Love of Basketball

I kind of forgot how much I loved basketball after this past season playing in a city rec league. Unlike baseball, which I can only accept in the most formal setting (umps, full rosters, full schedules, playing for something) basketball has always been a game that I have loved in its most raw form.

Give me ten guys on a dirt court and lets shoot up teams.

Take away the distraction of over-pious officials hellbent on leaving their fingerprints on every game. Take away these burly clowns in opposing jerseys that swing for your head on every drive because they know they won't get whistled. That's not basketball.

Give me your best five versus our best five on a sunny Saturday afternoon and we'll see how it goes.

Here are my favorite basketball memories growing up:

1. Playing neighborhood games to 100 for the rights to pick which song would play on repeat during the next 100 point game. My team had Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' looped onto a cassette tape and our rivals had Michael Jackson's 'Black or White.' Does it get more 1991 than that?

2. Upon being asked to pay for pulling down the 7-foot rim in 6th grade, I wrote up a 'legal brief' detailing everyone else in the school who had touched the rim and suggested that they contribute equal parts to the purchasing of a new rim. The school ended up paying for it.

3. Arguing over who got 'to be' Air Jordan in our neighborhood games. Everyone was appeased as soon as MJ retired and we decided as a group that a pre and post-retirement Jordan could exist. Eventually we had a Jordan for every year and I had to buy more red duct tape making jerseys for everyone.

4. In 6th grade we were challenged to a game by some 8th grade suburban hooligans who called themselves 'Eddie and the Cruisers.' We'd chickened out of many a dirt clod and rock fight with these guys and were way too intimidated to play well when it came down to it. Even though they weren't athletic and had zero game in retrospect, we got tooled. I was 0 for the game. Dammit.