We Gotta Basketball Jones

Basketball Jones. I gotta basketball jones…
I need help, ladies and gentlemens
I need someone to stand beside me
I need, I need someone to set a pick for me at the free-throw line of life
– from “Basketball Jones” by Cheech & Chong (1973)

In 1985, I stumbled into a thrice-weekly pick-up basketball game with a core group of like-minded (i.e., crazy) individuals. Thirty-seven years later, some of us are still at it. Ranging in age from late-30s on up to mid-70s, members of our current crew share a few common characteristics:

• Our love of the game remains constant or increases despite our declining skills and quickness. (Our trash talk, however, is world class.)
• We may be old, but we’re slow. (I like to say, “I’m deceptively slow.”)
• We all accept the following truth: “However good any one of us might have once been, that’s gone and it ain’t ever comin’ back.”

It’s mostly guys, but we’ve had some great women players — including former D1 and D3 alums — who take no prisoners.  In the end, there is but one inviolate membership requirement for those who wish to join our number. The sanitized-for-your-protection version of it is: “No Jerks.”

Given our speed… or, lack thereof… we’re easy to follow. Sometimes — especially early in a given session — you may see occasional flashes of brilliance, suggesting that the “player” might, at one time, have possessed some magic.  (However, you will never confuse any of us with Magic of the Johnson variety.)

You will also hear and/or see some things said that you would probably never hear or see in any other basketball setting. Some examples:

1. Me: (After failing to catch up to a rolling ball heading out of bounds) “Damn! Twenty-five years ago I woulda had that ball.”
Player #2: “Ah, Mal, 25 years ago, I was there. And, No, you would not have had that ball.”

2. Player X: “My wife and I are heading out on a week’s vacation at our lake camp in northern Maine.”
Me: “Cool. When are you leaving?”
Player X: “That depends. If I don’t get hurt this week, we’re leaving Friday afternoon after we play ball. Otherwise, we’ll leave as soon as I’m injured.”
(Note: No one finds this line of reasoning odd.)

3. “Sam Jones!!!” (Yelled out after someone has just hit an outside bank shot.)
“Kareem!!!” (Someone has just hit a hook shot)
“Cooz!!!” (Someone has just executed a reasonable facsimile of a behind-the-back pass.)
Every player under 40: “Who’s Sam Jones?”

4. There was a stretch of several months during the Pandemic when the Bath YMCA was closed to any and all play. When I ran into one of our guys on the street, he dryly observed, “I don’t know why they don’t just let us play. Hey, it’s not like we ever get within six feet of each other on defense.”

5. A decade or so ago, we entered a team in the Brunswick Rec Men’s League. Our name? “Team Clang!” Q: Why? A: See t-shirt.

6. “I’m done.”
While injuries are common in all sports, in Geezer Basketball, we treat them like pets requiring perpetual nurturing. From Achilles tendinitis to plantar fasciitis to pulled calves or sore knees, we’ve all got our compulsive go-to remedies, however wacky they may be. We also have closets at home clogged with enough braces and straps to outfit a small hospital.  So, should one of us utter the above line, we: stop, wish him well as he hobbles off the court, invite a replacement, continue on with our game sure of two things: 1) He’ll be back; 2) It’s just a matter of time until we also say, “I’m done.”

7. Said in a pubescent squeaky voice: “Can I play?”
We’ve been at it long enough to have observed a Circle of Life phenomenon that begins when we’ve got an uneven number of players on the court and there’s a young kid shooting hoops off to the side while dreaming of joining our game. We let him in. He plays at a notch or two below our level.  A few years later, his voice is deeper and he’s hitting jumpers in our faces. A year or so later, he is schooling us.  At that point, we enter a phase of mutual agreement where he no longer plays with us.

Before signing off, I need to come clean with some full disclosure: We are not the oldest band of hoopsters in the Midcoast. That distinction belongs to this distinguished group of Bath YMCA ballers:

Most of them are in their 70s and 80s on up to a high of 89. As you see, they get after it just like us “younger” players! (Even if they sometimes forget to bring a ball.)

I’m always respectful and nice to this squad when I see them at the Y. In fact, I’ve already started networking in preparation for my own try-out with them somewhere not too far down the line.

Next!!! Onward, Malcolm