"Chill, chill, Dre." "Focus up!" "What's wrong with these niggas?" "That's my man!" "That nigga is gonna get killed, man!" "Out of 20." " Bet." " Bet it." "Ain't no threes." "Four-two." "Four-two." "Nigga's a baby!" "Bucket!" "Baby!" "Get that nigga, man!" "Go on, go on!" "He think he nice." "Bet!" "Who you gotta pay?" "I hope I'm in that." "Stop fouling my man!" "He got a future!" "Too much dribbling, yo." "Left hand, right hand!" "Left hand, right hand!" "Let me see you get him." "I got $10 say you don't make the next shot." "Chicken noodle soup!" "Gonna get my money!" "Get my money!" "Oh, shit!" "He gonna win!" "He gonna win!" "Get my money!" "I'm ready to go get changed now." "Niggas are getting me mad, dog." "Bucket!" "22-10." "Unsportsmanship." "Get this nigga out of here!" "I should've bet everything!" "I'm mad!" "Where he at?" "He ain't shit, man." "He ain't shit!" "Peace." "My name is Bobbito Garcia, AKA Kool Bob Love, and this is my partner in crime, Kevin Couliau from France." "Over a span of 90 hot summer days, we hit up 180 courts throughout NYC's five boroughs to film, listen and play." "I've played ball in 35 countries throughout five continents, and can say that the journey we took, and what we learned along the way, was unlike anything I've ever experienced." "Welcome to New York City outdoor pick-up basketball, one of the most unique and mythic sports environments in the world." "Basketball, invented by Dr James Naismith, was first played on December 21st, 1891." "Naismith wanted to change lives by providing a physical and spiritual outlet that would positively affect society as a whole." "The organised game quickly spread, and by the 1930s, the sport arrived as a global movement." "Meanwhile, in New York City, basketball was being reinterpreted outdoors." "It started to be called "the city game" and New York was claiming it 110%." "In 1934, there were 119 playgrounds throughout New York City." "By 1960, there were 777." "The stage was set." "Pick-up basketball happens when someone forms a squad by selecting teammates who are there before the game starts." "There is no governing body, no schedules, no coaches or referees present, only unwritten rules that change from playground to playground." "Pick-up basketball can also simply be the moment that a player picks up a ball and does something with it recreationally." "It doesn't even have to be on a court." "There are no boundaries." "We started in the garbage cans." "As a matter of fact, I'm gonna take you back a little further." "We're in the house, roll up some socks, close the door." "That's where I first started practising my jumpshot." "Then you graduated to the room where it's between Mom's room and the living room." "We played full court, no baskets." "The wall; you got a spot on the wall." "There's a lot of handprints we had to paint over." "Our first experience may have been a hanger wire or a broken bicycle rim or milk crates with the bottoms beat out." "We would have monkey bar games." "One would be here, one would be here, and we would shoot, rebound the ball and then run around the monkey bars in front of our buildings." "Even those courts used to get crazy crowded." "So when they got crowded we had to come here, which we called the Garbage Can Court." "We had one against the park house and another one against the sandpit, and we made that like our Madison Square Garden." "My favourite moment was playing on garbage cans." "You had to play with balls with titties, with lumps in it." "But I do remember the rubberised balls back in the day." "Back in the '50s, the basketballs used to get pregnant!" "And we would even play with that, you know, as long as we got a game." "My first Christmas gift was a pair of Converses." "They were $7.50, and that was like someone gave me $1,000." "We would play in our dungarees, cut off, and we'd just go from there." "We just had regular pants, you know, like our swim trunks." "When I was balling, the shorts was like..." "One of the girls said poom-poom shorts." "As you got bigger, Pops finally put up a little basket on the telephone pole." "Still on the block now, three on three." "Play with whoever's out in the neighbourhood, whoever comes out." "We came out at nine in the morning, am, and we wouldn't leave until 9pm." "Go get sodas, maybe get some cookies, a sandwich, and play." "I mean, I didn't care if it was 100 or whatever." "We played all day." "Anywhere there was a sound of a ball, whatever borough, we was gonna play." "We didn't have to know nobody." "We'd walk into the park, call "next"." "And we'd sit and we'd wait." "And we'd hoop, get up, go to another borough, get on the train, and that's what we did all day." "Then go back home, go to sleep, get up, do it again." "When we was young, I didn't have all that Atari or PlayStation." "We did basketball in the rain." "We didn't care if it was snowing, sleeting, raining." "This is what we did, it's in my blood." "The heat didn't matter." "We're talking about minimal water." "The fountain used to work from time to time, and there was no bottled water back then." "We would go up to a friend's house up here, or someone would bring a big jug of water down, we'd all drink from the same jug." "You know, that's the way it was." "No Gatorade." "Although basketball was conceived as an indoor team sport," "New Yorkers took the game outdoors, reinvented it, and started adding their own style and creativity to how it could be played." "Finally get to graduate to go to 275 Park, where, in Brownsville in Brooklyn, you grew up playing half-court basketball." "If you came out to the park, one on one or it's one on none." "I used to play right hand against left hand, all day long, full court, by myself until people came out." "Played three on three as more people came." "That's how you developed your game." "Sometimes there aren't enough players for a five-on-five." "Other times, people just want to be inventive." "Enter specialty games." "They can be super-competitive, can also help skill development, or simply be just for fun." "Being a small guy, it was important for me to get a jumpshot with range." "So I designed a game, I called it the Sundance 15." "I gave it my name." "It had 15 spots, but the whole thing was that you would shoot all angles and distances." "We used to play it for money." "We used to play it for bragging rights, and we used to play it to work out." "Specialty games have a ton of variations, from around the world to taps to knock-out, but the most universally recognised one is horse." "In horse, a player attempts a shot." "If made, the challenger has to hit it as well or get a letter on a miss." "Whoever spells H-O-R-S-E first loses!" "You had to really work on your skills to play horse." "Off the glass, straight in, the little dipsy doo." "You might have one guy that jumps out the park so all he wants to do is dunk, and everybody else could only smack the backboard." "So we said "no dunking" when this guy is playing." "I used to win money in college off of horse, doing trick shots and shooting behind, over the head, backwards." "All my shots were money shots, Bobbito." "How d'you ask me a question like that, Bobbito?" "Come on, everything I put up went in." "I was a pure shooter, man!" "There was game called "boot's up"." "Booty's!" "One-on-one contest, the loser stands against the fence, and you take the ball, and they have to bend over and you throw the ball at them." "So that's another thing." "Humiliation is in the park." "All the girls are watching you standing on the fence and a guy is throwing the ball at you." "That's playground basketball at its best!" "That don't happen in the NBA." "You can't even put a dollar sign on that one." "When you talk about the game of five-two, you shoot the five from the top of the key." "The two is the follow-up shot." "And you add up your points." "52 points is game." "Now, the key is that if you make the five and the two consecutively, you shoot again, and