Saturday Balling 10/24/09

Got to the Lowell courts around 12:30PM on Saturday. 90 minutes later than usual, I know, but it was pretty foggy in the morning, and kinda misty. The ground was kinda wet, but by around noon the sun started to come out and dry things up a bit. There were some people there, but the one game going on looked like it was just high school kids - beneath my notice. (Nah, but it'd just feel creepy to be "that guy" who hangs out with teenagers all the time. Kind of reminds me of my high school track coach. Ugh.)

I just started shooting around by myself at one of the courts. (Isn't that how these recaps usually start? Gimme some new material. Maybe one of these days I'll show up super late and everyone else will wonder what happened to me.) At the court next to me, there were four regulars I recognized because they are always there on Saturdays as well. To kill time, they played Horse and two-on-two while waiting for more players to show up so we could get some real games going. I will now, for future reference, give each of these four players a name. I'm basing the first three of them on the Superfriends.

1) The first dude is this Asian dude who always looks like he's squinting when he's excited. He also likes to talk a lot but generally seems to have fun. He's okay, but he seems like a guy who thinks he's better than he actually is. I'll refer to him as Aquaman from now on. Why? Because I don't know what the purpose of his existence is. (I was gonna call him Vibe, but that guy is probably so obscure that no one who reads this will get the reference without checking Wikipedia.)

2) The second dude is Aquaman's buddy, a Hispanic dude who looks like he's at least in his thirties. He always shows up to the courts with his hair slicked all the way back like Dean Cain in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. This guy kind of annoys me and I don't like playing with him unless I have to. He talks a lot, but in an annoying way. He has this really smug attitude that rubs me the wrong way. He constantly takes lousy shots like a walk-up the court, pull-up three before the rest of his teammates are ready to get a rebound. He cherry picks a lot, too. Thought about giving him a nickname referring to his cherry picking, but don't wanna be accused of being racist in case he's from Mexico, so I'll call him Superman.

3) The third dude is another one of the superfriends. He's a tall Asian dude. He's actually pretty good although sometimes it seems like he just kinda coasts through games and doesn't really play hard until the game is on the line. This guy doesn't talk too much. As a result, he's my favorite Superfriend. I'll call him Metamorpho.

4) The fourth dude is a forty year-old black dude. I don't think he's actually one of the Superfriends, but he seems to get on well with them because they've played so often. This guy is actually pretty funny. The way he reacts to things on the court constantly amuses me. For example, after he misses a shot, he will say something like, "Come on, don't make me do all the scoring! I'm forty! Too old for this s---! Gimme some help out here for God's sake!" And he says this after forcing up a contested, fallaway, double-clutch seven foot jump shot, surrounded by three defenders while at least one teammate is standing around, wide open. And he can never keep track of the score, but despite trying to argue, is eventually a pushover and just accepts what he is told. It's fun to play with this guy. He doesn't use his size, but he loves taking outside shots. Sometimes he even makes them. I will call him The Black Pat Burke.

So those were the four guys who were already there. The courts were bookended by these teenage skateboarders (they were all over the court next to the one I was shooting around, the one closest to the soccer field) and the Lowell JROTC drum corps (they took over the far end court right next to the parking lot).

Skateboarders at Lowell kind of annoy me. I have no problem with skateboarding, but there's a time and place for it. It's irritating to have to watch out for skateboarders while shooting around. Especially these kids on Saturday. They moved onto my court where I was shooting and often skated within a few feet of me. They kept trying to do ollies and stuff but I felt like my space was invaded. A couple times, one of them would skate right under the basket I was shooting at. Ain't gonna lie - I was tempted to "miss" a shot and hit the dude. But then I realized that there was only one of me and five of them. Pretty unwinnable odds once you factor in the fact that five skateboards are way more dominant weapons in a fight than one single basketball. I just tried to not let my nerves get too razzled.

(This one time, I was driving west on Fulton. I saw this idiot skateboarder skating, a few blocks ahead of me, on the street. He wasn't just on the side of the right lane, either. He was in the middle of the street, weaving back and forth between both lanes. He was going pretty slow and just enjoying himself, I guess. As I got closer to him, I had to slow down for this idiot because he was oblivious. Then a funny thing happened. He must have hit a bump or something, because he lost his footing on his board and jumped off. Lucky for him, he landed on his feet and gathered himself, but because the street was sloped, he had to run to catch up to his board. The dude was just taking his time, though, and just kind of half-jogged toward it. Next thing I know, this big blue old-school pickup truck revs past me and runs over the skateboard, cracking it in half! I was driving just slow enough to see the idiot dude pick up the two pieces of his skateboard, gesture in bewilderment, and scream an expletive. That made my day. Actually, I probably lived off the joy of that moment for like a week, at least.)

