Basketball Jones: Part I ~ Redux ~ Ground-Based Vegetals, An Odd Round Ball, and The Never Ending Quest For The Quintessential Hardwood Floor ~ Original Photography and A Very Long Story - In Two Parts

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How far would YOU go, in the quest to play on the ultimate, hardwood floor?

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_{Author's Note: I am putting these posts out in deference to my love of the sport of basketball, and the NCAA Tournament, going on here in the States. "My" team did well this year, and ended up in what's called the Elite Eight. Which for those of you out there NOT as enamoured of the sport as I, is rather hard to do. So...if you have seen this series before, and voted on it during last year's tournament, feel free to abstain from this re-play of voter action. I certainly understand. I suppose one could say I DO like Basketball. And miss being a full-time gym rat. Read on, if so inclined.}

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The 'Jones' Is Born

A number of years ago, the comedy duo of Cheech and Chong created a classic musical parody for their Los Cochinos album, extolling the virtue of obsession within a single sport. In this particular case, the sport of basketball.

Their comedic tune, Basketball Jones discussed a youth who was so enamored of the game, spending all his waking hours in pursuit of basketball, that he was known to have 'The Jones' for the game. The song became an instant hit, and though the story of the ad hoc, famous-musician’s-in-the-studio-all-clamoring-to-get-involved-in-the-creation-of-the-materpiece is an interesting short story in itself, it is beyond the scope of this tome.

Suffice it to say, that though the song never, unfortunately, won a Grammy, it did pretty efficiently sum up MY days as a Midwestern-based, High School Basketball 'Jones' in the prime of my burgeoning youth.

[NOTE: One must proceed to the end of this post, to fully appreciate the wondrous nature of this song on YouTube.]

A Mild Obsession

Basketball. It's all my three best friends and I from our High School team spent most of our time and thought on, day and night, night and day. We were the epitome of the Basketball Jones. The game consumed us, with maybe one small exception...whenever girls snuck into our collective psyche...which was most of all-of-the-time also.

And though we constantly dreamed about DOING something about this girl thing, like actually TALKING to them, or asking one of them to go 'out' somewhere, spending all of our waking hours on the court just seemed like a much safer and likely daily endeavor of success.

Yes, we were fully hooked. And in constant pursuit of the purity of the sport. Nothing quite like it. A leather ball, a 'good game', and the quintessential hardwood floor. If you could find one. Which was difficult at best.

There were a lot of outdoor courts available in our area. Big, square, generally asphalt patches with no painted lines and chain nets on the rims at each end, if there WAS an 'each' end. And despite their rough, physical short-comings, a good game could be found on these courts now and then.

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Asphalt And A Stiff Sou'Wester

But remember, this was the Midwest. And these outdoor courts were...for lack of a better term...outdoors. If you've never spent much time in this part of the country, I'll elaborate for you. About 7/8 of the time the weather proves less than cooperative. If it's not 102° under a big summer-time tree, humidity hovering near a sweat-stain 98%, it's blowing rain or snow, or a mix of the two, whenever barometrically possible. Plus, this frozen stuff only seems to travel in a horizontal plane.

And though we were still game, and often had to play outside in these trying, Jones'-driven conditions, it was far from desirable. It's amazing how a stiff, sleet-infused Sou’wester can wreak havoc on the arc of a lofty 'three' from 'downtown'. A nifty euphemism of the sport describing any shot taken on the playground close to the grassy out-of-bounds line, usually in unsafe proximity to a local dumpster, park bench or other sideline obstruction.

Ignoring these nasty weather conditions for a moment, there was a larger problem at hand. All that rough asphalt was incredibly hard on our leather ball. And a leather ball was a necessity for us. Bright orange rubber balls were fine, in a bouncy, “wanna play some foursquare, kids?”, funky-feel sort of way. But to really PLAY the game, we were fully convinced there was no way to accomplish it without a leather ball.

Is This A Ball, Or A Piece Of Fruit?

I'm sure if you took a poll today, most person's out there whose life is driven by the pursuit of the large, dimpled orb would confirm my assertion. Leather is the best. And these leather balls were scientifically designed for indoor play. And HOW that outdoor asphalt wore down a nice, smooth, very expensive leather ball.

We used to call it getting 'peached.' Dribble a leather BB around on everyday asphalt for more than three or four full-court games, and the thing became all wild and fuzzy. In short order it resembled a very large, orange-brown peach...covered in a dense 'fur', outlined by those loopy black-etched lines.