the other guy doesn't get that turn." "So the key to winning the game is if you can go on a consecutive roll, five-two, five-two, five-two." "And that's what generally I would do." "You got a tough two-shot." "Good shot." "On Sundays, I used to wait till about one o'clock in the afternoon, and then I would come out to the court." "By that time, all the guys that used to sell the Sunday newspapers, they had sold all their newspapers and they would come out and wanna shoot." "But I wasn't selling papers." "I would wait till they got finished." "Then I'd win all their money shooting five-two." "It was like a part-time job." "Ball game!" "My money!" "To the winner goes the money!" "Keep it here, baby, all day." "In the mid-1960s, defenders were added to five-two and became the game 21, AKA Utah." "No teammates." "You against the world." "Let me tell you about 21, in any park anywhere in New York City." "Sometimes there'll be eight dudes, ten dudes, playing 21!" "Four people guarding you, trying to get ball, so you're working on your ballhandling, and speed and quickness, cos you're trying to get through them, or around them." "Or shake a couple." "You're working on your one or two dribble pull-ups, because if there's that many people defending, you can't get to the basket." "So you're working on all facets of the game, depending on how many people are in." "Your reaction when you gotta shoot has gotta be on pinpoint." "It's gotta be quick, sharp and everything." "So that sharpens up your skills." "It makes you a ballhandler and a shooter, which is more or less what New Yorkers are known for, especially in Brooklyn." "21, you really don't gotta pass the ball to nobody." "Plus, you get everybody playing defence." "That's why I think New York City has that handle because everybody plays 21 everywhere you go." "And the strongest survive so if you can win a 21 game one time a week, you good." "You could talk about that all night!" "No matter what park Kevin and I would ride to, we'd always find people playing 21." "21's city-wide influence made it clear that the game is singularly responsible for New York's signature guard play, in the playground and in the pros." "For me, I used to be in 45th Park every day just battling and battling and battling." "At the time, I used to be in the parks from sun-up to sundown." "It wasn't about NBA and things like that, cos I never watched the NBA games." "I couldn't, I was in the park." "So, like, for me, you know, streetball was the main thing that just shaped my whole game." "Like, it wasn't no Isiah Thomas and all these other people." "I didn't look up to these people." "I looked up to Malloy, Tip Dog, Future and all them." "So it was, like, all them people, they helped me grow, so that's why to this day, I give them much respect no how much I grow, no matter how much I be, or where I go, for me that's it." "Some pick-up players are legends in their local parks." "Others are known around the world for changing the game as we know it." "If the Hall of Fame included playground phenomenons," "James "Fly" Williams would be in the first class of inductees." "At Austin Peay State," "Williams averaged 28.5 points per game and earned All-American honours." "On the street, the legend would routinely score 50 in a half, then leave to other tournaments and repeat the feat, amassing 200 points by the end of the day." "We used to come, and whoever was on the court, they had to get off, you know what I'm saying?" "We used to walk in the park and they'd say, "Aw, man, they're here."" "They'd just take their ball, and just dribble on to the side and sat down, you know, and watch the show." "They was upset that we came, but they also was happy because they cheered all day long watching the moves and watching the things we did." "Because I grew up with World B Free, Greg Jackson, Phil Sellers." "You know, I grew up with some of the best guys." "And we always used to call one another, and, "What time we gonna play?"" ""Soon as the sun go down, we're going over to Van Dyke, going to the Hole."" "And we'd all meet up, so you'd see some terrific blacktop streetball games back then." "Since the late 1960s, the most mythic outdoor court to watch ball has been the Rucker, named after Mr Holcombe Rucker who invented the idea of outdoor youth tournaments in 1946." "Using basketball as a draw, he was able to help place hundreds of Harlem youths in better schools." "The first location for his organised games was 138th Street between 5th and Lenox." "By the 1950s, the Rucker would find two new homes." "First, 127th Street and 7th Avenue, then 130th and 7th." "He added a college and pro division, and the top players of the era performed on the asphalt for free in front of thousands of fans." "Many spectators left inspired to play, thus increasing the fever for schoolyard pick-up." "This park was the first Rucker Park that I remember." "I started playing out here at the age of 11 years old." "Would you believe, guys like Wilt Chamberlain played right here." "Thousands of ballplayers played here." "Going back to the early '50s, my cousin Ed Warner played with City College," "Sihugo Green from Duquesne, one of the first All-Americans that I actually saw." "When we were kids, Walt Bellamy that played in the New York Knicks, he was a young guy; he came out here and we played against Walt Bellamy." "130th Street Park has great memories." "I watched a great game with Satch Sanders and Cal Ramsey and those guys playing against Brooklyn right from the window." "I had the best seat cos the park was packed so you couldn't get in." "I looked straight down and saw everything I wanted to see." "There were players that were expecting to basically see a game here." "With the tournament being moved and they didn't know that, they'd just start playing here." "A lot of those guys would kill us from time to time, too." "It was a real honour to say, "I played where Wilt Chamberlain played."" ""I played where Connie Hawkins played."" "It was some of the best times I ever had, playing in this park." "I can remember a game when Joe Hammond, Pee Wee Kirkland was against Julius Erving." "We seeing some of the greatest players in the history of basketball." "You can't just go home and play scrabble or checkers." "You gotta get out there and play some ball." "By having top pros play against the playground's best, the Rucker elevated the creativity in basketball forever." "One of the main architects of this movement was Pee Wee Kirkland," "New York point guard supreme." "In 1968, he was the MVP of the CIAA Championship for Norfolk State, where he only committed two turnovers the entire season." "He was the top scorer in the Rucker during an era when Hall of Famers Julius Erving and Tiny Archibald were his competition." "The Chicago Bulls draftee skipped the NBA for a life of crime and wound up in prison, where he once scored 135 points in a single game." "My generation at that time, we changed basketball." "We changed basketball from pick and roll, give and go, to make it happen." "The best way you can." "You know, no zones." "We didn't let you play zone." ""If you're gonna play a zone, y'all can't play." "It's man to man, man up."" "Things like that." "You know, "Go hard or go home,"" "all them expressions we created back then." "Because that's what the game was about." "It was about living up to what you said." "If you walked in Rucker, people would say, "How much you gonna score today, Pee Wee?" "40."" "You had to talk, you had to be about that." "You know, that was the street flavour of basketball." "It was about your pride." "It was about who you was." "It was about who you was trying to become." "I remember sometime we'd play games at Rucker, they'd say," ""Put so-and-so in the game to guard him."" "I'd say, "No, don't find nobody on the bench."" ""Find somebody to guard me in another state."" "But that's the type of attitude you had to have." "The street attitude put a premium on