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So I joined a basketball league...

Cuda1447

Cuda1447

Lifer
I've been playing a bit of basketball lately with a couple of my friends. We decided to start a team and join a local league. Unfortunately no one scouted this league out before we joined and I feel we may be in over our heads...


First of all, I'm a white boy. I've never played organized basketball. I'm athletic, but stuck to soccer, wrestling, football, baseball and hockey. Basketball wasn't my game. But I've been getting better and decided it would be fun to play organized.

I show up at the gym about 30 minutes prior to our first game, walk in with my wife, thinking this should be fun. As soon as I opened the doors I thought "Oh fuck". I was in WAAAAAY over my head. These guys could ball. I'm talking throwing alley oops, dunking left and right, tons of fans in the stands. Hell, my wife and I were 2 of probably only 5 people in the whole gym that were white. I felt REALLY out of place.

Our first game was against apparently one of the best teams in the league. They've got this one guy on the team who is 7 feet tall, I asked him... he's huge. Apparently he plays professionally overseas. To my surprise, we hung in there with them. Ended up losing 80-61. I was extremely surprised we kept it that close. They were huge. Dunked on us a TON of times. I think they may have just been toying with us. I was happy to say I scored 8 points, created a couple of turnovers and even had a rebound or two. I didn't make any major mistakes and will have to work on my outside shot if I want to make a quality contribution.

Now I have absolutely nothing against black people. We have a few on our team and one of my best friends is black. But I will say this. Being one of a handful of white guys in this gym, where basketball is apparently VERY serious business, I felt extremely out of place.


/brool story co
 
Aside from beer league softball, almost any adult sports league is going to be full of former pros and flamed out minor leaguers. Unless you go into the beginner/bronze/bunny league.
 
lol. And sorry those guys sucked. If I play against someone that hasn't played before its easy to shut them completely down and score as many points as I want. Being white has nothing to do with it. I've seen white dudes that can ball and some that can't. Just like blacks except usually blacks enjoy basketball more so and play much more which is why they are usually better.
 
Did you have the option to pick which level league? The city I live in is only moderately sized but there are many different league levels.

Everyone starts out in D, and the only way to move up is to post a good record. The only to move down to E is to post a really bad record. Occasionally there will be one team in D that overmatches everyone else but it's not outrageous. The one thing that you will see is that you will need to matchup with relative size even in the lowest level league. Every team will have one or two tall people to deal with.
 
Check with the local churches and see if you can get into the old, slow, white guy church league games.
 
I'm envious...been a while since I've been in a league, which typically has been church leagues and a helluva lot of fun.
 
Being one of a handful of white guys in this gym, where basketball is apparently VERY serious business, I felt extremely out of place.
Click to expand...

Now you know how white athletes feel in the nfl or nba.
 
LOL...reminds me of when my previous job had a BB league. We thought, "ah man....it's just people who do this after work...we can compete".

Wrong.

Turns out, by after work, they mean people who worked at supermarkets part time while attending high school or college. So, a bunch a people who were getting close or just hit 20 vs a group of engineers who were approaching 30 or well over. Yeah, that first game sucked. At the end, all of us almost collapsed....
 
Red Storm said:
Who joins a league without scouting it out?
Click to expand...

Yeah, no shit. lol

You don't join a top league if you're not a pretty decent player. And, as a white guy who never played organized ball, you better be either a

1) defensive monster, quick as hell

2) great natural passer

3) good enough shooter to make open shots consistently

(perferrably all 3 to some degree)

or just fucking tall and willing to crash the boards, without being so clumbsy you trip over your own two feet

Still, all of that being said - that must be a pretty high level league if they're consistently throwing alley-oops. Did the sign say "Rucker park"?
 
In HS, wrestling and swimming took me away from organized B-ball, but I loved playing in pick-up games of all sorts -- half court, full court, 3 on 3, 1 on 1 where you kept the ball as long as you scored, whatever.

Or, with any small or odd number of players, the variation where it was a free for all, whoever bounded the ball against everyone else, the name of which escapes it at the moment but which for some reason I semi-think we called Michigan . . . not to mention the more static but still fun "Pig" and "Horse" and "Around the World."

Edit: Forgot "21!"

The football equivalent of that "one against everyone else free-for-all" we called Muckle, and those games were EPIC!

You could be face down in the mud and have ALL ten other guys on you, but as long as you were still squirming and didn't give it up or have your fingers bent back and the ball wrenched from you, that football was YOURS! :biggrin:
 
Last edited:
Via said:
Yeah, no shit. lol

You don't join a top league if you're not a pretty decent player. And, as a white guy who never played organized ball, you better be either a

1) defensive monster, quick as hell

2) great natural passer

3) good enough shooter to make open shots consistently

(perferrably all 3 to some degree)

or just fucking tall and willing to crash the boards, without being so clumbsy you trip over your own two feet

Still, all of that being said - that must be a pretty high level league if they're consistently throwing alley-oops. Did the sign say "Rucker park"?
Click to expand...


It wasn't quite Rucker Park standards. They weren't throwing the 'oops consistently, but it happened a few times. The first time I just put my head down in despair. After that, I decided to challenge these mammoths at half court and make them either dribble around me, or pass it off. I was faster than them, so they usually just passed it. We actually did pretty good by making them make bad passes.
 
Red Storm said:
I think the most widely used name for it is 21.
Click to expand...

Ok, yeah, I went looking on the web just now to see what I could find.

The Wiki definition of what, I guess, most people call "21" we called something else, which my dim memory indicates at least sounded like "Michigan."

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


What we called "21" was a more static game of just 2 points for each free throw, followed by a 1 point layup of your choice, with no defending. Your turn lasted as long as you didn't miss either. And you had to win by 2 (same rule for any 1 on 1 game, always.)