And though we certainly weren’t into appearances, as evidenced by our 'daily wear' and worn out, high-top Adidas...and there CERTAINLY weren't any female spectators anywhere about in the county to be concerned with...this fuzzy-ball thing boiled down to more of a performance issue.

Once a ball got fully 'peached', it acted a bit wonky. The thing became subtly erratic, bouncing this way when you needed a that, with a mossy surface that just wouldn't 'take' to your hand when you really needed it. A true, ball-handling nightmare.

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“You Gotta Call 'Bank' With The Peach”

And as for shooting with the peach, forget it. We all swore the thing actually lost some physical weight as this process 'wore' on. All that harsh asphalt abraded away any usable surface and heft to our precious ball. Maybe a good excuse for an errant shot now and then, but the cost of such result did not equal the occasional need. Combine this ever-lightening, hard-to-handle ball with the crazy, Midwestern weather patterns, and it was time to find a better place to play.

This is is where this whole 'hardwood' thing comes in. There is nothing like playing the game of basketball on 'the hardwood'. First and foremost, it's warm. And dry. You can actually play without 12 layers of clothes hampering your 'moves'. And to be sure, not wearing some sort of gloves during play REALLY upped your game.

Yes, the weather thing WAS a major factor. But the real reason for this burning desire for hardwood, was more of a Jones-ian, holistic view of the basketball pursuit. It's a GYMNASIUM. It's where the game SHOULD be played. It has a particular smell. It has it's own music. Ah, that music. The un-mistakeable, telltale squeek of rubber shoes on hardwood.

Music To The Ears Of A Jones Like No Other

That glorious, melodic sound, when your rapid-motion sneakers and that shiny wooden floor meet, as you perform your best 'shake and bake', stop and go, or jump cut-moves across the court. The squeeky shoe. Or even better? Twenty squeeky shoes. Running full-speed up and down in a full court game. All mixing together into a rapid-motion, chirping-shoe cacophony of rubber-based joy.

A sound that never fully leaves the memoric cortex, and brings a warm spaloosh of feeling to the pit of my stomach whenever heard to this day. The hardwood floor. It was smooth, and clean, you could actually cut and move quicker, an imperative in the game of basketball. And the basis for all that squeek.

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But Can He Really “Sky”?

As to the all-important jumping ability of the sport, all four of we Jones's were fully CONVINCED that one could jump higher on hardwood. Hence the term, “he's a real leaper” was born. I once had an all-conference hurdler, who could jump out of the gym, tell me, after I contested his shot in a pickup game one day in college, “you got some MF'n high-fly Adidas”. I'm not sure a loftier compliment could be bestowed on a true Jones' of the sport. There may be jumping science at work here, it's all beyond me. All I know is, we played better on the wooden stuff, and it was very hard to come by.

Most of the indoor courts in our area were either at the YMCA, in High School gyms, or over at the coveted College Campus. None of our families had the cash to lay out for the 'Y', and the High School wouldn't let us anywhere near their doors unless they were open for business as intended. Reading, writing, and all the other stuff of that life that often took us away from our daily game. The only alternative, as we could see it, was the local College.

College Kids Really Got It Made

Those College kids had BEAUTIFUL hardwood courts. A bunch of them. Just going to waste without us on them. There were at least two full gyms we knew of, with a labyrinth of other facilities...weight rooms, showers, and maybe even more courts...deep within the bowels of that sprawling complex of sport. And it was all right there, designed for the College kids. Not us.

Once T. Brown, our point guard and continual head of comic relief discovered this veritable goldmine of the squeek, we were fully hooked into the idea. We just had to get in!

Surprisingly, sneaking into the place wasn't actually all that hard, if you had the necessary skill set and proper motivation. Just wait outside for a College kid to exit a gym side-door for some much-needed fresh air, or to head back to the dorms, and we'd zip right in behind them before the heavy metal doors could close.

Once inside, as long as you stayed on the lookout for the dreaded CR police until fully involved in a game, you were OK. You just had to avoid the hardwood 'law'. CR. Campus Recreation. 'Campus Rec' for short.

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"Cheese It, It's The Law!"

Campus Rec. A bunch of college kids, given some perk or another as payment for watching out for underage, not-yet-in-college scofflaws like us, bending the rules of their School of Higher Learning. They were persistent, if not a bit sporadic in their daily rounds. You just had to keep your head down once inside, until a game opened up.

