Somebody Call Out the P(r)ick!

Today's edition of the Church of the Hardwood is dedicated to you, Mr. Kick-It-Back-Out-I'm-Open-For-Three:

You are a lame-o. You ruin basketball for a dozen people at a local YMCA. You make the world a dark and sinister place. You suck, you and all your kicking and screaming, prima donna, childish behavior. You are horrible. No one likes you and you don't care, you go on shouting instructions to everyone.

Ok, so you've got a decent shot. You hustle, rebound and play D on the other team's best player. That doesn't make your general crappiness acceptable. You are still the worst person on the court.

We know we're in trouble when you get the first in-bounds, launch an NBA three, miss it, and yell, "Fucking A. I shoulda hit that."

No, you should not have hit that. You should have passed that.

No, you should not even be on the court. You should be in therapy. You should be on Zoloft and Xanex and any other med that will modify YOUR HORRIBLE BEHAVIOR.

I didn't want to play with you today and even after we won the first game, I wanted us to lose. That's why I didn't hustle back on the break, why I didn't call the picks, why I half-heartedly put up a left hook. Because you are the biggest pain in the ass in the world.

Your game should be banished. If there were any justice in the world, you would never make another basket ever again and you would have to find another hobby. Perhaps knitting.

(For more context, see this site. Scroll down to "Coach on the Floor." )

He was that guy. What a dick.

11 Guys You'll Always Find...

Great video

If you've played pick-up ball in the last fifty years on planet Earth, you'll recognize these characters. You might even recognize yourself.

My favorite: Mr. Excuses.

Mr. Excuses: "It's just the war. I've got an uncle over there."

Other Guy: "You missed that layup because of the war?"

Classic.

Cisco Sighting

Berkeley, California. Not the kind of place you expect to see NBA players rolling up in blingy cars for a night on the town. Yet here was Francisco Elson, walking right by my table at a sort-of swanky, sort-of laid-back Chinese place. I was dumbstruck. What the hell was Cisco doing here? Wasn't he supposed to be in Seattle? And why was his lady companion carrying his San Antonio Spurs jersey? Sure, the Sonics are terrible, but his career in San Antonio wasn't exactly stellar.

In any case, I was star-struck. My companions, my wife and her parents, blew it off. Not huge NBA fans, these guys. I tried to get them interested: Here's an NBA player from the Netherlands who plays in Seattle carrying his San Antonio jersey to a restaurant in Berkeley. What the hey?! They shrugged. A waiter went over to the table and chatted with him and his two companions. When he came by, I grabbed his attention.

Who is that? I said, knowing full well who it was.

Franciso Elson, he said. He played at Cal.

Ok, mystery explained. But the rest of dinner I had to fight the urge to invite him to the local YMCA for some pick up ball. After all, I have guarded a 7'0 NBA big man. Once. But the Vanilla Thunder vs. Bryant Big Country Reeves will have to wait for another time.

Crisis Moment

I'm guarding a guy who looks like my mirror image: white six footer in his mid-thirties. A little bulk around the middle. But I can't hold him. He drains threes in my face. I get closer and he goes by me. The little twat. He's got these baby blue North Carolina shorts on. You know, the ones with the argyle pattern on the sides. So pretentious. For someone who takes pride in his defensive prowess, I'm a little down. If I can't hold a guy like this, maybe it's time to do something else... It's a basketball crisis moment on a sunny day in April in Berkeley.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's of basketball to discuss here. It's been a long road to get to this YMCA. Really, the road starts back in Houston about eight months ago. The Houston Downtown Y. There are rumors that Joel Osteen hoops it up there. I never saw him and I played my fair share of ball there.

Hoops at the Houston Y all started with my job at the city's alt weekly paper, where I was working as a sort-of staff writer. Ok, it was a glorified internship for a corporate newspaper--no reason to put lipstick on that pig. It was a miserable job, miserable people, and I was looking for a lunchtime game. The Houston Y has the right personality for a gritty pick up game. For starters, it smells like 50 years of old man sweat. You notice it when you first walk up the stairs to the front door.



Second, the gym is poorly lit, like a good dive bar. You can't really make out the faces of the guys you're playing against, nor would you want to. There's the Serbian Terror, Mr. T, Mr. Miyagi, a few 50-something wannabe coaches who alternately pout and scream.

Houston is big enough that two games are always running: there are the aging players who were legitimately good players in high school or even college, and then there's the game for old guys...