The Sunday Pick Up
A black eye is not a great look for me.
The elbow came down on my cheek like a meteor strikes Jupiter, at least it felt that way. I’m 5 foot nothing with a vertical leap no better than an aging cricket and thought I could outrebound a 6 foot something who had boxed me out of the lane. I could not. My cheek swelled quickly and my jaw vibrated and twitched in excruciating, albeit perfect rhythm.
To steal a line from a good friend: “Are you a dummy?”
I remember telling myself at Bryant tryouts 24 some years ago that I could make the basketball roster if I could just grab more rebounds than any of the other players. I was sure a 5 foot 5 guard outrebounding the scholarship offered big guys would get attention. I made the final 15 cut, but ultimately didn’t play well enough and settled for a spot on the low contact tennis team. But here I am, on my way to 43, and I’m still trying to play amongst the trees.
I cupped the left side of my face and slunked off the court. “You alright man?” Paul said, probably checking his elbow for cheek flesh. “Need a sub – I got you,” Kevin said bouncing up from the sideline, giving a pat on my back. There were no ice bags here so I jammed my face left-side down onto the bubbler, letting the water envelope my burning face. Funny how when there’s pain, check that–anguish–you care little about touching public services so carelessly. The game ended about 3 minutes later at half past 8 on this Sunday morning, the dew still glistening outside, the pancakes still bubbling up in houses around town.
Scott, who only an hour earlier had admitted he was a bit nervous about playing, told me to take care of the eye as we walked outside – no doubt thankful he wasn’t the one who got decked in his first game back.
It’s funny how even at 40- or 50-something a grown man with a family, mortgage and career can walk into this gym with the fear of a 5 year old taking his first steps into kindergarten.
It’s just old man basketball, right?
Not at all. Not these games. Not this group.
Guys mosey into this mahogany gym before the paper guy even flings the Sunday comics onto your front stoop. The dark wood beams here are striking, running along an A frame ceiling giving the gym the feel of a 1950s Hickory Huskers field house. The players carry small duffle bags with throwback new balance sneakers and two jerseys: one white, one dark. Sunday ball is not a shirts and skins game like you might think. There’s a modest level of embarrassment here even though no one would admit it. It’s one thing to show off how bad you are from 15 feet, but quite another to show off the belly you have let go as you fill the lane on a break. Jiggling could be distracting and induce further injury. And, heck, getting guys to change from white to dark shirts after the first game is harder than peeling a Made-in-China sticker off the kid’s Christmas toys.
“It’s like your shirts are stuck on with you guys,” Steve laments, as he tries to balance teams when 7 of the 10 guys on the court are wearing white jerseys.
By the looks of it, these games feature a lot of bald, bulky and banged up middle age guys : 4 of the guys wear knee braces, two or three have goggles, one has a kind of arm band that looks more like a downey pillow, at least six have massage gear to keep their calves from tightening, and there’s one guy who has athletic tape over pretty much every possible part of his skin.
In between games guys talk about work and kids and usually youth sports or last night’s ballgame, and if you listen carefully some of us talk about a leg cramp we’ve been having or this weird abdominal pain or headache.
But once the games begin, this is no medical unit, slow it down half court, no defense, 3-point contest. This is a first 10 in the gym full-court war, with down and dirty man to man defense, pick and rolls, dribble screens, post up pivots, and outlets to a break. “Sh–,” says John after getting caught up on a screen leaving his guy open for a game ending layup.
There’s very little arguing, in fact the only argument last week was over whether the offensive team should retain possession after tipping the ball past half court on a strange possession change. A google quickly settled it.
These players, despite what you’d think, are not intramural hall of famers whose claim to fame is that College Spring Weekend Sigma Fi 3 on 3 foul shooting championship where you had to wash back a grape crush shooter before every shot. No, these are ballers, a mix of D1 and D2 throwbacks, who played in an era of motion offense and bank shots and backdoor cuts you just know are coming but still can’t catch.
3’s count big in these short games to 15 and they often hinge on fighting over a moving screen from a wide 6 foot 3 forward or calling a switch before the screen even happens. “Get on him, switch! Kevin yells. “Screen coming left! Left! Watch the 3!…Swish…Damn it!”
No one calls out a guy, but there are jabs. I filled Steve’s spot after a muscle cramp a couple weeks back. When I entered, his team was up 11 to 2 but minutes later it was 13 all. “You guys have gone downhill since Cote took my spot,” he said, gently noting how we were on the verge of blowing one. I hit a 3-foot fall away after an offensive board to diffuse further humiliation.
The players are educated and entertaining. At one point two Sundays ago Steve tried to rip the ball from Joe, almost tackling him to the ground, the way they likely would have 20 years ago. The uniforms and significance may have changed, but the game itself, the rivalries have not. Mishon and I trashtalk our way up and down the court, the way Larry Bird and Bill Laimbeer would have, neither of us meaning any of it and neither of us capable of backing it up. “You can’t make that shot – go ahead, it will be a brick,” I said. Mishon smiles, fakes the corner jumper, then kicks it back out to a teammate because he knows his last 3 shots were ugly.
It’s in these moments that we acknowledge our limitations because we don’t need to be heroes – we just want to play. We smile, hunched over between games, breathing heavy but usually willing to go one more.
Players don’t necessarily fit the stereotype of an old man basketball player, but there are patterns that emerge:
There’s the “I’m sorry guy” who invariably takes 17 footers that never hit rim, or the “My bad guy” whose entry passes hit the guy in the groin rather than the hands. There’s “Full court guy” who takes every board and screams up the court at warp speed, always veering right near the hoop before throwing up a brick. There’s the “I can only go right guy” who, well you guessed it – can only go right.
There’s the “Anderson Hunt guy” who has missed a few weeks so he sucks wind and walks back on D or basket hangs as the former UNLV star used to.
There’s also “Long pass guy” who loves to push the ball through the air and always has a head up the way young point guards today rarely do. And there’s “Fall away guy” who has a knack for hitting a 5-footer to end a game using the glass, the way kids today don’t.
There’s no hot dogging or over dribbling. The guys play the game as it was intended. The only difference is this is not prime time on ESPN in front of millions, it’s the wake up game without an audience.
For every turnover there’s a POD, a tipped pass and steal, an offensive board put-back, a no-look give and go and, if you’re watching closely, an occasional Sherm Douglas to Rony Seikaly alley-oop lay-in that ESPN might even consider Top 10 worthy.
Okay, that’s a stretch, but I got to say that an “Old Man Basketball” Network might not be a totally horrible idea. It’s March Madness on muscle relaxants. Think of a reality TV comedy version of Mad Men and White Shadow. Could call it Hoops & Hopalongs or Back Pain & Backdoor Cuts or As The World Turnsover?
Episodes could have a bit of Glengarry Glennross and Gordon Gekko Wall Street feel to them in between games as the players talk business and trade proposals. There would be no need for a script or actual actors because, let’s be honest, these guys can play the part of a middle age not quite as good as we used to be basketball player as well as any actor could. Producers could use witty, yet subtle dialog to address social issues like, “That’s right! You can’t come into my country!” Mark would say after swatting Jerry’s 15 footer from the elbow. They would debate immigration reform during the next dead ball.
The reality, of course, is that these guys aren’t getting up on Sundays to debate anything. They already know who they are by now. We already know. The game is really just a way to temper the zillions of things going on in our head and in our life, the college payments, the project deadlines, nana’s memory loss, the unpainted deck. That’s why, black eye and swollen face and all, I will be back next Sunday. When the email comes over asking ‘who’s in?’ there’s really only one answer I can give.