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An Aging Rookie
It's often said of rookies who have graduated from the college hardwood to NBA arenas that they have to wait for the game to "slow down" before they can feel comfortable with a basketball in their hands. The pros are simply bigger, stronger and quicker than anything these youngsters have experienced during their college years. The game is way more intense.
Rejoining my old b-ball buddies at the Anderson school gym the other night, I felt a little like one of those rookies -- although I don't think the game could slow down any more than it has over the past decade and still resemble basketball. Intense is not exactly the word I would use to describe what goes on here.
And I don't think I have to tell you that is a good thing.
Some things haven't changed: J.D. still runs the court like a madman, consistently scoring on fast-break layups; his brother, D.D. still has that little hook shot and a reliable mid-range jumper; and J.Y. (AKA Sleight-of-Hand) still can drive the lane for his patented scoop shot. It's just all done now in slow-motion now; they're all in their 50s, after all.
So I can't say that my re-entry into "competitive" basketball was all that daunting. We did play full court, however, so there was plenty of running involved. And the opposing team featured a mix of twentysomethings along with a few greybeards, so there were flashes of athleticism to contend with. Plus, we didn't have much in the way of reserves, so I ended up sitting down for only about 10 minutes during the two hours we had the court.
I think I did OK, though. Four of 12 from the field, a handful of assists, a handful of turnovers, an occasional rebound. But there was one moment early on that really made me wonder whether I belonged out there. I was posting up my defender down near the baseline, and when the pass came my way, I could hear my brain telling my arms to reach out to corral it, but my arms weren't listening. The ball bounced harmlessly out of bounds and D.D. gave me a look that seemed to suggest that I save future indications of dementia for other venues.
At home later that night, I waited for my body to react to the punishment it had received. It didn't take long. My knees, ankles and hips had begun a vigorous protest by the time I collapsed into bed, and for the next few days they continued to complain. Less than a week later, though, I felt pretty good (yoga and arnica work wonders) and a second round of hoops last week delivered less of a body blow than the first. My endurance has been fine, and the knees are holding up pretty well so far.
So I'm looking forward to getting after it again tomorrow night. I'm feeling less like a rookie already.
Me and Nat Hickey
On wintry Saturday mornings in my youth, I would line up with neighbor kids outside the gym at my grade school, waiting for one of the local teens to let us in for a couple hours of slightly supervised basketball chaos. We'd practice dribbling and passing and shooting layups and then finish up with a free-for-all game designed to put all those drills into practice but typically ended up with guys dribbling around mindlessly before hoisting up prayers that, if they were answered, rattled around the rim and dropped through. It was great.
Ever since that time, now more than a half-century gone, I've been entranced whenever I stepped out onto a basketball court. It's just something about the clean lines, the squeaky hardwood, and the orange-rimmed hoops that invites me to revisit those days when I could reliably bury that mid-range jumper under duress.
I was recalling those emotions Tuesday, when I spent a pleasant hour shooting hoops at a big gym in the western suburbs where you don't have to wait outside for somebody to let you in. The court here is clean and wide, with glass backboards and rims that aren't bent, and the basketballs aren't all slippery and worn, like the ones I grew up with. But on this weekday afternoon it's full of kids, burning off nervous energy. At one end of the court, six burly guys sweat and grunt their way through some primitive form of dribble-shoot-rebound-repeat. At the other, a collection of giggling high school girls in green-and-white jerseys run through some drills.
There are, thankfully, four other hoops and backboards on the sidewalls, so there's enough room for me to work on my shot. Slow and gradual at first, just a gentle rising from the floor and a flick of the wrist. Then more active, chasing down an errant shot and dribbling quickly (relatively) to my left before a quick (relatively) stop and, pushing hard off the floor and releasing the ball in a gentle arc toward the hoop. Swish. This is OK, I'm thinking. The knee is holding up, my shots are falling. I'm feeling like I'm maybe 50 again.
Later, I look this up out of curiosity: The oldest player ever to get on the court in a professional basketball game was Nat Hickey, and he was two days shy of his 46th birthday. Hickey was the coach of the Providence Steamrollers and on January 28, 1948, he put himself into a game. He missed all six of his shots and committed five personal fouls.
Hickey was 14 years younger than I am.
I'm not thinking about competing at even the level of 1948 pre-NBA basketball, when two-hand set shots ruled and the game was more horizontal than vertical. And, frankly, the chances are that a couple of the guys I'll be going up against in a couple of weeks will actually be older than me. Still, a day after my pretty moderate workout, my knees are tweaky, my quads are aching and even my ankles are sore. It occurs to me, briefly, that this could qualify as craziness.