We got quite good at this sneaky business. Often hiding deep within one of the fat-cushioned high jump/pole vault pits around the place, and moving stealthily about in the quest for a game, skirting along behind the huge, hanging curtains used to close off different areas of the complex during various college events. We wisped about like round ball-obsessed ghosts, and became quite adept at this whole sneaking about thing.

Once we were safely ensconced within a full-court game, we were generally OK. Often was the time a CR cop would interrupt a game to see if we really belonged there. The poor guy would then get a real raft-of-it-all from his peers, for attempting to remove half of the contingent of 10 during a 'good game'. The CR usually relented, under pressure of “give 'em a break, dude, we got a good game going here. Go bother somebody over in gym B!” They'd usually wander off to hassle some youngsters in another gym.

Winner Stays, Loser Moves On

Not only did we get to stay, but it was great motivation for playing well. In the world of pickup basketball, the team that wins, stays on the court. The losers sit, and wait for next game, or have to go off and find another game elsewhere.

Keep winning, you get to keep the floor. Keep the floor, you could stay there all day. Lose, you had to go back into hiding without the College kids to protect you from going home. It was actually a rather large and interesting ecosystem of sport, on many differing levels.

Whatever you call it, we were in round ball heaven!!! Most of our waking hours that season were spent in that complex of gymnasiums, enjoying life to the basketball fullest. On glorious hardwood floors. I'm pretty sure the College kids and CR staff saw a lot more of us than our families that year.

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Unlike The Song -- Nothing Remains The Same

Unfortunately, as that one saying that someone somewhere said at one time or another...regarding various events of life...“the more things stay the same, the more they change.” Our basketball world was about to make a drastic change, and not for the better.

We did manage to eek out one more good full summer of hardwood play after the end of the school's spring term, but come the next fall at the College, our world of indoor heaven would come crashing down around us, not unlike a shattering, Daryl Dawkins glass-backboard of old.

With the advent of the Fall college semester, things took a decidedly left turn. Someone with authority on-high must have found out about all us pesky youngsters illegally playing about in their gymnasium, and instituted a whole new set of rules and procedures for the new College year.

It was a harsh reality. We were crushed. There was beefed-up security at the many side doors of the gyms, and all entry resorted to the 'one door in/one door out' policy in our playground complex. The dreaded One Door. Everyone had to use this front door, no matter what.

And it funneled us, very efficiently, right past 'the cage'. A chain-link, fence-fronted box of a room placed right before the locker room entrance. The very locker room you had to traverse to get our precious, hardwood basketball world.

Though we had no experience of the sort, we thought that cage looked a lot like some sort of mini prison, complete with a crabby guy perched on a stool within, with an attitude toward we youngsters without. There was a large, open slot where the chain-link screen met the counter top. The place where all the permission of admission passed through. Show your official College ID, get your hand stamped, and you were in.

Is That A Stamp, Or A Full-Body Tatoo?

None of us had any sort of ID, and as for the stamp, this was not a small, run-of-the-mill, easy to copy and claim “it smudged from sweaty play” stamp. The thing was enormous! Took up most of the back of your hand. It consisted of a huge CR, in capitol letters, in ever-changing-by-the-day colors of red, green, bright blue and black.

We were stymied. And out of hardwood...for a time. Going back to the asphalt was both a hard pill to swallow, and a bit expensive. They hadn't improved the playground surface in our year-long absence, and it was still darn hard on our Adidas and one leather ball.

Play resumed in the outdoors for a time, but we were all-too-aware that the harsh weather would soon set in, the Addidas were wearing thin, and our precious leather ball was rapidly fuzzing up like the proverbial peach. Something had to be done.

And as that other saying from somewhere or another about the other things of life goes: “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, until you find another sneaky way around it.” We just needed a bit of ingenuity. That's when T. Brown came up with another plan. A brilliant plan of complex simplicity. All we had to do was put this grand plan into practice, and those hardwood floors would once more become a wondrous, Basketball Jones reality.

~ Finto ~ (For Now)

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~Stay Tuned For Part II ~

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BASKETBALL JONES, By Cheech & Chong:

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~ Finto ~

Thanks for stopping in and viewing Part I of the Basketball Jones Series. If you have any thoughts about Basketball, The NCAA Tournament, that sublime, squeeky hardwood, leather balls, or anything else this post reminds you of, please feel free to comment away in the spaces below. I'd love to hear from you.

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And go to @ddschteinn -- There's a whole lot more...

_{Posted: 03/29/2018 @ 14:04}

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Excerpts From Late-Night Conversations With A Mechanical Cat

Fact Number 53