Anyway, back to Saturday Balling.

Chris Cheng (or, as I call him, Tayshaun Prince because of his all-around game) and Alex the Man (whom, as you'll soon discover, is the Chinese Chuck Hayes of San Francisco) eventually showed up.

Interesting fact about Chris: he took 10 minutes to get ready before shooting his warmup shots. He had the most complicated ankle wrap I've ever seen, which probably took at least seven minutes to put on. Then he had to tape his fingers. Finally, he had to put on one of those wrist braces like the ones old lady secretaries wear to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Thus, Chris' alternate nickname is The Mummy.

Eventually, enough people showed up and we got a fullcourt game going. It was Metamorpho, The Black Pat Burke, Alex the Man, Chris, and me on one team. I always feel good whenever Tayshaun is on my team. He led Lowell to a championship, so he's a proven winner.

As an added twist, the Lowell JROTC Drum Corps was still on the court right next to us, doing their routine. 16 kids with drums (I counted, to cement my factual accuracy in this recap) including two xylophones. It was quite epic. And loud. I couldn't hear much, other than the martial beats they were playing. At one point, Chris pointed out that having the drum corps play for us was like how those suburban schools have their marching bands play for them.

It always takes me a while to warm up in a game. That first game we played, I went for a rebound very early and started to feel a little tightness in my left calf. Nuts, I thought. I can't be about to cramp up in the first minute of the game! Not when I'm on Chris' team and, therefore, have a good chance of walking off with the sweet taste of victory! During a lull in play, I tried to stretch it a bit. That seemed to do the trick. I didn't cramp up. Whew.

I think we played a good game. The other team was all right, but no match for the Black Pat Burke and Tayshaun. I think they were our leading scorers. I think I made a layup or something, maybe a couple more gimme buckets, but nothing spectacular. I basically just tried to feed Tayshaun the ball and get the heck outta the way. It was tough to communicate on the court because of the drum corps, but Chris said that their loudness simulated "playoff atmosphere." He would know. He's been to the promised land.

On defense, we played a 2-3 zone. I usually don't enjoy playing zone (it just feels wrong somehow, in street ball, and you never know how it'll turn out if you play alongside people who don't know what they're doing), but Tayshaun made it work. He played the upper perimeter of the zone like a champ. He knew exactly how to rotate, how to execute the perfect traps, and his Tayshaun-like arms were all up in the passing lanes. He racked up some steals and blocks. His lateral quickness was amazing. I don't know why he needed an ankle brace. It's like I say, a 75% healthy Chris Cheng is still better than a 100% Dru. That's why I want him on my team every time.

Alex the Man was a beast on the boards, too. I really like playing with him. He is one of the hardest working players I have played with and even though he often claims he doesn't know what he is doing, he makes most of the shots that he needs to make. He has solid defense and great hops (must be those volleyball skills). He made a couple of steals when people thought they could lob the ball over him. What really stands out, though, is the ferocity in his rebounding. This dude isn't the biggest dude on the court, but when there is a loose rebound in the air, no one else goes up for it as hard and as fiercely as Alex the Man. He plays bigger than you would expect him to play, considering his size. That's what makes him the Chinese Chuck Hayes.

That first game we played dragged out a while. I think we were playing "win by two" so it took forever. The drum corps kids didn't stop playing. It was a constant auditory assault. We eventually triumphed because the Black Pat Burke made just enough lucky shots to help us pull through.

The Black Pat Burke sat out the second game we played, though. He said he was old and tired and needed more time to recover. I don't even remember whom we picked up to replace him, but whomever it was, that player wasn't as good as the Black Pat Burke. The second team we played was better than the first, too. They had the size and the speed advantage.

It was a tough, hard-fought game. We fell behind early, but Chris basically willed us back into the game. He knows how to play a great team game but he also knows when to take on the burden of scoring some points. I definitely laud his abilities. Chris has a really pretty game. I think you can usually tell how good a player is by observing his body language and posture when he handles the ball, and Chris projects sure-handed confidence. He doesn't do any flashy stuff to show off, but his fundamentals are plain smooth, and that's what I like to see. Even when he doesn't have the ball, he plays the game of basketball, setting good picks, cutting through defenders, and anticipating his teammates. If his playing style were a girl, I'd marry her or die trying.