embarrassing opponents, whether it was putting a finishing touch on a lay-up or deceptive ballhandling." "This style, characteristic of New York and birthed in the '60s is now prominent in the pros and beyond." "I'm the guy who invented the crossover." "I didn't even know that." "But in my son's school, they was doing a report about basketball and the teacher called me and said, "I didn't know you invented the crossover."" ""Oscar Robertson said the first time he saw somebody do a crossover was Pee Wee Kirkland up at Rucker."" "The Big O. Could you imagine that?" "And I really took his change of pace, and just added sort of like a street flair to it." "The next thing you know it was a crossover." "And after me, here's another crossover, another crossover, and it just became the new wave of basketball." "You see so many things in the NBA that they go crazy over that we did as kids." "The sports announcer used to try to say that street basketball, it has no importance in the game." "It's the origin of the game." "Wouldn't be no game without street basketball." "Hip-hop grew up in the parks." "That's the birthplace of the jams." "It's also the birthplace of pick-up games, and if you were involved with hip-hop, or if you were involved with playing basketball, you had to come across each other one way or another." "Whether it'd be Dyckman, the Goat or the Rucker." "There were always hip-hop jams going on." "The whole thing of using cardboard came from the furniture store that used to be right over there behind us." "They used to sell appliances, and we would break the boxes apart and we would put them on the black mats by the swings." "And we'd be practising all day, and all day this was going on right here, you know." "There were a lot of things going on." "It wasn't just basketball going on, OK?" "You had your boys, the Rock Steady Crew, they were over here on the side." "They were basically playing cards and gambling over here." "I saw Madonna out here a few times when she was young." "Then we were playing basketball over here." "So there was a lot going on in the park." "The park is the community's central meeting place, where basketball and the street inspire and influence each other, creating an entire culture unto itself, and energising the game in the process." "From 1974 to 1998, we had a frenzy of basketball, where there were at least 50 ballplayers on the sidelines at all times, ready to play ball, if there was a tournament or not." "Somebody'd be like, "Who's next?" "Kenny!"" "They'd call up to your apartment." "You might be eating your cereal." "You know you're next." "You just grab on anything and run downstairs." "So it didn't matter what you had on." "Some days I ran down with no shirt, some wack tight shorts, and my sister's sneakers." "But I wasn't missing my next." "Some guys came how they woke up." "You could tell they had slept in what they had on." "But that's what it was; nobody cared." "Although known players can wear whatever they want, an unwritten dress code does exist for those unaware of what playground culture is all about." "Your game spoke volumes." "You know I mean?" "They could tell from your first shot whether you was nice or not, you know what I mean?" "You see somebody with all new stuff, and then they shoot a brick." ""Nah, I'm not picking him."" "You see some of these guys even now with everything purple and yellow that you could imagine on, and can't play." "And they got their girl on their arm coming in the park." "We are gonna embarrass that guy." "He's a target." "Dress code?" "That's not Brooklyn." "We do whatever here." "That's more Harlem." "That's what they do up that way." "They don't do that here." "Give that nigga a high five." "These shorts are wild old!" "He got the John Cena shorts!" "They wild old, though." "But you outside, though!" " He really got the John Cena's on!" " Outside!" "High five them!" "Remember in Above the Rim when Damon Wayans came to the park and they called him a 14-carat-gold Urkel because he had the glasses on, the jacket, and he put the powder on his hands and he had the wristbands?" "Those guys, no." "Don't come to our park wearing a New York Knicks top," "New York Knicks bottom, New York Knicks coloured sneakers, you don't do that." "You wanna get picked, don't wear that." "We don't do NBA jerseys." "No NBA jerseys." "NBA shorts, yes." "NBA shorts and socks, yes." "If he's got an NBA jersey on and one of them sleeves, he can't play." "Not pick-up." "Matching is always good." "Say you got a black shirt on, maybe some black-and-white EBC shorts, you good." "To play good, you gotta look good." ""Mookie" John Thomas, that's our fashion guide." "I came here one time with some mesh." "They was, like, "You can't play."" "Darren Phillip, Primal Fear, has this thing that he do that is not allowed in the parks." "He wears a full uniform." "He wears a full uniform." "No, DP, that's a ticket." "You can't wear that." "You can't do that." "And I didn't know." "I thought I was good." "He was like, "No."" "What you needed was some Nike's, Olaf's, and a T-shirt that had a number." "Which was crazy." "I didn't understand that, a T-shirt that had a number." "When DP wears the full uniform, like the West 4th uniform, no." "He get a ticket and he gotta go to the store and buy some Gatorades for everybody, then he gotta change." "He can't wear that." "We don't do that." "No disrespect to DP." "He might not be the best dressed in the park, but he's the greatest to play." "That's my man, though." "First one, I'm going off the glass, you already know." "If I make mine, if I make mine." "But you know I'm good, though." "That's one, that's one." "Yes, sir." "I'm good money." "Over the rim you got to shoot it." "You know, over." "Mookie Mook, the Road Runner!" "Some players are more known by their nickname than their real one given at birth." "On the asphalt, everyone wants an AKA, so long as it's favourable." "Pee Wee Kirkland, that's what they call me." "Last of a dying breed, legend in two games." "Gregory Brown, also known as Elevator Man Number Two out of deference to Uri Cobb who was the real Elevator Man." "Kenny "The Jet" Smith, I represent Queens." "Darren Phillip, playground legend, AKA Primal Fear," "AKA the Most Sought After, Brooklyn's Beast." "Corey "Homicide" Williams." "Samera Marsh, AKA Ballgurl." "Michael Drake, Skin Tight Big Mike." "Mark Norman, AKA they call me the Movie." "OK?" "People know my name but not my address." "John Thomas, AKA Mookie, AKA the Road Runner"" "Niki Avery, AKA NVMe, AKA the Model," "AKA Cookies, cos I take the ball," "AKA the Ratchet, Little Ratchet." "I got a gun, they know." "George, they call me White Chocolate cos I'm one of the only white boys." "Ed Davis, better known as the Sundance Kid." "You can't give yourself a nickname." "That's first off." "You walk around telling everybody, "Call me this, call me that,"" "they gonna look at you like you stupid." "You had to earn your name." "You had to earn your name, what you was about on the basketball court, every inch of the way." "Let's go, More Moves." "More moves." "More moves." "More moves!" "Get that shit out of here!" "That's a dunk for the menu!" "That's the chef!" "You can get it from exemplary performance on the court or it can be a name where they start out maybe laughing at you or how you look." "Maybe Fish cos of your eyes, or Nut cos your head is like a peanut." "Like, even with Cabbie, as a young ballplayer." "Now Cabbie invokes the African cab driver." "And it was funny at first, but now it's no joke." "That's the Cabbie, and he will put up numbers on you!" "Earning a memorable AKA and having it endure is like being inducted into the Hood Hall of Fame." "As-salam alaykum." "He's a Muslim." "No pork." "No pork on my fork." "No pork on my fork." "No pork on my fork!" "Nothing!" "Right back to the Gangster!" "He'll shoot you." "Right back to Yugoslavia." "For legendary players, park nicknames last forever." "Look at this