I was super tough in transition, ask former NBA All-Star Mark Jackson about his “D” against me at King Towers back in the day…
“The business.” It’s a term used when a player starts to flame broil his opponent on offense. Many players left like “cooked beef” from our gym back in the day, grilled and handled with a spatula by NBA pros, but real appreciative of having a place to test their skill. I truly remember how the comp helped a city get its rep as the breeding ground of the NBA hardcore player that willed their respective teams to the championship round. I miss that charcoaled flavor. During this All-Star Weekend, I reminisce about men like Mark Jackson, Kenny Smith, Anthony Mason, and Tony Campbell, all NBA All-Stars and championship round players who made NYC’s Jim Couch Foundation Open Gym a Pro Experience… Read More »
Wow! That’s all I really have to say at this point. Kentucky’s freshman sensation, John Wall, is beyond special. He’s a once in a generation type of talent. Read More »
The North Carolina Tar Heels. The legacy of this esteemed college basketball program conjures up words like prestige, championships, class and dominance, along with Hall of Fame names like Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Dean Smith. They’ve won 27 ACC regular season titles, 17 ACC tourney titles, competed in 18 Final Fours and captured five National Championships.
The question that begs to be answered is how did the program ascend to such rarefied heights. Read More »
The Dunk! The Ram! The Slam! The Bong! Whatever you want to call it, it’s an art form, birthed on the playground, that has revolutionized the way the game is played. And in game 4 of the Western Conference playoff battle between the Houston Rockets and Pheonix Suns on May 5th, 1994, Kevin Maurice Johnson threw down one of the illest yokes of all-time. Read More »
all photos: courtesy of georgia tech sports imformation
Kenny! No last name necessary. Say it on any playground in NYC and everybody knows who you’re talking about. Even the young cats who are on the come up, if they ball on the asphalt of the concrete jungle’s five boroughs, they’ve heard about the legend of Kenny Anderson.
In the most recent issue of Bounce Magazine, #21, we sat down with Kenny to unearth the story of his formative years. To really understand how the playground gave us one of the greatest phenoms in NYC history and hear from the man, in his own words, you need to cop the issue immediately. Read More »
Christopher Paul Mullin was a simple, neighborhood guy from Troy Avenue in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn. The love affair with hoops was a multi-generational thing that began in the driveway of the family’s small row house. Read More »
TNT announcer Kenny Smith wasn’t giving props at last year’s dunk contest to anyone who went with an unoriginal dunk. If it was done before, he and the crowd demanded more. Rudy Gay went straight to youtube to find the moves for the slam dunk contest. Dwight Howard and Gerald Green came with props, using cupcakes and capes to revive the event that many said was playing itself out. Now that the bar is raised and people are looking forward to the contest, I’m personally waiting for someone to add some streetball/b-boy flavor to the festivities. We got players lobbing and kicking the ball to dunkers. How ’bout some “Alimoe-B-boy” aka “The Section 8″ to add more flavor to the event.
The Section 8 movement is for all my brothers and sisters who came up from the jects, tenements, and homes that were looking for someone to notice their skills. I’m down with it and a part of it. Alimoe is one of the most original ball handlers in the world. His infamous “wrap the ball around the defenders head and then pass it off the backboard to himself for a dunk” is a game-executed move that was done at EBC and the Holcombe Rucker Tournament. Here are some good “section 8″ suggestions. Read More »
“It was all a dream…”, B.I.G.’s opening lyrics to Juicy
It’s no mere coincidence that as we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream, along with the historic Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama and the dream that he represents, that this offering in “The Playground Gave Us…” pantheon focuses on b-ball’s “Dream”. Read More »
