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Michael Jordan, six-time NBA Champion–
"The game of basketball has been everything to me. My place of refuge, place I've always gone where I needed comfort and peace. It's been the site of intense pain and the most intense feelings of joy and satisfaction. It's a relationship that has evolved over time, given me the greatest respect and love for the game."
Author's Note-
Street basketball is a society of its own. Don't be fooled by the game's often loose and unorganized appearance. It doesn't matter that the participants are usually ununiformed, or at the bare bones of playing shirts vs. skins. I urge you to look closer with a more discerning eye. If you do, you'll discover that the game's inner-workings and social tenants are highly-structured. Because streetball is mostly played without referees or authority figures, it is the players themselves who govern the on-court action, as well as what happens on the sidelines. They hold complete domain over what goes on inside the painted lines of an asphalt court and chain link fences surrounding a ball yard. They establish their local constitution or "park rules" in various ways–sometimes through democratic consensus and other times through the singular force of will by a dominant player.
To thrive and survive in a streetball yard you need to develop and sharpen a wide array of skills. Many of those skills have nothing to do with ball-handling, rebounding and shooting. Instead, they are advanced societal skills. Your ability to communicate, negotiate, problem-solve and deescalate potential conflicts are tops among them. Almost every baller can confidently look back at their time on a court and point to something in their current life–a job, a relationship, an achievement–that they've gained through the skills honed while playing streetball. I proudly include myself among those ballers.
Of course, my story is really our story. That's because streetballers very much enjoy a shared experience. It also means that the greatest ballers to ever walk onto the blacktop–legends with tags such as Dr. J, Black Mamba, Helicopter, Hawk, The Goat, Destroyer, Hot Sauce, Bone Collector, The Professor and Big Dipper–to some extent, have all traveled paths similar to you and I.
At our collective story's conclusion, we'll learn about the lives of some of these legends. We'll also look at some of the famed ball yards, films, literature, fashion, commerce and language spawned by streetball culture. And, of course, we'll continue to examine how streetball enhances the skills you'll need to succeed at life.
So the next time someone scowls at you and asks, "Are you going to waste your time again playing ball today?"
Your uplifting reply can be, "Waste my time? No. I'm about to participate in and become part of a complex society of ever-shifting tribes (teams) while I sharpen a wide array of skills to enhance my future."
Prologue:
I fell in love with the game at 16. Not with watching it on TV or the desire to be seen wearing a numbered jersey with my name arching across the back shoulders. I'm talking about the actual game. Becoming part of the rhythm and flow of ten players searching for their place in something that lives and breathes. Something that strives to move with one mind. One goal. One passion. To be a member of the winning squad and stay on the court, sending the losers to the end of a long line of fresh opponents waiting for next game.
Other than those players waiting to get onto the court, there was no crowd. No spectators. Only the occasional passerby who'd put down their grocery bags for a moment to stare at the intense conflict on the other side of a chain-link fence. The lack of cheers and adulation didn't matter, though. It was never the motivation. Streetball is strictly fueled by pride and desire. And those undocumented battles were mostly contested with the same ferocity as the NBA Finals.
When the game seduced me, LeBron James hadn't been born yet, Kobe Bryant was still in diapers, and nobody wanted to be like Mike because Michael Jordan was about to be cut from his high school's varsity basketball team, and sent to the JV squad.
There was never a realistic thought of becoming a pro, or even being offered a college scholarship. The rock rarely bounces that way for streetballers. Instead, we play out of an overwhelming need to express ourselves and to compete against anyone with the guts to enter the park. Those who don't understand us see this passion as a dead-end, a waste of time and energy without a tangible payoff. Our critics mistakenly value the perceived destination over the enlightening journey.
Streetballers are always searching for their Nirvana–a streetball paradise where the competition and commitment to the game reflects our own. I found mine at a place called the Proving Ground during the summer I graduated high school.
The Proving Ground was a ball yard where teens knocked heads against grown men– mostly cops, firemen, construction and sanitation workers who gladly leveraged their considerable strength and weight against you. There were no simple fouls in this particular version of streetball, just hits delivered so hard that they resembled felonies.