guy." "I mean, you know who we are." "I mean, I don't have to say my name." "I mean, you know, I mean..." "Everybody know the Fly." "Anybody who know about this blacktop know about the Fly." "So, I mean, I don't have to say my name, but I'll say it for you." "James "Fly" Williams, one of the top playground legends in the world, man." " It hit his foot." " It hit the knee." " It hit my shin." " Your shin is below your knee, right?" "When the language of pick-up meets the attitude of the street, the result is trash talk, which some New Yorkers have elevated to an art form unto itself." "You ain't nothing." "You ain't nothing." "You can't do nothing to me." "I got you." "This is the place where all that garbage comes from." "You know what I'm saying?" "This isn't like..." "There's no patrol out here." "I didn't come here to make no friends." "I come to make enemies." "I can't compete against my friends, I compete against my enemies." "So all y'all know, I made a lot of enemies over the years." "If you ain't on my team, you got it coming." "If you ain't on my team..." "You just don't know how to respect another player." "You don't disrespect him off the court, but when the game starts, if he's on the other team and they tap it up, it's over with." "That's game!" "Get out of here!" "Let's go on the side and talk about it then, son." "I'll knock you out, nigga." "You crazy?" "And it seems like it's always on the brink of a fight, but it's really not." "If you're a true ballplayer, you might talk all that trash, but the bottom line is that's part of the game." "What the fuck?" "I hit the ball, though, Doc!" "You came over the back!" "They told you to brush your tooth." "You didn't, it fell out!" "You can't keep a tooth." "How we going to keep your word?" "I got one eye and a pocket full of money." "You got two eyes and you broke." "And a whole mouth of breath stink!" "You got two eyes and you broke!" "Whatever you pull out your pocket, I'll triple it!" "You play college ball." "I shouldn't have to tell you this!" "Fuck!" " How many times you going to say it?" " Until you learn it!" "Motherfucker!" "If it's on, it's on." "If I knock you down, I knock you down." "I'll push you into the gate." "I'll talk about your mother, your brother, your dog, your sister." "But after the game, it's a hug, a shake hand and back to being family." "That's what makes the games good." "Our favourite one of all time in the hood, is like, "Come on, man."" "I wanna play with girls, I go play with my sister." "Play some basketball!" "Couple of head fakes, you be out your sneakers." "You need new sneakers cos your feet ain't staying in front of me." "I'm so nice, it scares me." "A million-dollar move with a twopenny finish." "Bobbito, you used to be good, like you used to have a hairline." "Bobbito, it's gone." "It's over." "Your pockets is out." "Your hairline is gone." "It's over, Bobbito!" "Back to Bobbito." "Bobbito finished like his hairline." "Bobbito wants to dance." "He wants to hear bachata, merengue, salsa, nada!" "French?" "So you don't want no problems!" "French people don't fight!" "Let's go!" "No misses this time, Yugoslavia, something like Peja Stojakovic." "He's a foreigner." "He wants to know what love is." "Back to the foreigner!" "I want to know what love is!" "See, pick-up basketball has a lot to do with the people on the side watching." "Cos you learn that you ain't just playing for yourself." "You playing cos people on the side are talking about you real bad." "You know what I'm saying?" "And they not gonna stop talking about you real bad until you learn how to make it happen, learn how to become that person." "So it was always was about the crowd." "And not the big crowd." "It could be one person." "If I walk in the park with my girl, I ain't trying to leave by myself." "So you gotta be able to handle your business." "For the truly dedicated, basketball is a religion, and the park is our church." "There is no other location where so much joy can be shared, as well as frustration released." "This sacred ground has helped many a kid avoid the other street game that the inner city is infamous for." "Basketball was my life, and it's still my life." "Since I was small, I played with some legends." "I played in New York." "I played in a lot of street tournaments." "I played pro basketball in Puerto Rico for three years." "You know..." "The streets got a little bit out of me, and eventually, I ended up in here." "I played..." "JV." "I went to Paul Robeson." "I played pick-up basketball in Howard Projects and 55 Park." "Moe Kirby, St John's Park." "I went around and played." "I got put in here from following negative peers, not listening to my parents." "I got a weapon charge." "Most of the day while we in here, we locked in, you know?" "And it's like... you put a dog in a cage, and when you let him loose, he's so happy at being loose, that's how we are." "When they take you to the yard, basketball's like, "Now I can go release some stress."" "You know, "Good." "I don't have to do nothing negative today, because I played some ball."" "11, y'all. 11-8." "I play ball." "That's what I do." "So I like playing basketball any time or chance I get, from here, from home, I play." "People gave me rumours that jail ball is hard, they push you, scratch you, you gotta be tough to get on the court." "That's what was in my mind." "But when I came, I played, I seen everybody's the same." "We human beings." "We're here to play ball and have fun." "Back door, back door!" "Good shot!" "Jail basketball in the system is identical to what's happening out in the streets." "Identical." "It's basketball." "There's none of this no blood, no foul." "That's all myth." "Come on, you little chickenhead!" "You dribbled it!" "You dribbled it!" "I thought I was the only one!" " I thought I was the only one!" " You hit it." "He dribbled it!" "He dribbled the ball!" "He didn't drop it." "He dribbled the ball!" " You hit it." " No, I didn't." "There's four of us here." "Your ball, let's go." "There you go." "Good pass." "You put a ball in some of these kids' hands," "I don't care what their charges are, they're a ballplayer for that moment, just like you and your friends are and everybody else." "That murder charge, that multiple robbery charge, it's no longer in their head." "It's all about breaking you down and taking the ball to the hoop." "Even for that three seconds of activity, he forgot why he's really here." "All he knows is that he's just going at you." "Big difference, but when you continue that in the course of a day, that leads into multiple days, and into weeks and months, whatever, the violence has been down because of that." "It's a thing to get a relief off your mind that you in here." "To remind you that you're a little thing from the town." "Your wife might leave you, your mom and dad might die during your bid and all of that, but the love of the game is never gonna die, so these guys transcend that love for the game from the streets" "and parlay it over into the jail system where a lot of these guys get their status also." "Let's go." "Southside!" "Good D." " It's off." " Nice shot." " Where you from, kid?" " Southside!" "Southside, tell him." "Tell him." "I'm from the Southside." "Send help, send help!" "Send help, send help, send help!" "Was that with the left?" "Was that the left?" "Was that the left?" "In the streets, all you hear is "oohs" and "aahs"." "If you cross somebody over or if you dunk it on somebody, you're gonna hear "ooh, aah"." "Here, it's like "Ooh." "Oh, damn, do I have to watch my back now because I crossed this kid over and made him look crazy on the basketball court?"" "So if you're known in the jail, if you got respect, then, you know, you don't got to worry about that." "You go out there and you bust their ass, do what you gotta do and you play ball." "You don't have to be a thug." "If you're a ballplayer, you're gonna get just as much props in jail being able to rock the ball