photo: slamonline.com

Basketball, broken down to its simplest compound, is about scoring more buckets than the team you’re playing against. The Semi-Automatic refers to players who leave bodies in their wake with their innate ability to get buckets. And few players can truly say that they are, or ever were, on the same level as the man known as “Mao Santa”, aka “The Holy Hand.” Read More »

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The scam went down like this. A skinny kid named Reggie would be tossing up jumpers at the John Adams Elementary School and other playgrounds in Riverside, California. His older sister, Cheryl, would be at the other end of the court, tossing up bricks. Sometimes, she would wind up and heave the ball over the backboard and into the chain link fence.

Reggie would approach a couple of kids and the convo normally went down like this -

“You guys want to play two-on-two? I’m waiting for my man to show up. Or I can just play you with my sister down there.” Read More »

photo: flickr.com

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 »

In the most recent issue of Bounce that’s about to drop, #20, we took the old school flavor to the West Side of things and caught up w/ former UCLA and LA Laker standout Jamaal Wilkes, aka Silk. Read More »

photo: weallbe.blogspot.com

For years, he contentedly stood in the shadows. Unlike his more celebrated teamates at the time, he didn’t walk through the b-ball corridors with a fancy nickname or a respected pedigree backed up by a blue blooded institution and some fawning media.

Far away from the bright lights, he morphed from a good high school player into an incredible college performer. And when the spotlight and eyes of the world finally cast their admiring gaze upon him in the pros, he’d completed his metamorphisis from role player to one of the finest all-around talents and greatest defensive players the world ever witnessed.

And through the entire journey from the hoops backwoods to the crescendo of the sport, he never stopped being “Boopie” to those who knew him way back when. Read More »

photo: krossovki.net

The Orlando Magic are back in the building, yet people seem to be a little confused. Everybody’s saying that they haven’t been to the finals since they had Shaq. How can it possible that mainstream media not fully understand how indescribably incredible a young Penny Hardaway was, and the role he played in the equation?

In early December of 1991, we received our first glimpse. We’d heard the whispers about the kid from the rough streets of Memphis, Tennessee a few years earlier while he was tearing up high school ball. But it was undeniably confirmed that the young man was, indeed, a supreme talent on the night of his NCAA debut as he collected 18 points, 15 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 steals and 6 assists against DePaul. Read More »

photo: jamd.com

It seems unfathomable that a point guard who led his team to three straight NCAA Championship games and two rings in four years would be underappreciated. But that is indeed the case with Robert Matthew Hurley, Jr. Read More »

photo: procorbis.com

In March of ‘81, Isiah Thomas became a college basketball legend. He was the one indispensable member of coach Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosier squad that captured the Big 10 Championship en route to March Madness.

The team leader in scoring, steals and assists was not only the best pure guard in the country, he was the best the college game had seen since North Carolina’s amazing Phil Ford. Read More »