If you made a sweet jumper inside the gates of the Proving Ground, you didn't dare smile or celebrate too loudly. If you did, someone was coming to knock you down. But if you canned a second shot in a row, you might as well celebrate. Because opposing players were going to physically punish you anyway. The park's culture resembled that of the Roman Coliseum as much as it did Madison Square Garden. And despite the bone-jarring nature of its overly-competitive contests, the basketball played there was nothing but pure.
The Proving Ground was a difficult place to cultivate friendships and an easy place to make enemies, at least until new sides were chosen at the end of every game. But if you could earn the respect of the players there, you could hold your head up high and walk with confidence anywhere.
This is the story of my summer-long initiation at the Proving Ground. It is truly a streetball crucible of a teen who wanted more than anything else in the world to earn his stripes, staking his claim as a legitimate streetballer. Only what I didn't understand at the time was that this experience would deliver to me a set of skills that enhanced my life far beyond the boundaries of a basketball court.
Richard "Pee Wee" Kirkland, streetball icon–
"I wanted somebody pushing me. I wanted to have you try to take my heart. I wanted to test my chest against your chest...If you don't know what it is to leave a basketball court crying. If you don't know what it is to leave a basketball court bleeding. Then you don't really understand basketball."
Chapter One: Leaving the Comfort Zone
You begin by playing against your friends. They're kids from your immediate neighborhood. Kids who truly believe they have a love for the game. Over time, however, you realize that you're different. Your team almost always wins. And when it comes time to choose up sides, you're usually picked first.
Soon you find yourself alone on a court, shooting baskets long after the sun goes down. You're playing on the one bent rim in the park because it's the only hoop illuminated by a streetlight. Or maybe you've talked a relative into bringing their car up to the fence and turning on the headlights. You're hungry for a game. But your friends are all off doing something else. That's when you realize you're ready for the next step. You need to leave the comfort zone of your neighborhood yard and test yourself against better players.
For me, that came about during the spring of my senior year in high school. It meant leaving the hoops nestled beneath the Triborough Bridge (now renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in Queens, New York. They were courts shielded from the harsh elements of the world by the immense six-lane roadway approximately 60 feet overhead.
Still uncertain of myself, I took a lateral sidestep, four blocks west to a second section of courts under the bridge. Those courts drew players from other neighborhoods and housing developments. The rising roadway was probably 150 feet overhead there, high enough to allow in the slashing winds and rain.
I didn't have any siblings or a best friend to use as a sounding-board, to hear feedback on my plans. There wasn't a girl I'd dated more than two or three times. Most streetballers are loners. It comes with the territory, the solo hours of practice invested in polishing your game.
My parents both worked, living paycheck-to-paycheck, while never owning a house or a car. They really hadn't succeeded at anything in life, except being great people. Their biggest claim to fame had been raising me, a B- student who never mouthed-off to his teachers. Only I desperately wanted something more. And I found it in the feeling of a basketball balanced on my fingertips.
"You're just like your old man," Dad told me. "I played basketball in the street all the time. I was crazy for the game."
I'd nod my head in response and smile, just to make him feel good. But deep down, I knew his love affair with the game hadn't burned anywhere as fiery as mine. I could tell by the coolness in his stories and the way he held the ball in his hands, instead of cradling it.
As a streetballer, I could pass and shoot the rock with some touch. More importantly, I played defense with an immense chip on my shoulder, taking every point scored against me as a personal insult.
My skills stood up to the new surroundings and I quickly bonded with four other players: Angelo, Monk, Hot Rod Rodriguez and Jumbo. It was easy to see that we shared the same intense passion to play. Together, we became a makeshift team ready to travel to any yard in the five boroughs to stamp ourselves as recognized New York City streetballers.
Like me, Angelo and Monk were high school seniors. Angelo was the sharpest jump-shooter I'd ever seen, although he didn't look anything like a basketball player. He was 6-foot even, with a frame that was round and soft. He was the real-life Woody Harrelson character (Billy Hoyle) from White Men Can't Jump a decade before that movie was ever made. Angelo had learned to shoot the rock by practicing night and day in his backyard, fine-tuning a high-arching jumper over his mother's clothesline. His house was a half-mile from the courts. After every game, he'd phone home to make sure his Mom had a meal ready for him. His conversation with her, mostly in Greek, would be punctuated by a handful of words I understood.
