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Bill Simmons' Brain: Simmons on the joy of pickup basketball -
Any pickup-basketball regular battles an ongoing dilemma: What’s it worth to keep playing for as long as possible? If it’s super-crowded and you want to stay on the court for a few games, you might suck it up and jump on a team with Pickup Carmelo or Pickup Kobe — a.k.a. a one-on-one guy who will shoot half your team’s shots, only he’s good enough that you might be able to ride him for two straight hours. But if it’s less crowded? You take your chances with people who are fun to play with — a.k.a. unselfish guys who run the floor, know how to pass and cut, keep the ball moving, don’t take stupid transition shots, and generally know what they’re doing.
And ideally, this is what happens: A few times per year, you’ll find the right four guys on a crowded day, everything will click, you’ll turn into the ‘77 Blazers, and you end up laying the smack down, 2013 Heat–style, for six or seven straight.
It’s just the best day you can have. It’s the greatest. You limp out of there beaming, and when your wife or girlfriend asks you later that night why you’re so damned happy, you can’t even properly explain it. How can you explain total bliss? I love playing basketball — even now, with my body breaking down and my game decaying to alarming degrees — if only because it’s one of the few places left on earth where you can connect with total strangers like that. Age doesn’t matter, backgrounds don’t matter, nothing matters. You have four teammates, they can be anybody, and you either know how to click with them or you don’t.
(Source: grantland.com)
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50 Things That Turn 50 in 2013 -
- Beatlemania
- The Computer Mouse
- Weight Watchers
- Push-Button Telephones
- Michael Jordan, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt…
- Marvel’s The Avengers
- The X-Men
- Smiley Face
- The Rolling Stones
- “Blowin’ In The Wind” - Bob Dylan
- “Surfin’ Usa” - The Beach Boys
- Compact Cassettes
- Zip Codes
- Tennis For Women
- The Fugitive
- The Great Train Robbery
- Hang-Gliding
- Hover Mowers
- Hypertext
- “I Have A Dream”
- “Segregation Forever”
- “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”
- The Election Of Pope Paul Vi
- Iron Man
- Kenya
- Dead-Donor Kidney Transplants
- Lava Lamps
- Cleopatra
- The Alphanumeric APS2
- Lilies Of The Field
- Lamborghini
- Women In Space
- The Eruption Of Mount Agung
- Modesty Blaise
- “Be My Baby” - The Ronettes
- Nanoseconds
- The Killing Of Medgar Evers
- The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
- The Nutty Professor
- Fellini’s 8 ½
- The Profumo Affair
- The Most Peaceful Violent Protest In History
- Skateboarding
- Science Of Being And Art Of Living
- The Birds
- Astro Boy
- Zanzibar
- “Pop Art” At The Guggenheim
- The JFK Assassination
- Doctor Who
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