as you would if you were gonna cut somebody or stab somebody or whatever in jail." "The competition is there, the skill level is there, and the desire to get better is there, regardless of the challenges awaiting for the future as far as if you're ever gonna go home or if you're going upstate." "We have 1,700 of the worst inmates in this camp in New York City." "And it seems to be a positive factor in what we're trying to accomplish, and it's all done with one little round ball." "It's weird, ain't it?" "Whether inside a prison yard, or out in the park, the city court is about inclusion, a place that is free for everyone, no matter the age, gender, religion, salary or race." "We don't argue, we don't curse at each other, nobody come here and steal nothing." "It's nice." "Anybody can come on down and play." "Anybody." "We don't have no favourites." "That's what I love about the game." "Whether you're big, small, white, black, brown, Chinese, size, colour, weight, it doesn't matter." "If you're good people, you come, Saturdays, Sundays from nine to twelve, it's like religious." "We meet here." "We've played for 20 years, most of us." "We eat, we run off our mouths at each other, we play ball." "This is our meeting ground." "Don't have to call no one, don't have to send text messages or leave Facebook messages." "We all know where the stomping ground is at." "Hopefully word of mouth transfers around and the people come." "Everybody is welcome." "It's like a family." "This is what I love coming out here for, to play ball with my friends." "You knew my big brother, I knew your mother, I knew your cousin." "So it was really a close-knit community." "Even though I was 13 and you might've been 18, we made the connection through pick-up." "You see this cage right here?" "This court was my crib." "To me, this park was my family growing up." "They changed my diapers in this park." "So when I say West 4th Street raised me, it literally raised me." "And they would lock me in the park cos I was still playing at 2am." "And for me to get out and go home, I had to climb over the fence." "That was my life." "I went to sleep playing basketball, I woke up, 10am, I was back here at the courts." "So the guys who played here were my parents, my dad, my mom." "They helped raise me to be the man and the player that I am today." "The local park can be your home away from home." "It can also be a tough environment where kids learn that nothing is given, everything is earned." "Rock is over there with the ball." "See?" "Big guys got the court, you played on the little side court if you was lucky." "Make sure your ball don't go on the court, cos they'll take your ball and make you sit down." "Or they want to play with your ball, and you got to sit there." "The only way you can think of getting a run is to be like, "I'm going home."" "I didn't get on the main court until I was, like, 15 years old." "I never played on the main court." "Think about this." "I was first team All-American, I played at the University of North Carolina," "I'm an NBA champion, and never played on one court in my own building until I was 14, 15." "We had to play on the monkey bars because we weren't good enough." "My most vivid memory ever about basketball was not winning a championship, not North Carolina, it was the first day I won on a three-on-three in the back, because I graduated." "It was like I graduated from the little boy court to the man court." "I knew I was official then." "I knew I could go to any borough, anywhere and play." "There were so many players that were better than me, it was ridiculous." "I learned from them, from playing against them." "I used to go home every night pissing blood from being elbowed in my kidneys." "That's how rough they played." "I remember as a kid they used to always say, "You'll never be shit."" "By them telling me I'd never be shit, it was no greater motivating factor." "I'd work hard." "I'd dribble up and down the court a hundred times." "Shooting at one end, dribble back the other way." "Shooting, you know." "If somebody walked by and saw me, they thought I was crazy cos I was talking to myself, till I got to the point where I couldn't guard me." "In my mind, I couldn't stop me!" "The thing about pick-up is that a lot goes." "There's no ref." "You know I'm saying?" "So you got to hold your own and there's a lot going on that would normally be called in a game." "So guys that can't guard you, they'll resort to all types of methods that are illegal in tournament play." "But you can't bitch up and quit and stop because you getting a little physical, or you getting threatened." "I had a guy telling me that," ""Yo, man." "Yeah, you keep thinking you can just take me like that," "I'm gonna shoot you."" "And I was like, "You're going to shoot me?"" "But they'll do anything to try to get in your head, try to intimidate you, and get you to back down." "But the bottom line is that, yo, you gotta..." "For this, you'll lay your life down." "I wanted somebody guarding me." "I wanted somebody pushing me." "I wanted to try to have you take my heart." "I wanted to test my chest against your chest." "I wanted to find out who was the most man." "I wanted to leave that day saying, "That punk can't guard me."" "I wanted to be a gorilla in the game." "What's up?" "Wait, wait, wait." "Basketball ain't playing." "It ain't funny." "You're laughing, joking and acting silly." "That ain't real basketball." "I want to see you..." "Street basketball is playing real hard." "Real hard!" "Guarding your man real close, not letting him shoot the ball." "You understand?" "If it's necessary on your basket, elbow him and elbow him and move him out your way." " Tell them, Pee Wee!" " Play real hard." "Play hard." "Street basketball ain't laughing and joking." "It's getting on your man, playing tough, setting picks and playing real hard." "So y'all three play y'all three, but this time, play hard." "I don't want to see nobody laughing, OK?" "If you don't know what it is to leave a court crying or to leave a basketball court bleeding, then you don't understand basketball." "Win by all means necessary, you know what I mean?" "That's what makes the playgrounds of New York so tough." "So you learn how to play harder." "When you think you down, you not really down." "And you look, you see like 50 people on the sideline, you gotta sign your name on the chalk on the floor to be next." "That's when you know you gotta play, and you bring that to the League." "We can be down one, two, going into the fourth quarter, two minutes left, and I'm back in the hood." "I'm back playing a pick-up." "I've done it here, so I can do it in this situation." "I grew up playing playground basketball." "And playground basketball, you fought for the court." "When you got on, whether you were first one there in the park in the morning or whether somebody lost and then you got on, you tried to stay on the duration of the day." "Who got next?" "You got five?" "When someone calls "next", they become the captain of the next game, responsible for picking a team and making sure they actually get on the court." "If you had no game, you wouldn't call next." "You'd stand there and watch." "You wouldn't want to come out on the battlefield." "Cos that's what it was like, a battlefield." "If you came to the park and they don't know your name, your game, they'd be like, "You got next after next."" "Then when your next after next come up, they'd be," ""You ain't have next." "My man had next." "He just went to go get his sneakers."" "So by the time you get next, it'd be the next day." "You know how long I had to wait to play?" "Nigga, I'm 24 now." "I just started about two, three years ago, because of my height." "Not because of my age, because of my height!" "Man, I remember coming to the park and I couldn't buy a next." "I'd be waiting ten nexts, then I got next and somebody would come in there with a name, he'd take my next." "You can't come in real shy