"Ma...pork chops...French fries," he'd emphasize, interrupting the flow of her native tongue.
Monk was a stone-cold preppy. He only wore the newest kicks and changed the laces every week to keep them spotless. His shirt was always tucked into his shorts, even if he had to stop playing mid-game to fix it. He was tall and lanky. For a nice guy, Monk was amazingly annoying, often pointing out everyone else's faults. And though other players were jealous of Monk's ideal basketball body, they mostly viewed him as someone who'd never worked hard enough to get the most out of it.
Hot Rod Rodriguez was a few years older. He'd done a hitch in the army and had a job on the nightshift as a doorman at a swanky Manhattan apartment building. He stood 5 foot 9 inches tall, built like a short-armed fire hydrant. Hot Rod couldn't shoot, dribble or pass. What he could do, though, was station himself directly in front of you and play defense. He'd somehow injured his right wrist in the military and couldn't make a normal layup without turning into an odd-angled adventure.
I started calling Hot Rod "Fifty-Fifty," because those were the realistic odds of him sinking a breakaway layup.
Jumbo gave our quintet size, a presence beneath the boards and in the paint. He was 6 foot 2 and a good 35 to 40 pounds overweight. That didn't stop him from be amazingly agile and moving like a chunky ballerina with octopus arms. Jumbo had a full-time job reading electric meters for Con Edison. Every day, he'd read the minimum number of meters on his route before marking everyone else N/A (not available). Then Jumbo would ditch his blue Con Edison work shirt and meet us at the courts. Equally as important, Jumbo had a car–a brown two-door economy model. It was a four-seater in which the five of us jammed inside to barnstorm the city's b-ball yards. Jumbo named her "Brown Betty" after his favorite desert of apples baked with brown sugar. Being our thinnest member, I routinely rode the hump in the middle of her backseat.
"Unless somebody goes on a diet or I decide to leave Monk stranded in some park, that's your official spot, your half-seat" Jumbo needled me.
My streetball game was in its infancy. At 6-foot, 165 pounds, I shied away from physical contact, using my speed to find open jumpers. My Pops was left-handed, so I'd emulated him. As a natural righty, I'd become almost ambidextrous and could shoot the ball with both hands.
Not long after our team's birth I earned a nickname. While playing shirtless on a sunny June day, somebody's unleashed Rottweiler grabbed my t-shirt in its saliva-soaked mouth and refused to give it back. That's when Angelo gave me the tag "Pets." Whenever we went into the store across the street from the courts for chips and drinks, the rest of the guys would point at the sign in the window that read: NO PETS ALLOWED.
We were hardly an intimidating looking crew. But as a streetball squad, we knew each other's moves–strengths and weaknesses– allowing us to play well over our athletic ceilings. We came away with surprising victories in hugely competitive yards such as Central Park and Dyckman Park.
At Manhattan Beach (located in Brooklyn), we held the court for almost two hours, winning several games in a row. The locals were completely pissed and put together a team of goons to physically beat us into the asphalt. Jumbo exchanged a series of vicious elbows with their biggest threat, who became even angrier at him daring to fight back.
"If you can't take it, don't dish it out!" Jumbo barked.
That's when the guy tightly gripped the rock between his huge paws. From maybe 10 feet away, he fired it overhand at Jumbo, who caught it cleanly in his hands as if he were King of the Dodgeball Court. In response, Jumbo punted the ball over the fence and onto the sandy beach bouncing toward the ocean.
A wild fight broke out between us and what seemed like every player we'd defeated that afternoon. I ducked a few phantom punches and heard Monk's voice from behind me shouting, "Cooler heads, Guys! Cooler heads!"
That melee probably lasted for less than a minute, before three times our number chased us out of the park and across the boulevard to where Brown Betty was parked. We jumped inside her in record-time and then sped away with a small mob chasing us down the street.
