playing basketball

hes tall like 6-4 or so but seemd p slow and not that skilled - he was dressed as you might image a stroke would dress to play basketball

haaa

headband?

one time when the real world dc was going on a couple cast members showed up to my gym and ran full court and were embarrassingly bad. one guy kept falling over bc he was wearing sketchers or some shit. two camera dudes were running around trying to film the whole thing.

that is like . . . america

More 3-on-3 today. It's interesting to learn a sport almost from scratch -- I feel like I'm Johnny 5. Like today I kept having all these basic realizations, like "Oh, if I stare straight at the guy I'm passing to for too long, someone is going to read my pass," or "Hey, if I move this way, I draw my defender out of the way so my teammate can drive to the hoop." I started to feel more the sense of the three as a unit. I was still pretty bad but I had some clutch rebounds, a few layups and putbacks, and I made a difference on D although my man was pretty fast and hard to stay in front of. My in-game jumper is still complete garbage.

YMCA pickup ball can be kind of hilarious too. The first game I played was with a couple of maybe college-age guys and a few maybe 12-15 year old kids who kept calling me "sir." An old-timer with a good fancy hook shot jumped in later too. There was this one wiry as fuck kid who was probably 12 or 13 and was by far the sickest shooter out of any of us -- just putting up threes like nothing to the point that you couldn't take the pressure off. At another point I had to guard this little runt kid with basically no skills, and I pretty much took all the pressure off him but they still wouldn't pass to him.

Class 1: managed to run the court for the full 30-minute scrimmage. Pulled my neck. Ow.

Been playing occasional one-on-one. Managed to beat a so-so teen who was slightly shorter than me. Have figured out a few things, e.g. starting to get the hang of "planning" what to do when you dribble, also in one-on-one how to vary your attack to throw off your opponent. E.g. I managed to get a couple of good right-side drive layups, so when the kid caught on I pulled a simple spin move. When he caught onto the spin move I used a spin fake and went back the other way.

Today I played one-on-one with two different guys who were clearly miles better than me and it was no contest at all, but it was good practice I guess, at least for trying to stay in front of someone bigger and faster than me.

ice craem have you found that indians always go to the right?

btw question: one dude kept saying "watch the travel" -- I thought as long as I was dribbling it didn't matter how many steps I took or how much my feet shuffled, and I couldn't figure out what else I might have been doing wrong. Is this something that a lot of people are confused about?

you carrying?

I mean hard to say what is happening without seeing you play. but could be that you're cupping/carrying the ball too much. there are NBA carries used for misdirection & crossovers that everybody generally accepts, especially on the playground, and then there are the "I'm trying to protect the ball" carries that everybody calls.

oh yeah maybe I am unwittingly carrying

weekly clinic is kicking my ass

sort of getting a handle on screen aways and give and gos but most of the time it's just kind of like "DAH DO SOMETHING"

scary chinese girl kept yelling at me I'm like "u know this is a beginner class right?"

lmao

ice craem have you found that indians always go to the right?

― mookieproof, Tuesday, April 26, 2011 10:55 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

haha forlornly watched some children playing basketball through a chain link fence yesterday, they were noticeably worse than their american counterparts, prob much better at cricket tho

Can anyone give a link or recommend a book or something with a good basic explanation of positions? I don't really understand any of them except point guard.

positions aren't really important unless you're running a particular offensive set (or are playing zone defense), which you presumably aren't in pickup. but i'm sure there's stuff on youtube about hoop strategy.

yeah, it's more for my NBA knowledge actually -- like I just want to understand what guys mean when they say so-and-so is playing 3 or whatever.

in theory,

1 point guard
2 shooting guard
3 small forward
4 power forward
5 center

it's more fluid than positions in most other sports, tho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball_positions

you wanna have some big guys and you wanna have some small guys

incidentally all my life I have been really thick about running/executing any kind of play in any sport. It's like there's some category of intelligence -- the translating-guy-yelling-at-you-into-doing-physical-stuff intelligence, that I lack.

