"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?