No one was hurt. All the way home, we laughed and bragged about our performance the way a tight-knit army platoon might after surviving an ambush. It was a great streetball experience. Something that would ultimately serve us well. Though we had no idea at the time, over the course of the next few Saturdays, we'd take the first steps down a brutal gauntlet. One that would offer us the opportunity to raise our streetball reputation to another level.
LeBron James, Akron, Ohio native and three-time NBA Champion, who as a youngster fought to overcome his harsh inner-city environment.
"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough. They will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. They will tell you no. A thousand times no. Until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no. Quite firmly and very quickly. And you will tell them yes."
CHAPTER TWO: Into the Fire
The principal called my name and I walked across the stage to receive my high school diploma. After the ceremony, in the back of the auditorium, my Grandma asked if I had any plans for the summer.
I knew better than to tell her that I was focused on playing ball. She'd already twice mentioned that a similar-aged cousin of mine was going to Europe for a few weeks. But the only traveling I had a passion for was to visit as many streetball yards as possible over the next two months.
"My uncle on my Mom's side owns a gas station," I answered her, just to fill space. "I've been getting a few hours of work there, on-and-off."
Dad gave me a long sideways glance. He knew they'd stripped my hours at the station down to nothing because I'd sent three cars on their way without reattaching their gas caps one Saturday afternoon. My uncle claimed it was because I had my mind on something else–being at the b-ball courts.
"I just want him to stay out of trouble before he starts college in September," added Dad. "That simple."
"Our son doesn't get into trouble," Mom defended me. "Just into fights at basketball."
I'd actually never thrown a punch at anyone who hadn't started with me first. On the flip side of that–lots of players took offense at how hard I competed against them. They took my style of harassing defense personally, and probably felt justified in picking their hands up to me.
Mom had me pegged right, though.
I was the kind of kid you wanted to find your lost wallet on the street. I'd read your ID, get your address and bring that wallet straight back with the money still inside. But if I ever met you on the court, I'd be hell-bent to pick your pocket of the basketball and steal your pride.
On the Saturday before the Fourth of July, it was 97 degrees with a sky-rocketing humidity. Just being outside was like standing in the shower, with salty beads of sweat stinging at my eyes.
The five of us piled into Jumbo's car and drove off in search of run. There was no air conditioning in the Brown Betty. Monk hung his head out of the back window in the breeze, like a well-groomed dog. We drove from yard-to-yard around the city, looking for a game. But every deep well of basketball had seemingly dried up for the day in the intense heat. We only encountered small kids, inferior players or dudes who didn't want to step out of the cool shade to compete.
"We understand. You don't want to get your butts whipped," Hot Rod told some guys in one yard.
Even that slap-in-the-face challenge didn't deliver us a game.
After chipping in for gas, Angelo, Monk and I had less than two bucks in our combined pockets. We pooled our money together, and Angelo decided he'd be the one to go into the nearest deli alone.
He came out carrying a two-liter bottle of root beer.
"That bottle's not sweating," I said. "Is it warm?"
"I don't like it too cold. It bothers my teeth," answered Angelo, who demanded to drink his entire share first before passing the bottle to anyone else.
"You can finish it," I told Monk. "I don't want any warm backwash."
By 11:30 AM, Jumbo had enough of driving. He was ready to drop us off beneath the Triborough Bridge. I was a firm holdout, though, still looking to satisfy my basketball jones.
"I know one last place. Maybe fifteen blocks north of here. It's a yard next to the Triborough Bus Company's big garage," I said. "My Dad used to take me there when I was a kid. I think it's got three full courts laid out side-by-side."
Dad had taken me there for my eighth birthday to shoot hoops. We'd played together for a while before five guys on the next court cajoled him into joining them for three-on-three. That left me alone with a ball in my hands, fighting back the tears. Now I couldn't blame him for wanting to compete. But back then, I didn't understand it.
"I've played there in the past," said Hot Rod. "It's got kiddie sprinklers too."
"Okay, that sold me," said Jumbo, with the steering wheel turning north like a compass needle. "But if there's no game, I'm going under those sprinklers to cool off. Doesn't matter if it's filled with five-year-olds. I'm going in."
