Wow, today was a change of pace. I got out twice today. Once to pick up some potting soil. And once to play some ball.
Over at Fayette St court, I got in a run with some of the kids from the hood. Games to 16 ran at a rate of about 1 per hour because shots were made at a rate of about 1 in 12.
Not to say that these ballers didn't know what they were about. In fact, the mestizo kid with a ponytail avidly coached his teammates on shot selection while firing his own long range airballs. And the homie curiously wearing three layers of long sleeves knew just how to free up his teammates by drawing the double, and occasional triple, team. And the friendly 300 lb. guy had a midrange shot that fell every time he took it. Too bad he more often opted for stiff, ill-timed chest passes to closely guarded teammates.
Tell you what, the thug wearing headphones enjoyed me guarding him. Whereas he hadn't scored in the previous game, he quickly buried two 30-footers on me. He did little else after that. His only other contribution today came during a smoke break between games when he said, "I told y'all this was bout to get segregated."
He was referring to the 3 white guys walking onto the court. One was Fake Euro Hip, one was Real Euro Stooge, and one was Edward, a normal dude. Euro Hip told me all three had played high school ball, but out here, man, he personally just couldn't go hard. "It gets ugly" when he goes hard and "people wouldn't like it." Apparently he'd been in an altercation or three and wasn't out to make a new memory today.
I guess. One possession he missed 3 straight bunnies. Then his man went on to score half his teams' points. I was happy when he picked up his white-frame, sepia-tint wayfarers and walked on home. Time to get back to going hard with real ballers.
No comments:
Post a Comment