and humble, like, "Hey, guys, who has next?"" "You're never gonna get on the court." "Someone will come from the handball court, from the building across the street." ""No, listen, I had next." "You chill."" "If you're not known, you're going to be waiting for a while." "Like, that's just how it is." "I never had next." "I was on the team as soon as I walked into the park." "They'd have a team and the guy would say, "You chucked, we got him."" "You know? "You not playing." "We don't want you, we got Fly!"" "I very rarely had to call next, cos when they see me... ..you already know what it was." "If there's a certain guy that runs that block, and you know he just walked in the park, that guy got next." "Because you don't want no problems with him." "You just better hope he picks you." "If he likes you, you're on his good side." "You won't have a problem and you'll be playing all day." "You'll be having next every single day, every time." "My thing was, just to become good enough to where every next," "I'm a part of that next." "If we lose, I'm a part of the next." "You come here and say, "Who's got next?"" "One person will have the next, you say, "Do you have your five?"" "And he says, "Yeah, I got five."" "But you're the only person standing there, so how do you have five?" ""Oh, I got it, I got it."" "So when the game that they're playing is finished, the losing five, he picks up the four." "So he had his five, it's just that you wasn't in it." "I'm trying..." "Look." "I'm fighting for next right now, look." "And I'm somebody!" "Let's see if I get there." "I might be shunned out." "I might be too old." "Book." "We on now?" "Right now, right now?" "So I guess I got picked up!" "So I'll be right back." "Pray for me." "I have an older brother, so I was kind of like a tomboy, always following him around." "I would go to the parks with him and all the other guys, and I would be the only girl." "And I really thought I was the only girl in America playing basketball." "There weren't a lot of girls in my neighbourhood playing, so I had to play with the boys." "About 95% of the time I was playing with all boys." "It's rough." "They're looking at you like either they only wanna pick you up cos they need to fill the team, or they're wondering if you're good or not." "So I was proving myself a lot." "I kind of established myself playing everywhere I can." "Going to this park, that park, wherever, in Brooklyn, the Bronx, in Harlem, it doesn't matter." "So now if I call next, I might see a couple of the dudes that I know and they'll be like, "You gotta pick her, she's nice."" "As far as when I started coming up, they'll be like, "Oh, that's a girl." I'm like, "Alright."" "So when I get on the court, I'm gonna crack you!" "We use a men's ball because we're playing with the men." "We can't be like, "I got next but I wanna use a girl ball."" "No, you gonna play with a men's ball if you gonna play with the men." "For most of my life, I've played with boys and men pick-up." "And it's different, cos sometimes they are easy on us, being women, but then sometimes you have the ones that go extra hard." "If there was a good run, you'd have to be a true baller, and it doesn't matter where you're at and you'll just play." "I love it either way cos I talk smack to them. "You ain't shit!" "Guard up!"" "They like that, I like it, so it's fun." "They like, "I can beat you one on one." That's the crazy pick-up line." "So yes, don't keep using that line, we already know it!" "A lot of guys now are getting crossed over from females, so we're getting that respect." "Like I said, we have to prove a point that we can handle with the guys." "I love playing with men, cos it's gonna help your game." "Even if it's young high school boys, college men, older men." "No matter what, men are physically stronger, they jump higher, quicker, whatever, so if you can keep up with a man, or you can do anything against the men playing pick-up, it'd be that much easier when you play the women." "I'll come outside dressed as a girl." "Well, I'm a girl, but there's a difference." "Dressed as a girl, looking nice, and one of my girlfriends that I'm with, she doesn't play basketball, she'll make a gesture like," ""I bet you she'll beat you one on one, or I'll bet you she'll outshoot you."" "And they look at me and they're like, "Nah."" "They look at me and they're like, "Nah, never!"" "So they're like, "I'll put this up, I'll put 20 up, 40 up," "I'll put whatever you got in your pocket up."" "I'm quiet cos I already know I got the ratchet, remember, so I'm like, "OK!"" "Then they put it up, we'll do the shooting, and then they're like," ""OK." "We can't play with her no more."" "She's in disguise." "Bronx-born Corey "Homicide" Williams has been obliterating playground competition for years." "As a result, the undrafted guard was invited to the Toronto Raptors camp in 2005, where he was the last player cut." "A champion in the NBA D-League and an MVP in Australia's pro league," "Homicide made it because pick-up got him there." "Claremont Park was where I started my basketball." "I started late." "I started at 13." "I was so bad of a player that if there were ten players on the court, me included, and they were picking up teams, they would look on Webster Avenue to see if there were any other players coming." "This way they wouldn't be able to pick me." "That's how bad it was, and I'm dead serious out there, people." "Trust me when I tell you, that's how bad I was." "I was a nobody when I started out here." "College didn't help me at all." "I just got a degree." "They helped me fundamentally, but as far as reputations, didn't help me at all." "I'd read stuff online that talked about guys getting an opportunity in this game by dominating on the playgrounds." "Coaches were coming." "Recruiters would come." "Guys would get gigs overseas or NBA guys." "I was so naive and didn't have anybody at that point in my life, whether it was coaches or agents, older people, mentors, that told me, "We can help you out."" "I didn't have that." "Therefore, all I had was the park." "I would shoot in parks at night-time." "I would shoot in parks in the rain." "I would dribble in the rain." "I was that focused on making it." "I said to myself," ""Maybe I can get a shot at my dream by dominating these parks."" "So what I did was, I'm going to go to these playgrounds and whoever is the man there at that point in time," "I'm going to destroy him." "I'm going to pick him up on defence and make sure he's guarding me on offence." "I'm going to kill him and the rest are going to fall in line." "So in order to be the best, you're going to have to take them down and that's going to take a while." "It definitely took a while, but I caught them!" "I definitely caught them!" "Don't let nobody tell you street basketball, you can't get nothing out of this because that's not true." "I'm living proof that it can happen, and I'm still doing it." "A dude from the streets?" "Come on, man!" "It can happen if you put your work in." "To earn a city-wide rep, ballplayers have to hunt down competition outside their local park." "Over the course of 75 days, Kevin Couliau and I did exactly this, playing in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island." "Of all the courts we hit, one is more recognised for pick-up than any other." "West 4th St." "Since the early 1960s," "The Cage has been perhaps the most consistent place to find run, not just in New York, but in the world." "Best pick-up, I'd say West 4th." " West 4th." " West 4th." "West 4th Street, coming off that D train." "You could stop by there any time of day, even before they set up for the tournament and after they break down you can find people playing pick-up," "We'd play against guys on their lunch break, but then there were guys that I guess they were out of work, but they were nice in ball!" "What I love about West 4th Street is you get that whole crowd." "You get the West Village crowd, you get