My Thoughts on the Glory of Pick-Up Basketball

I am never so calm as during the moments just before the start of a pick-up basketball game. If I'm on defense, I either move to the natural match for my skills (almost always someone I've covered half a million times before) or I spread out to the perimeter and let my defender (that same guy) find me. If bad or uncertain match-ups are present I negotiate with my teammates or listen to the other team walk through their own negotiations. On the rare occasion someone new walks on the floor, I introduce myself and size up my competition in the friendliest manner possible. I'm not out to hurt anyone. I just want to play basketball.

Pick-up basketball has provided me with some of the most poetic, beautiful moments of my life. I am not exaggerating. When I lie in my bed at night, or daydream through a meeting, I'm not thinking of that girl who won the dance contest on television or running enrollment figures for next semester. I'm re-running this morning's fast break. I'm considering whether or not, had I dribbled another step, I could have bounced a pass into Doug for a layup. I thinking of whether or not Steve's hot streak on the baseline will extend to next Tuesday's game. I'm creating mental poetry from the interactions of a group of scruffy, mostly middled aged and out of shape men who show up at the YMCA early in the morning to play hoops.

My pick-up basketball devotion emerged early. In fourth and fifth grade I walked through all kinds of weather to hook up with friends at Oriole Park, back then a new and sanitized gym with a gleaming wood floor, for Saturday morning games. We were awful, half-court specialists in jeans and old shoes (I don't remember a locker room). Later in middle school we moved to Rosedale Park, a proper Chicago Park System building bathed in the smell of sweat and leather. Rosedale gym left approximately six inches breathing room on the court's perimeter so, if you weren't careful, you became well acquainted with the room's brick wall. At Rosedale we got a little better, more competitive, good enough to at least ride the bench on our Catholic grade school teams.

I spent most of high school smoking pot and having sex. Despite this window of non-sports activity, I can't complain.

I don't remember exactly when in college the gym's siren call returned. Northeastern Illinois University had a brand new athletic building, back in the early nineties, and some officials at NEIU were anxious for athletic success. The space was huge, four or five courts across, and open, at least in theory, to students. The scholarship athletes and their attendants tolerated the presence of a small group of gym rats as long as we stayed out of the way of official teams. We'd play Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after class or work from four to six or six-thirty. The rules were clear. Each game ended when a team hit 32 points counting by twos and threes. Call your own fouls. Don't be a pussy.

I made some good friends at the pick-up games. I mean, if you come three times a week for a year (and devotion is prized in pick-up hoops), you're bound to get to know people. I met Jimmy, an absolutely insane three point specialist who claimed to have starred in the Greek leagues. Jerry, a thin, muscular intellectual, and Jimmy's crossfire-esque sparring partner, was next. Mike, a friendly, lumbering center/guidance counselor completed our foursome. We'd pick up another player, set our five, and hit the floor. Chances are we knew our opponenents as well as they knew us. They (and we) knew Jimmy was relentless from the perimeter but an absolutely shitty defender. Jerry was lightning quick but worried, vocally, about Jimmy's defense. Mike wouldn't miss from six or seven feet out. I had no jumper but played the utility/rebound/assist role pretty well. Someday, in my mind, when I'm in the old folk's home, I will replay snapping passes to Jimmy in the corner for stray threes. I do it now in staff meetings and conversations with my wife. I haven't played at NEIU for eight years, and offensive sequences still unfold in my daydreams.

The Northeastern games were not faultless. Fights broke out more often than not. Smartass kids would sneak in the side doors and fuck up the culture. I heard, after I moved, that campus security got involved more every year. A pick-up game that can't police its own is bound to wither. Still...Joon, the tiny Asian with the killer baseline range (and Jimmy's sworn enemy), Jan, the quick-handed Mexican, Ron, the grizzled veteran with the questionable ethics, I miss you all.

I didn't find a decent Wisconsin game for about two years. I finally worked myself into Monday night YMCA games, loose, no-defense contests populated by a curious mix of teenagers, their fathers, and gym rats who rotated from floor to floor on any given evening. One of the rats asked if I wanted to play early in the morning, say, 6AM, with a group of older guys. Now, I usually showed up at work by about six, six-thirty, but I was sick of my job at that point, so the choice was easy. I played for an hour every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for about four years. The games were much more gentlemanly (pick-up basketball is the true gentleman's sport, by the way, not dumbass golf). The games ran to seven by ones. Everyone brought white and dark shirts for team distinction and politely rotated in and out if more than ten men were present. I loved these games. I was eventually asked to play for a couple of fine men's league teams, through my early morning contacts, but I loved pick-up and dreaded the men's league. Why did I need a ref and territorial/testosterone driven pissing to mess up my groove? Put a shirt purchased by a sponsoring bar on a group of guys and suddenly the game becomes deadly serious.

Again, these games weren't faultless. A couple of guys were psycho-competitive (a requirement at just about any gym) and started physical altercations. At the YMCA. At six in the goddamn morning. This particular pick-up culture, however, ejected bitchy players without much difficulty by freezing them out and glaring at the offenders during water breaks. Still, no game can last forever, and I believe the M-W-F 6AM group is on its last leg. In fact, it's the W-F group now. Monday's are a distant memory. Too many guys have moved out of state, had kids, etc., to support getting up that early only to find you've got three that day. There is nothing worse than showing up at the gym at 6AM and not having enough guys for a game.

I've transitioned to an even more gentlemanly group of guys who play at the same floor on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7AM. We 6AMers used to refer to the T/TH group as the "B Team". The guys aren't as good as the M/W/F group, but at least they show up. My jumper has improved, but I've learned to play closer to the basket and lean on my strengths. You learn a lot about yourself in pick-up basketball. You learn to either be the guy who sits out a game so no one else has to sit or become the guy who plays every minute of every game but looks like a prick. You learn where you are, emotionally, on any given day. If you're wired, upset, or depressed, your mood is going to leak into your play more likely than not. I've had exactly two altercations in all my years of pick-up. I probably could have predicted both based on my emotional state. You learn, hopefully, how to gauge whether or not the guy goading you is worth your time. You listen to your varied colleagues and take in their stories. That guy, that new guy with the baseball hat, is getting married next May. Donnie broke his hand playing tennis and won't be back for a couple months, at least that's what Tony heard. I saw Steve on his bike this weekend and he said the same thing. Rob's fishing in Oklahoma. In other words, you become part of the culture, mostly a male culture (although women are almost always welcome and respected on the court and admired as they walk past the gym windows on the way to the cardio room), for a couple of hours every week. How valuable is that?

My knees are starting to give (might write about that in the near future), but I know guys who are playing in their early fifties. I hope I last that long. Any game could be my last, I know, but I can count the games I regret on one hand, and I can feel the gym buzz the second I walk out the door in the dawn light and cross my yard on the way to my car. Even if I can't play, even if the doctors tell me my knee is never going to recover, I feel lucky. I've got years of games cataloged in my mind. No wonder I don't mind meetings.