Paul Volponi - Streetball Is Life

Streetball Is Life

The game of basketball has been everything to me. My place of refuge, place Ive always gone where
I needed comfort and peace. Its been the site
of intense pain and the most intense feelings of joy
and satisfaction. Its a relationship that has evolved over time, giving me the greatest
respect and love for the game.

Michael Jordan, six-time NBA champion

Street basketball is a society of its own. Dont be fooled by the games often loose and unorganized appearance. It doesnt matter that the participants are usually un-uniformed or even playing shirts versus skins. I urge you to look closer with a more discerning eye. If you do, youll discover that the games inner workings and social rules are highly structured. Because streetball is mostly played without referees or authority figures, the players themselves govern the on-court action, as well as what happens on the sidelines. They control what goes on inside the painted lines of the asphalt court and the chain-link fence surrounding a ball yard. They establish their local constitution, or park rules, in various wayssometimes through democratic consensus and other times through the singular force of will of a dominant player.

To thrive and survive in a streetball yard, you need to develop and sharpen a wide array of skills. Many of those skills have nothing to do with ball handling, rebounding, and shooting. Instead, they are advanced social skills. Your ability to communicate, negotiate, problem solve, and deescalate potential conflicts are top among them. Most ballers can confidently look back at their time on a court and point to something in their current livesa job, a relationship, an achievementthat theyve gained through the skills honed while playing streetball. I proudly include myself among them.

Of course, my story is really our story. Thats because streetballers enjoy what is very much a shared experience. It also means that the greatest ballers to ever walk onto the blacktoplegends with tags such as Dr. J, Black Mamba, Helicopter, Hawk, The Goat, Destroyer, Hot Sauce, Bone Collector, The Professor, and Big Dipperhave all to some extent traveled paths similar to the rest of us.

At this collective storys conclusion, youll learn about the lives of some of these legends, as well as some of the famed ball yards, films, literature, fashion, commerce, and language spawned by streetball culture. And, of course, youll learn how streetball enhances the skills needed to succeed in life.

So the next time someone scowls at you and asks, Are you going to waste your time playing ball again today? your uplifting reply can be, Waste my time? No. Im about to participate in and become part of a complex society of ever-shifting tribes [teams] while I sharpen a wide array of skills to enhance my future.

I fell in love with basketball at sixteen. Not with watching it on TV or wearing a numbered jersey with my name arching across the back. Im talking about the actual game. Becoming part of the rhythm and flow of ten players searching for their place in something that lives and breathes. Something that strives to move with one mind. One goal. One passion. To be a member of the winning squad and stay on the court, sending the losers to the end of a long line of fresh opponents waiting for the next game.

Other than those players waiting to get onto the court, there were no crowds. No spectators beyond occasional passersby whod put down their grocery bags for a moment to stare at the intense conflict on the other side of a chain-link fence. The lack of cheers and adulation didnt matter, though. Those were never the motivation. Streetball is strictly fueled by pride and desire. And those undocumented battles were mostly contested with the same ferocity as the NBA finals.

When the game seduced me, LeBron James hadnt been born yet, Kobe Bryant was still in diapers, and nobody wanted to be like Mike because Michael Jordan was about to be cut from his high schools varsity basketball team and sent to the JV squad.

I wanted somebody pushing me. I wanted to have you try to take my heart. I wanted to test my chest against your chest.... If you dont know what it is to leave a basketball court crying. If you dont know what it is to leave a basketball court bleeding. Then you dont really understand basketball. Richard Pee Wee Kirkland, streetball icon

There was never a realistic thought of becoming a pro or even being offered a college scholarship. The rock rarely bounces that way for streetballers. Instead, we play out of an overwhelming need to express ourselves and to compete against anyone with the guts to enter the park. Those who dont understand us see this passion as a dead end, a waste of time and energy without a tangible payoff. Our critics mistakenly value the perceived destination over the enlightening journey.

Streetballers are always searching for their Nirvanaa streetball paradise where the competition and commitment to the game reflects their own. I found mine at a place called the Proving Ground during the summer I graduated high school.

The Proving Ground was a ball yard where teens knocked heads against grown menmostly cops, firemen, and construction and sanitation workers who gladly leveraged their considerable strength and weight against yours. There were no simple fouls in this particular version of streetball, just hits delivered so hard that they resembled felonies.