda guy -- one aggressive dribble to my left or to my right, then elevate and finish hard at the hole (although as a five-foot-eleven-and-three-quarters-inches-in-my-stocking-feet white guy, I was NEVER really able to play ABOVE the rim...despite playing more like six-foot-one in my sneakers). Didn't even bother to wear my glasses in those days, which also meant that I had a hard time even SEEING the rim from much beyond the free throw line. Of course, in those days there wasn't a three point shot anyway. That 19 foot 9 inch line has extended my playing days for at least two decades -- although at times it feels like I've sold out and moved to the suburbs (which I'm ashamed to say I've done off the court as well).

In the meantime, I've been trying to do more of the "little things" that keep me in the game and contributing even when I'm not putting up that many points. Good defense, both on and off the ball. Rebounding. Passing. Screening, Screening, Screening. It really is a team game you know, even at the lowest levels (and you don't get much lower than over-35 pick-up rec ball). And it's amazing how satisfying this can be. Two weeks ago I found myself back defending against what was shaping up into a four-on-one break. I knew that the dribbler was going to try to look me off and finish himself, so I forced him to give the ball up to his left, and then spun quickly and rejected the baseline cutter's lay-up strong and clean. That sort of thing doesn't happen in this league very often. Was the play of the evening. Even brought all the guys who were sitting around waiting their turn to play to their feet.

Then last Wednesday I was the one who came up with a loose ball and was out leading the break. Pulled up a little beyond the arc to draw the defense and threw a cross-court, back-door ally-oop pass to the exact same spot and the exact same player whose shot I'd rejected the week before, which he gracefully finished without ever touching the ground. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often in this league either, and once again it turned out to be the play of the night.

And finally last night. Walking the ball up the court in a game where we had trailed badly, but battled back to get to game point, I noticed that my defender had dropped down below the foul line to crowd the passing lane into the post. So once again I pulled up just behind the three point line, and with the word "Respect!" rose up and drained the winning shot like I'd had the hot hand all month. People take those kinds of shots all the time in this league (and sometimes they even go in). But not me. At least not lately.

I'm sure there's a moral here somewhere, but I'm not going to try to spell it out. All I know is that I've probably played tens of thousands of pick-up basketball games in my lifetime, won some, lost some, and scored more points than I can count. But it's little plays like these that I remember for a long time afterwards. Win or Lose....

Trust the Force Luke...

Well, here's the sad truth about ths BLOG. I haven't the SLIGHTEST idea what I'm doing here. Just thought it might be kinda fun occasionally to post my thoughts about the Meaning of Life, Popular Culture, and the Essential Wisdom of Pick-Up Basketball. I say "essential" because it's the best word I could come up with combining the concepts of "essence" and "fundamentals." I'm a little old school when it comes to hoop -- although I have at least accomodated myself to baggy shorts. After all, dress codes shouldn't only go one way.

As for me, I'm one summer league short of a half-century on this planet, and have spent almost that much time bouncing balls off the hardword. I can remember when the lane was still a "key," but I honestly can't recall the first time I picked up a basketball...it's just always been part of my life: at the playground, at the Y, in my driveway, at school. In any event, I like to think I've learned a lot about the game over the course (statistically, at least) of more than half a lifetime; and the game has certainly taught me plenty about life as well. So I thought I'd try to share a little of that wisdom, and maybe pick up a little more myself from whoever happens to find and read this.

So hands in, everyone. WHAT TIME IS IT? GAME TIME!