We played a zone for part of that second game but eventually switched to man. For some reason, I was guarding this Persian-looking dude who had a couple inches and a bunch of pounds over me. He was more effective once we went to our man defense. It's shameful to admit, but this dude backed me down more than once and just got some easy buckets. After he scored a few points on me, Metamorpho wanted to switch, so I started guarding this older-looking dude on the other team. And for an old-guy, he was actually pretty decent. He looked just like a skinny version of Stan Van Gundy/Ron Jeremy. He had the right hair and the right mustache. He also had good hustle, so I still had to concentrate in order to play against him. That mustache was a huge distraction, though. I didn't want none of that!

At one point during this game, one of those skateboarders from before got too close to us and lost control of his board. The board rolled onto our court and this bald white dude on the other team just kicked it towards the parking lot and yelled crossly at them, dropping an f-bomb or two for good measure. I thought there was gonna be a fight or something, because what that white dude did and said were fighting words. Apparently the skateboarder didn't want none because he just stalked off and got his board.

It would have been interesting if the skateboarders had decided to fight the ballers. I wonder if the Lowell JROTC Drum Corps, who were still going at it, would have gotten involved.

We did our best, and Chris almost carried us to victory, but we were just faced with an uphill battle. I really appreciate playing with Chris and Alex because they don't quit even when things look grim. The Chinese Chuck Hayes was still jumping for rebounds even after some guy fell on his head and knocked his jaw. Nothing could deter Alex. In the end, we lost the game. The drum corps were still playing their songs.

The three of us sat around for a few minutes and caught our breaths. By the time it was about 3PM, it was time to go. The drum corps stayed.

____________

I went home. A pair of my old college buddies were coming to town. Sam Park and Kevin Lee. I remember back when I first started balling with those two guys. Sam was a typical goofy tall Asian guy with questionable shot selection. Kevin was like Muggsy Bogues without the bulk. Now that they've hit the prime of their street ball careers, they've blossomed and reached their potential. Sam is an Asian man's Sam Perkins, aka Big Smooth. (Gotta love the sweet outside-shooting big man.) Kevin is the self-proclaimed Kevin Johnson. (KJ is one of my all-time favorite players. Sacramento is lucky to have him for mayor just like California is lucky to have Arnold as Governator.)

Those two guys met at my house around 3:30 or so. Before we went back to Lowell, I ate a couple handfuls of walnuts. All I'd eaten that day was a bowl of Cheerios around 11AM in between MvC2 matches. And it wasn't a big bowl because I can't run around with milk and stuff joshing around in my stomach. It's too discomforting. I have no idea if walnuts are actually good providers of energy or nutrients, but I really had nothing else to eat at that moment, so I scarfed 'em down. The walnuts were close at hand.

We got back to Lowell around 4. The Lowell JROTC Drum Corps were gone. The skinny Stan Van Jeremy guy just finished his last game and I saw him leave. My other buddy Justin was about to start a game. His team only needed one more player, though, so Sam, Kevin, and I cast lots to determine who would play. Sam was the chosen one. Actually, we didn't cast lots. I don't even know what that means. It just sounds Biblical and I wanted to sound spiritual.

Kevin and I hung around and watched them play. I think Justin had already played a couple games by then, so he might have been a bit tired. He's a good player with solid fundamentals and a high basketball IQ. Like me, he also disdains a lot of things that are prevalent in today's game. For example, hop steps, hesitation dribbles/palming violations, AND 1 bullcrap like that... I don't like that stuff. I don't know where the hopstep came from but some guys who hopstep don't really hop. They just jump. I hate that. And half the time when people (streetballers and pros) do hesitation moves, they carry the ball. Can't stand that! Go watch film of Bob Cousy. You won't see him do a palming violation. Jerry West didn't have to carry the ball. It's whack!

Anyway, for most of Sam and Justin's game, Kevin and I just stood off to the side and commentated on the game. We didn't know the names of any of the other players, so we would just refer to them by the color of their shirts. He was the play-by-play and I was the color man. I discovered it's pretty tough to commentate intelligently when you don't know anything at all about the people you're analyzing. Most of our comments were dumb and pointless. Now I wish we'd recorded them.