the tourists coming through." "It was right there at the subway stop, with people coming up and down those stairs." "And it's so small." "It's this little bandbox." "It's kind of the front porch of the game in a way." "So yeah, the hardcore ballers know where to find it, but that's great basketball that people who are just flowing through New York can get a chance to really get a taste of it." "That nigga is dirty, yo!" "You fucking making a fancy call." "This is the real fucking world!" "This is the real world, nigga!" "The arguments would bubble up, and the tourists would take out their cameras to show the people back in Nebraska, "We saw this argument!"" "No, no, he hit the ball!" "And you hit it like this!" "It was like playing what a lot of people call jail ball." "But it's not jail ball, it's just tough basketball." "Anybody who was anybody in New York City came to play in this park." "Not just the tournament, but pick-up ball." "You never knew who would be out there." "That's just a park in the middle of New York City." "You never know who would be there playing." "And I would be there, like, for weeks at a time, every day." "That was the main run." "NBA stars have been making unannounced cameos at West 4th since the 1970s, and we were lucky enough to have our cameras on hand when the Milwaukee Bucks' Brandon Jennings showed up one afternoon." "I was with my friend Kris." "We stopped by, he was like, "Here's West 4th."" "I was, like, "Stop the car, let me get out, give me some basketball shoes and go out there and hoop!"" "Brandon Jennings is killing them!" "A lot of guys played pick-up in this park." "From the Chris Mullins, to the Kenny Andersons," "Stephon Marburys, Anthony Masons, the Rod Stricklands." "Anybody who was anybody growing up in New York City." "You got Fly Williams, you know." "You got those guys before me playing here." "I started playing ball on West 4th Street 1984." "I asked to play and they chumped me." "First time, no, I couldn't even play." "Then a white guy, his name was Shocklee, he put me down." "We won all day." "And every time I came out the train station," "I was picked and that was it." "They've been calling me the King of West 4th, the Mayor, the Court Jester." "When I got shot in my leg, I had to change my game." "So now I'm just like, they say, the court coordinator." "At no time do we play half-court, unless it's not enough men." "It could be ten scrubs." "We're going to play a full court." "You know what to do, man." "We out here all the time." "I might yell, but they know I'm only trying to encourage them." "Play some D, bitch!" "Send him to the middle, Butter." "Get him now!" "Come on!" "I got it!" "Don't worry, I got it!" "What the fuck you waiting for?" "Let's go!" "Off the glass, Ray!" "I got two back here." "One day, when we played, and we won 25 games." "That's the record out here." "That's the record." "I ain't saying I'm a superhero, but I played all 25." "I've been coming to West 4th Street since I was 22." "Next month I'll be 48." "So that's 26 years, every summer, I spend down at this park." "I didn't come here until my early 20s." "I didn't think I was good enough to come to West 4th and play." "One day I said, "I'm going to West 4th, I'm gonna try to get down."" "Before I got on the court, when they were down one side," "I was down the other side, bam, bam." "When they went down that way," "I went down that way, bam, just letting everybody know, bam." "And the first dude I met, Sherman, I remember him yelling," ""Uh-oh, we got a white boy dunking!"" ""We got a white boy dunking." "He's only six feet!"" ""We got a white boy dunking!" And that's how I first met Sherm." "The next game I got on, and it's been heaven ever since." "Now, whenever there's a game, there's people around the whole fence, which means it's show time." "You can show off and do something, and me being a little white guy, getting out there with all the brothers and everything," "I make one little move, and the fence starts rattling." "And they want to know who that little white dude is." "And I don't look 49, but I'm old." "Ankle braces, a knee brace, and it happens all the time." "They put the worst guy on me, bam, bam." ""Yo, switch, let me get him."" "Bam, bam. "Yo, let me get him."" "Bam, bam." "Now they're yelling at each other," ""Yo, put your hand in his face!" "My hand is in his face!"" ""I'm giving him a high five every time he shoots right in my face!"" "And to me, it's hysterical, because it happens all the time and I look forward to that, because it makes me feel good and I'm busting these young kids up, who look at me at first saying, "Look at this old guy."" "Good shot, Jack." "I never played like a white boy." "The white guys didn't like playing with me, the black guys loved playing with me." "I did all that fancy shit like that." "I put the ball around a white dude, he wanted to kill me." "I put the ball around a black dude, he'll say, "Yo, that's my boy, man!" "You see what he just did?" It's crazy." "Jack Ryan, he could dribble just like somebody black, like he came out the hood." "And then he shoots the ball exceptionally well." "It didn't end yet, I'm still going, 49." "When I'm 59, I'll be out here." " Jack Ryan!" "Jumpshot!" " Jack Ryan!" " Hello!" " Jumpshot and teeth!" "And teeth!" "Google it fast, somebody!" " Oh, my God!" " Another one!" "Another one!" "OK, so we know he can shoot." "So what do you do when you have a man who can shoot?" " He's not going to miss!" " There's another one." "Thank you, Nero!" "Thank you." "Jack Ryan, shooter!" "His name's Ryan." "He gets buckets!" "They call him Black Jack cos he's an ace in the hole." "Last name is Net!" "I swear!" " First name All." " Really?" " Look, another one!" " What are you all doing?" "Come on, right?" "I saw him at a game, a halftime show with his daughter." "He had the whole crowd on their feet!" "And he didn't take a single shot!" "Everybody knows Jack Ryan." "Everybody." "That's the best eight-letter name I've ever heard in my life!" "Oh, shit, I missed." "Some legends have earned reps in the multiple parks, but only one playground player, Earl Manigault, AKA the Goat, has ever had a court dedicated in his name." "His impact on the community was monumental, in more ways than one." "When I moved to this neighbourhood in 1968, I was ten years old." "I used to come out to the park." "At that point, it was a regular park." "Earl Manigault did live in this neighbourhood, but I didn't know of him." "He was dunking on Lew Alcindor in the other park." "Lew Alcindor, AKA Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the all-time leading scorer in NBA history, once said," ""Earl Manigault was the best player his size in the history of New York City."" "He says, "Earl, show him what you can do," He says, "No, man." "Come on, man."" "He says, "Come on, show him, show him."" "So he goes back under the basket..." "Now, he's 13." "Without a step goes straight up and throws it down with two hands." "I said, "Earl, Earl." "Forget it."" "During the late '50s and early '60s, 6'1" Earl Manigault dominated Harlem's playgrounds." "Known as the Goat, he once cuffed it on three 6'8" defenders underneath the basket, causing the crowd to go in a frenzy." "People threw their chairs on the court, stopping the game for five minutes." "They used to knock him off balance before he jumped." "He jumped so high he could straighten his body out in the air and shoot the jump shot." "That's height." "That's really jumping." "Most guys get up that high and can't do anything." "But he would straighten out his body in the air, like a dog shuffling to get the water off his body." "He had one of the best bank shots back in those days that I've ever seen." "Unfortunately, the inventor of the double dunk became addicted to heroin, turned to crime to support his habit, and wound up in and out of jail." "By 1970, the 25-year-old had become one of the biggest what-ifs in street history." "Now, in 