As we pulled up to the place, the Department of Parks sign on the fence read: WOODTREE PLAYGROUND. Beneath that, scratched into the sign, was a grouping of uneven letters that spelled out–PROVING GROUND.
Slipping through a huge hole in the chain-link fence, we saw close to 20 players at the far end of the yard, gathered around wooden benches and several ice coolers. At that moment, in the desert-like heat, the yard seemed to hover somewhere between a mirage and a streetball oasis. Angelo immediately began to bounce the ball in his hand to announce our arrival.
Most of those players, a mixture of teens and adults, picked their heads up to see. But not a single one of them acknowledged our presence. They just stay glued to those benches, glistening with sweat, coldly ignoring us and looking tough as nails.
We began to warm up–stretching, jumping, passing around the rock and knocking down jumpers. Still, there was nothing from those guys.
Finally, Hot Rod approached them. Only he completely abandoned that challenging tone he'd used earlier in the day. And there wasn't a doubt in my mind that these dudes would have pounded us if he hadn't.
"You guys interested in going full court? We've got our five," he said. "You want to put out a team?"
Their eyes seemed to turn toward a few of their key players. Without a verbal response, one of them stood up from the bench and demonstratively shook his head before leaving the yard.
We'd already endured a three-hour odyssey around the scorched city in search of run. A shake of somebody's head wasn't about to stop us. We kept shooting the ball on that court, laying down our best moves and hoping to entice a game.
Over the next 15 minutes, that crowd of players slowly shrunk in number until only one remained. He was probably in his mid-30s, standing 5 foot 10, and weighing approximately 260 pounds of chiseled muscle. His softer face was framed by a curly black beard. He planted his toes at the edge of the court watching us with a bottle of beer in his hand. In my mind, I imagined him suddenly lowering his head like a rhino and charging through the concrete handball walls there for fun.
"You want to play three-on-three," Jumbo asked him.
"Nah, my muscles are stiff already from sitting. I don't want to strain anything," he replied. "We've been playing all morning."
The rock bounced off the rim directly to him. He put his beer down on the hot asphalt and picked the ball up over his head with two hands. Then he shotput it toward the basket, missing the iron hoop and nearly breaking the backboard.
The five of us might have been thinking it, but no one had the courage to shout, "Brick!"
"We're here every Saturday," he said. "If you guys are looking for a game, show up next week at nine o'clock sharp. But I'll warn you, it's going to be rough. We don't give strangers a free pass. It's just the opposite. You need to prove you can stand up here. Anyway, I'm Reggie."
By the time we finished introducing ourselves, Big Reggie was already headed for the gate, carrying a huge cooler in his arms. He put it into the trunk of a yellow Cadillac convertible. Then he climbed into the driver's seat and started up the engine.
Before he drove off, Reggie hollered, "Don't hurt yourselves. Save that for next week."
We all stopped playing and just looked at each other. There was no way we weren't going to be back here the following Saturday. Only we knew better than to walk in at 9 AM and be behind their regulars, stuck on the sidelines. So we made a pact to be standing on that same court by 8:15 and to have our five ready to rock and roll.
For almost another half-hour, we shot the ball on both rims, trying to get the feel of that full court. When we'd finished, every one of us hit the sprinklers. And Jumbo, true to his word, waded way out into the middle of the shallow pool like a baby elephant, splashing and making waves for all the little kids there.
Self-reflection: Interdependence
There's a term in the science of sociology (the study of human society) called "interdependence." And it's so important you can't have a society without it. Interdependence is when two or more people are dependent on each other to achieve the things they desire. It's easy to see how teammates are interdependent, working for the same goals. But it goes well beyond that. In streetball, you can't test yourself without finding a willing and suitable opponent, someone whose commitment to the game mirrors your own. That's why my teammates and I wanted to play against the very best competition. In turn, our opponents were equally dependent on us to achieve their goals. That actually made our opposing groups interdependent upon each other, creating the basis of a larger streetball society. To the casual observer it probably looked like two teams competing on the court, and nothing more. But we were actually opening the door to participating in a complex social structure, the blending of two distinctly different tribes in an effort to satisfy the needs of each. Hence, streetballers embrace the idea of competition, a vital quality needed to advance in life.
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