During the game, Sam had one awesome block. That man's got some fire in him. A player tried to pull up for a midrange jumpshot and Sam just swatted that crap into the next court. It was monstrously fierce. I never saw Sam play like that when we were in Davis. It was one of those blocks that would have been an awesome, awesome, AWESOME moment for Sam to do the Dikembe Finger Wag. Unfortunately, doing the Dikembe Finger Wag to some stranger is a good way to start a fight, so I guess that's why Sam didn't do it. Later in the game, he had another nice block, but instead of recovering the ball (it was right in front of him) he admired his handiwork and the guy put it back in.

It was a really long game. It was one of those games where the guys playing must have been so tired that at the end, nobody could score. It was ugly and sloppy. At one point, one of the players approached Kevin and me. We thought he must have heard our insulting commentating, but he just apologized that the game was taking forever. Maybe we were just jerks. Right toward the end there, Justin pulled up lame with a cramp and had to leave the game. I subbed in for him. By this time, I was ice cold because it been a couple hours since the last game I played. In a way, I had fresh legs, but these guys were way more invested in the outcome of the game.

I was like Daniel Ewing during that one game when the Clippers played the Suns in the playoffs. He came in ice cold at the end of regulation to guard Raja Bell. Bell ended up drilling a game-tying three-pointer right in Ewing's face. The same thing happened to me, except maybe not as humiliating because the moment wasn't captured on YouTube. Sam's team lost that game, possibly because I came into the game cold and my man hit the winning jumper a few seconds later. It was bad.

But no matter. Kevin and I still had next, so we picked up Sam, another Asian dude, and a white dude. Both of the guys who joined our team were pretty decent, although I think the white dude committed a palming violation every time he did a crossover (which was probably every other time he touched the ball). Whatever, though. He was on my team so I didn't really mind as much.

The team we played against had a massive height advantage, though. They had this one white guy who was probably something like 6'4 and could dunk. We couldn't really stop him; we could only hope to contain him. Most of the other players on the team were bigger than me, too, and most of them could shoot. It wasn't really a good matchup on paper because Sam was our biggest guy. That was one of those times where we just had to resort to a zone defense out of strategic logic. Even then, it was a really tough game.

We did have a couple things going for us, though. Number one, those guys didn't take us seriously. They probably looked at us, saw four small Asian guys and figured we would be pushovers. I always enjoy being underestimated because I feel it gives me a hidden advantage, however slight. Two, they were starting to get tired. They had just played a few consecutive games because they kept winning, but their fatigue was getting to be a factor.

As the game started, I think we played a solid game. We made good shots to stay competitive. The white guy on our team was good at scoring because no one ever called him out on his palming violations. I think I'll call him Palmer from now on. Palmer was an aggressive scorer but I actually didn't think he was a selfish player if only because he made a decent percentage of his field goal attempts. He loved slashing through traffic to get layups. Sometimes he kicked it out to the open man, too. I think I missed the first one or two open shots I needed to make, and Palmer started to worry that all his Asian teammates sucked. (I could see the fear in his eyes.) Luckily, on one possession he gave me one last chance on a catch-and-shoot turnaround off a slip screen and I swished the shot. I think that restored his confidence in the team. He fed me a couple more times throughout the game and I made some decent shots.

Sam, Kevin, and the other Asian dude all contributed. Sam had one or two blocks and changed a few shots. Kevin drilled some jumpers to keep us in it. The other Asian dude was quick and had hustle - he got us some rebounds and found ways to score really easy close buckets.

So, somehow, the Force was with us. We made it a real game. So what if the tall 6'4 white dude had a breakaway dunk on a fast break? Okay, I guess that is pretty demoralizing, but the score was close. We kept it just close enough to make things dramatic and interesting. And toward the end of the game, the other team started losing their composure. They lost their chemistry. They started to take selfish, bad shots where only two guys would touch the ball during their entire possession. They started to take and miss walk-up threes. The tall 6'4 dude stopped trying to dominate us in the paint and started falling in love with his jumpshot. (All right, his jumpshot loved him back and he made a lot of shots, but still. I told you we couldn't really stop him.)

And then... and then... Could it be? We clawed back, fought, got lucky on a fair share of plays, and what happened? Game point, tie game, baby! Win by two! We were still in it! You ever sit down to take a dump, only to realize that you forgot to put down the toilet seat? Not a good feeling, right? Well, you know the facial expression you make at that horrible moment of realization that your butt's no longer as clean as it's supposed to be, only you can't take a shower quite yet because you feel a bowel movement coming? Everyone on the other team had that face.

