my hoops playing days

[Half Smoke]

Smoke-what I think is a funny story. I was a very good all around athlete. Baseball and hockey were my best and I played on a semi-pro team in hockey. Basketball was probably my worst as I am short and was heavy back in college.
Anyway, in college, I used to go to our facility several days a week to shoot around or get into a half court pick up game. There was one court reserved for the real players where they played a full court game. Players included Lonnie Perrin who played pro football, Rich Nye who pitched for the cubs, and other present and former athletes from hoops or other sports. Big guys and real players.
So I'm shooting by myself and they call me over and ask me to play as they were short 1 guy. I said I can't play with you guys--I suck. They said just do what you can we need a guy. My hoops skills were pretty much limited to ballhandling and defense, and there was no way I could defend against guys that tall anyway as I was 5 foot 7.
We are playing a while and I'm just bringing the ball up court and passing it off to a real player. Just kind of staying out of the way. Then we miss a shot. Opponent, who is the then center on the college hoops team, rebounds and is coming back the other way. He was 6-6, 280 at that time. As he gets up a head of speed, I have the brilliant idea to plant myself and take a charge. Now of course, there are no refs so who is going to call the charge. He keeps coming and knocks me off my feet and a good 10 feet through the air. Everyone laughing uncontrollably as I am lying there half dead.

Brilliant!!!!

that's great stuff - I had so much fun on the playgrounds - much more than in organized ball

we used to give guys nicknames - one guy we called Superstar - he played like he thought he was truly great - shot every time - gave a lot of body motion while he was dribbling - he didn't suck but he was nowhere near as good as he thought he was

lots of dudes we said about "he thinks he's better than he really is"

there were some great playground players that washed out of organized ball for various reasons - had those rims a rockin' back when very few could dunk really good

one more story about myself - and after this one there's nothing really interesting left to tell - in h.s. before he took Georgetown to the national championship John Thompson coached St. Anthony's h.s. in DC - an awesome team - after the season Sport Magazine named them the #1 h.s. team in the country

we played them and they crushed us - I had to guard Johnathan Smith who later excelled at Georgetown - and I'll never forget - he took a jumper over me - I was crouched down defensively - and his feet were in my face

I had a layup and Donald Washington who later excelled at Georgetown and played in the ABA goaltended it - he pinned my shot to the board about 12.5 feet up there - when I saw it happen my mouth dropped open - I had never seen anybody go up that high before other than on TV - and even then it was only Wilt Chamberlain

I ended up with 11 - so I can actually say - I had double figures on a John Thompson team - memories, memories, memories


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