i could still run the offensive set we used against man-to-man defenses in high school 22 years ago

in pick up u dont really run plays anyway so w/e - i mean maybe a lil pick n roll if youre feeling ambitious

but turn towards the ball

ballers around here are so lame - how do i have to go to 4 parks to find a good game on a nice saturday afternoon? what are ballers doing besides playing basketball? idgi

i'm playing great right now too

what are ballers doing besides playing basketball?

hangin w/ randoms

lol

i'm spoiled at school when i can go to the gym any time any day and get a good run

move to nyc dawg

btw so amped to return to usa and try some dirk style one leg jumpers

move to nyc dawg

― ice cr?m, Thursday, May 26, 2011 12:32 AM (15 hours ago)

this is a pretty major reason why i will be living in a city, any city, once i finally graduate for real

btw so amped to return to usa and try some dirk style one leg jumpers

― ice cr?m, Thursday, May 26, 2011 12:33 AM (15 hours ago)

i've been fucking around with the slow-motion ballerina one-legged fallbacks in shootaround, tons of fun and surprisingly not terribly difficult! gets pretty tough past 17 feet tho

pick up culture in nyc is unsurpassable anywhere imo fwiw, just like so many games everywhere

like these are the neighborhoods which ive played basketball a bunch in: e village, chinatown, battery park city, ft greene - and thats just cause those were places i was near - when i was in sf for a couple months i had to like drive to find a game, boston is a lil better but still not up to nyc levels, basketball seems p non existent in colorado from what ive seen

So I started to find my game today -- totally destroyed this dude in one-on-one. Basically I'm good at maybe three things -- overall endurance (because I'm in pretty good shape), staying focused on defense, and short/mid-range jumpers (I've been drilling these about an hour a day for at least a month). The dude I played was a little fat and out of shape, though he was a good inside defender and had an ok shot. So I did two things -- I moved around a lot on both offense and defense early on to get him tired, and I kept backing him into the post like I was going to go inside and then stepping back for short jumpers (with some variety to avoid it becoming too predictable). I was hitting everything - it felt amazing. The dude was like "damn, you've got a jumper." Lol I guess so, I guess so.

nice1 dude!

Unfortunately not everyone is going to let me take as many open shots as this guy did. Need to develop some moves.

when i was in sf for a couple months i had to like drive to find a game

― ice cr?m, Monday, May 30, 2011 10:30 PM (3 days ago)

rong

I play about 3 times a week. I got in good with a couple medical students nearby and they have a gym on campus. I organize all the games, send out emails etc and now we have a consistent run of about 12-15 dudes. 6 of them played on some collegiate level and the rest of us can hang. I play pg, always look to pass first. My pride and joy is my soft left around the rim which I have been working on since 1989, and my 8-10 foot bank shot is gwap.

idk steve shasta there was a dece game on the panhandle besides that, was not a vibrant basketball scene ime, maybe youre a super ballin dude tho lol

too many wites maybe???

^^this is a major problem with being away from school

wbiw spottie

wbiw ?

I dunno what SB is either, everyone's getting SB'd around here and I have no clue whats happening.

Hey Sansky, next time you come to SF, let's run a quick game and I'll send your sad saggy ass back east where you can enjoy your rainbow color of wackassery. if I skunk you then you have to permanently change your ilx name to SuperBallin Shasta's Bitch lol.

SBS'sB

SB is suggest ban, ppl are usually joking when they say that - if 51 people actually SB you then you get banned from posting for 30 days

wbiw i just made up, it's a variant on wkiw (would kick it with) - would ball it with

who is sansky im confused, anyway i if you are referring to me i will be totally happy be lead on steve shastas tour of epic san franciscan street ball spots, might be out there in like august

Thanks for clarifying. If you come to PHX we can ball it up for real.