And then... and then... AND THEN... I had what was possibly the single greatest performance in the history of my streetball career. Top two at the very least. I think I scored something like 5 of our last 7 points in overtime.

Ever have that feeling when the Holy Spirit just takes over you, and you do some business for Jesus and then when it's all over, you look back in bewilderment and say to yourself, "Wow, I can't believe that happened the way it did. Way better than I ever dared dream. I can't believe God used me to do that!" That's what it was like for me at the end of that game.

Even now, I don't really know what happened. I just happened to make a couple of tough, but not impossible, shots in succession while we traded baskets. A twisting layup here, a contested jump shot there. Every time we were down by one, I managed to even things up. I started feeling good. My biorhythm was hot.

I think the moment I had this vague feeling something was different was this one play when I tried to beat my man off the dribble. I kind of got past him but he managed to poke the ball away. I chased after it before it got too loose and recovered it, with my back turned from the basket, at the free throw line, right elbow. Now, normally I would have reset the offense at that point, and just gathered myself. But some instinctive primal force I can't explain compelled me to force up what would normally be a horrible shot. Off-balance, on one leg, I looked up and saw a small window of an open look. As I turned to face the basket as I picked up the ball, I started falling backwards to my right. I shot the ball anyway. Drilled it in. Off-balance, turnaround fallaway jumper barely looking at the basket. I like to believe that shot demoralized the other team.

Justin and some other people were watching us play. Hearing the "ooohs" was a great feeling that I don't get to enjoy very often. My only regret is that there weren't any beautiful women watching. But I guess it's okay. I might have bricked more shots if I knew women were watching. Possibly. Maybe. Probably.

Anyway, we went back and forth a couple more times after that. I nailed a rhythm jumper off, I think, a Kevin screen that put us up by one. We got a defensive stop somehow. And on our final possession, I drove to the hoop. There were too many tall guys there, so I drove back out. Two of my teammates set some excellent screens for me (and this was all completely improvised) and suddenly, I had just dribbled in a complete circle through the paint, Steve Nash style. More importantly, I was suddenly and dramatically completely wide open coming back into the lane. The one guy who had a chance of stepping up and defending me had his back turned! I don't know if he was just locked in on his man or if he was just confused by my unconventional use of overdribbling, but he had no idea I was behind him. I banked in the easy runner and that was that.

To quote the inimitable Raul Julia as M. Bison in Street Fighter the Movie (the greatest action movie ever filmed, and also, not coincidentally, Jean-Claude Van Damme's finest hour), "Gaaaaaame... OVAAAAARRHH!!!!"

Winning that game felt great. Maybe eating those walnuts did the trick. I'm gonna eat more walnuts before playing ball in the future/ I only wish someone had YouTubed that game so I could relive my own glory until the end of time. I wonder, when we get to heaven, will God let us watch highlight reels of our earthly lives? (Probably not. Still, I hope I don't get smited for the thought. Or for typing that last sentence.)

We stayed for a couple more games. We lost the second but won the third. The team we played in both of those games had this old 50 year old Asian guy and a slender young Asian guy with fob spectacles and an Nuggets A.I. jersey. The fobby guy liked to call fouls and he dribbled too high. That's all I've got to say about him.

The old man, on the other hand, was a force not to be trifled with. (Don't you hate it when you end a sentence with a preposition? I'm too lazy to go back and reword it.) I don't know what the blazes was going on, but it wasn't like he was fast, athletic, strong, or quick. He just made ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot. Our other Asian guy was guarding him most of the game and I think he might have been going a little too easy on the old guy. But the old guy ended up doing a lot of damage to us and killed us in the first game he played against us.

In the rematch, we switched it up a little bit. The old guy was their leading scorer, but he had a low field goal percentage. Palmer and Sam kept racking up blocks on him. It was almost too easy. Still, he was their best player and kept them in it. Now I kinda know how pros in the late '80s felt whenever they had to play Kareem. Dude was so old and slow but we just weren't mean enough to complete take him out of the game. And he kept bailing himself out with bullcrap foul calls. In the end, though, three of his teammates were the equivalent of Jud Buechler in his rookie year. No help at all.

We beat those guys and left. Then we had some Fresca with our dinner. It's the drink of champions. (Except for Kevin, who claims to be allergic to "fake sugar" or so he says. Blasted heathen.)