1973, Earl came to the park." "I remember the very first day when Earl was at this park right here, he dunked from the foul line." "My friend blocked his shot, and he looked towards us and he started bragging," ""I just blocked the Goat's shot!"" "And before you know it, he turned around, and Earl was coming down with two hands, like one foot from the foul line, and just threw it in his face." "The next summer, the park transformed." "Earl basically brought Harlem and the Rucker down to this park." "Then they started running the tournament in 1974, and that's how the park transformed from a regular park to, basically, Rucker Junior." "You could lose your reputation in one day at Goat Park." "And then Goat would be sitting out there." "He act like he's not watching you, so don't get your behind busted in Goat cos he's gonna tell you about it later on." ""Oh, man, that guy was serving you up." "Yeah."" "I grew up without a father, and Earl Manigault was like a father." "People talk about Earl Manigault could jump high and do these moves, but Earl Manigault was a great human being, man." "Earl Manigault was a father to the neighbourhood." "If something was wrong, Earl Manigault, he never looked down on anybody's situation." "You could always talk to Earl." "And Earl really helped people beyond basketball." "I can tell that he wanted me to go straight, and try to make it to the pros." "He don't want me to mess up like some people out here." "When I need something, he can lend it to me." "Like, or if I'm in trouble, he'll help me out." "If I have a problem, you know, he'll see me about it." "He's like a father to some people who don't have fathers." "He really gave back to the community in this park." "That's why it's the Goat Park." "I've been here this summer and I've seen people come out here every day playing." "You go on the other court, Mexican people playing basketball." "We got everybody playing basketball." "Little kids playing." "There's been so many players that come through here, reppin' their hood." "It's not just New York City, either." "Philadelphia, Chicago, everybody wants to come and play in this park." "Goat Park is always gonna have a big part in everybody's hearts, and in basketball in New York City in general." "Hello, my name is Jamel." "My last name is Brown." "We come here every Friday from about three o'clock until about 11 o'clock at night." "They're from Brooklyn, they're from Queens, they're from the Bronx, from Staten Island." "You see, all the deaf people, they can play." "It's not the same like hearing." "All deaf people, they can't do it." "They'll try." "They'll try to play hard." "To keep score, what you do is you have to, number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten." "That's all counting with sign language." "If you see the call to "travel" and "carry", you have to learn, because with the deaf, you have to do sign language." "It's really, really hard." "It's really hard." "All deaf people love to play it all day, all night." "Never miss a game." "I'm still running." "I'm still running to go play basketball." "All I want to do." "All my life." "You have to work together with not-disabled people." "You have to stay out of trouble." "Whether it's Each One Teach One, Rikers, Mullaly, Marine or Mt Morris, when peace of mind cannot be found, the basketball court provides immediate sanctuary." "You can play high school or college for four years." "You can play pro for a decade." "You can play pick-up for life." "It is the only constant in a true ballplayer's heart, the highest truth in b-ball, period." "New York City pick-up basketball is the essence of basketball." "I don't know if you can be a basketball player without experiencing pick-up basketball." "I had ten surgeries." "I have a hip replacement." "I have a partial knee replacement." "I had two back surgeries." "I had four foot surgeries." "A lot of people don't know that, so..." "And I'm still out here." "If that's not passion enough for you, then I don't know what is." "My girl gets mad at me, my family gets mad at me." "Saturdays and Sundays, all of us, the summer, this is where we at." "It's like a drug, it's just in you." "You know where to be at." "If you're not here, something's wrong." "People come looking for you, calling you, "Where's he at?"" "That's the way it is out here." "West 4th is, like, my get high." "Growing up, I never smoked, I never drink." "I never been high in my life, my whole entire life." "So basketball was, like, my getaway." "There's nothing like West 4th Street to me." "There was never a moment in my career where I stepped away from the game, from West 4th Street." "Because the West 4th Street game is in here." "It's here." "This is like the other love that I got at home." "You know, honestly." "It's been with me all my life." "It's still with me all my life." "And the love that I got for it, and the dedication, because that's the real reason why I'm still playing, because I love it." "But you also got to put time into work." "I love basketball." "I could do it all day long." "My friends wanted to go do something else, I'd go to the courts." "Girls didn't come before basketball." "The only thing that came before basketball was going to school." "To this day, if I hear the ball bounce, I get chills." "I wanna go play." "If I walk in a park and I see a crowd, and I'm watching a hype game," "I wanna lace up my sneakers and get on there." "How can I express this?" "Mucho love, you know." "Mucho love for this game." "Dr James Naismith, years after inventing the sport and looking back at what he had created, once asserted that basketball was not a game that can be coached." "It could only be played." "His goal wasn't entertainment." "He wanted to change lives by providing a physical and spiritual outlet that would positively affect society as a whole." "In this regard, pick-up basketball is the truest essence and fulfilment of the good doctor's vision of what the sport could and should be." "The voluntary action is completely accessible to all, manifesting expressions of beauty, freedom and spirituality." "No one in the world earns a living by playing pick-up outdoors." "Anyone who steps on the asphalt, the concrete, the blacktop, does so wholeheartedly... for the love." "Naismith would be proud." "Jeremy!" "Shoot it!" "Want me to teach you how to Dougie?" "I got a new rule for us." "Any park that we go to that's empty, we set the tripod wide, and me and you play one on one to three." "Original Rucker!" "I blocked his shot, so that's why the ball went in." "Another real win." "Straus Playground was mine!" "Three-one!" "I lose again." "Can't let ze Frenchman, AKA Baguette, beat me." "Today, ze Frenchman lost." "Baguette!" "Good move, good move!" "We tied the series up." "That's how we doing it today, you know what I mean?" "I think that was the most physical game we've played yet." "Tough one, I was down two-zip." "Had to come back strong to represent Harlem." "Kevin Couliau, sorry I had to take you out." "Peace." " BX, man!" " Five all." "Just so you know, I won that last game." "Very tough battle." "Seven to five, favour Puerto Rico." "Kevin wants a rematch." "I have the advantage." "He doesn't play in the dark." "One up!" "I won, despite an unfair Bobbito, trying to play really physical with me." "He tried to do some wrestling instead of basketball." "No, it's getting physical." "It's been a long summer." "I'm tired of him scoring." "Shit!" "So we got to give him a couple of elbows." "Make him tough." "And he still won." "What can I do?" "We got the finals today." "Kevin Couliau versus Bobbito Garcia." "Doin' It In the Park summer-long one-on-one championship!" "Series is tied eight-eight." "We brought it to Rucker Park, the world's most famous, legendary outdoor court." "This is the Mecca right here." "And we're playing one on one with nobody watching." "We're going to see what happens, France versus Puerto Rico!" "Boricua!" "Subtitles by IMS"