Pig was the exact same as Horse, just fewer letters. Horse and Around the World are described in the Wiki link above.

I also found Muckle!!!!!!!!!! On, of all places, Urban Dictionary, defiinition # 6. We never had any end zone or scoring, though . . . just an enclosed space and mayhem. 😛

6. Muckle 3 thumbs up

An American game using a football consisting of at least two players, but the amount of players can be infinite. One throws the football in the air, and yells out muckle. When the ball drops any player can grab it and try to run to a determined end zone. All the other players will have to try and tackle the player. Once the player is tackled, he has to restart the game (although scores are preserved). If the player does not want to be tackled, he can toss the ball up beforehand and yell muckle to begin the game again. Scoring is customizable, as is final score. Good game to play if you have an uneven amount of players for an actual football game.
Click to expand...

Pig is mentioned here: http://www.games-for-all-reasons.com/basketball_games.html
 
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Slew Foot said:
Aside from beer league softball, almost any adult sports league is going to be full of former pros and flamed out minor leaguers. Unless you go into the beginner/bronze/bunny league.
Click to expand...

The kickball league I joined didn't have any pros, but I'm not sure if there is a pro league for kickball. It is mostly college kids, and there is a lot of drinking involved. Occasionally you get the gym class hero, but they usually just get made fun of...
 
Cuda1447 said:
It wasn't quite Rucker Park standards. They weren't throwing the 'oops consistently, but it happened a few times. The first time I just put my head down in despair. After that, I decided to challenge these mammoths at half court and make them either dribble around me, or pass it off. I was faster than them, so they usually just passed it. We actually did pretty good by making them make bad passes.
Click to expand...

I get the impression you're being a bit modest about your ball skills. :thumbsup:
 
Cuda1447 said:
I've been playing a bit of basketball lately with a couple of my friends. We decided to start a team and join a local league. Unfortunately no one scouted this league out before we joined and I feel we may be in over our heads...


First of all, I'm a white boy. I've never played organized basketball. I'm athletic, but stuck to soccer, wrestling, football, baseball and hockey. Basketball wasn't my game. But I've been getting better and decided it would be fun to play organized.

I show up at the gym about 30 minutes prior to our first game, walk in with my wife, thinking this should be fun. As soon as I opened the doors I thought "Oh fuck". I was in WAAAAAY over my head. These guys could ball. I'm talking throwing alley oops, dunking left and right, tons of fans in the stands. Hell, my wife and I were 2 of probably only 5 people in the whole gym that were white. I felt REALLY out of place.

Our first game was against apparently one of the best teams in the league. They've got this one guy on the team who is 7 feet tall, I asked him... he's huge. Apparently he plays professionally overseas. To my surprise, we hung in there with them. Ended up losing 80-61. I was extremely surprised we kept it that close. They were huge. Dunked on us a TON of times. I think they may have just been toying with us. I was happy to say I scored 8 points, created a couple of turnovers and even had a rebound or two. I didn't make any major mistakes and will have to work on my outside shot if I want to make a quality contribution.

Now I have absolutely nothing against black people. We have a few on our team and one of my best friends is black. But I will say this. Being one of a handful of white guys in this gym, where basketball is apparently VERY serious business, I felt extremely out of place.


/brool story co
Click to expand...

Were they huge? Black? Just curious
 
Yeah I played in an organized league about 3 years ago despite only playing some intramural during high school. I had been playing over lunch for about 2 years so my shot was consistent but at 5'10" I was just short and most of the other short guys were super quick. We won no games and came no closer to winning one than 7 points.

Our main 4 guys who were there every week were me, a 6' post guy (super short for that position but he was strong and had good drop steps and pump fakes), a 6"1' athletic wing with no outside shot and no left hand who could finish anywhere near the rim and rebound and a 6'4" skinny guy who was a PG in high school. Needless to say most teams had at least one guy 6'6" or over, multiple guys who could dunk and we were simply killed on the boards. I learned to shoot NBA range 3s just to get open looks and did more sprinting just curling off of screens than I had done since high school cross country. It was brutal and the top 3 teams toyed with us while the others just put us away and made sure to maintain their lead.

We found out latter there was a B league but due to scheduling we wouldn't have been able to play it anyway. This is in an Iowa town of 100,000 so any big city is going to have more than just our 2 former division 1 ballers. In short, engineers don't play serious ball =)
 
zebano said:
Yeah I played in an organized league about 3 years ago despite only playing some intramural during high school. I had been playing over lunch for about 2 years so my shot was consistent but at 5'10" I was just short and most of the other short guys were super quick. We won no games and came no closer to winning one than 7 points.

Our main 4 guys who were there every week were me, a 6' post guy (super short for that position but he was strong and had good drop steps and pump fakes), a 6"1' athletic wing with no outside shot and no left hand who could finish anywhere near the rim and rebound and a 6'4" skinny guy who was a PG in high school. Needless to say most teams had at least one guy 6'6" or over, multiple guys who could dunk and we were simply killed on the boards. I learned to shoot NBA range 3s just to get open looks and did more sprinting just curling off of screens than I had done since high school cross country. It was brutal and the top 3 teams toyed with us while the others just put us away and made sure to maintain their lead.

We found out latter there was a B league but due to scheduling we wouldn't have been able to play it anyway. This is in an Iowa town of 100,000 so any big city is going to have more than just our 2 former division 1 ballers. In short, engineers don't play serious ball =)
Click to expand...


Man, I feel your pain. I'm 5'10" as well and I had one of my shots BLOCKED bad last night. The type of block where the crowd erupts afterwards. It didn't make me feel to great.

I'm hoping there will be a few teams we can compete with, but I'm not sure. Apparently during the NBA lockout two low level NBA guys who live here played in this league.
 
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