Danger Signs?
I had an interesting revelation last week. After a long absence, I headed downstairs to the gym after work on Tuesday and dragged myself through about a 45-minute workout, including a stint on my old nemesis, the Elliptical Death Machine, and a trip to The Pit, where I got reacquainted with some heavy (for me) iron.
A week has passed and I've only just recovered, hence the revelation: My morning body-weight and kettlebell routine is way too wimpy to be doing me much good, if soreness is any measure of workout goodness. My morning regimen gets my heart pumping and I'll break a sweat if I push through three series (which takes about 15 minutes), but I have to admit that it's not that much of a challenge anymore. And fitness, I'm told, is all about pushing yourself beyond what you think you're capable of doing.
This is not a groundbreaking discovery, I know, but it says something, I think, about how easy it is to imagine that you're making progress when you're not really doing anything but coasting. I like to imagine that I'm more active than a lot of sixtysomethings, but that's not saying much, is it?
So just when I'm thinking that this past week's worth of soreness was some kind of a sign -- a kick in the pants, if you will -- I run into an old basketball buddy at the co-op on Sunday. And what does he do but issue an invitation to rejoin the old crew on the hardcourt after the holidays.
This is suddenly an immensely attractive idea -- another sign that it's time to ratchet up the intensity of my workouts. Later that day, I'm talking on the phone with my tennis buddy (and former b-ball teammate), M.E., and I'm making a case for the two of us to make a comeback, and he actually seems mildly interested, which I take to be another sign that I must be on the right track.
So, I'm thinking I'll rev up my workouts through the holidays, get over to the big gym and work on my jumper, ramp up my endurance, and push myself a little more. See what happens when I have a goal, when I'm participating in a competitive sport I really enjoy.
Then it occurs to me that my left knee has been kind of achy ever since I left the co-op on Sunday. I wonder . . . could that be a sign?
Nah.
Hoop Dreams
I was just clearing dishes from the table after dinner last night when my son said two little words that are changing my life.
"So . . . basketball?"
Mr. Parkour wasn't talking about heading downstairs with a six-pack to catch some March Madness on the tube. He was challenging me to get off my duff and head over to the gym and shoot some hoops.
This is a relatively new preoccupation for M.P. When he's not working these days you can usually find him perfecting his free-running moves or joining his pals for a spirited game of basketball at one gym or another around town. And, given that he's 20 years old and on the verge of heading out on his own, any invitation is something of an honor.
And a challenge. There's something about your son taking up a sport that you once played that fires up the old competitive juices -- or at least what's left of them. You want to take advantage of these dwindling opportunities to hang out together, but you secretly (or not so secretly) want to show him you still got it.
That's not easy when you're pushing 60 and haven't really played competitively for the past decade. On our last foray to the hardcourt a month ago, for instance, I spent a half-hour or so hoisting airballs and clanking bricks before I began to find my stroke. Tonight felt better. The knee seemed strong and some of the old moves began to resurface (in super slow-mo, no doubt). And for the first time in a long, long time, I began to entertain the notion that maybe I could get back on the court again.
In fact, M.P. and I have been talking about putting up a hoop on the garage and buying a basketball. And I've been trash-talking with his pal, Justin, who is itching to play some two-on-two as soon as the snow is cleared from the court at the local elementary school. (All I need to do is recruit my tennis buddy -- and hoops legend -- M.E. and it would be "game on"!)
This could be a mid-life crisis, I suppose, if I wasn't already so close to retirement age. But, practically speaking, everyone says it's important to have a variety of activities in your fitness regimen. And I figure that as long as I don't pretend I'm 28 (or even 48) again, there's at least a 50-50 chance that I'll survive this infatuation relatively unscathed.
Peer Pressure
Mr. Parkour (AKA my son) has been on a bit of a fitness jag this week and, because I'm the kind of guy who wants to support healthy habits, my poor, aging body has been pretty sore. Tuesday night, for example, I was sitting in my comfy chair, sipping a cup of tea and reading the newspaper when he arrived home from work raring to go to the gym. This was about 8:30, a time of evening when I'm just beginning to happily slide down the slippery slope toward bedtime. But, I rose up from my reverie and, with MP and My Lovely Wife in tow, climbed into the car and drove across town to the fancy gym in Minnetonka for a little late-night exercise.
We chose the Minnetonka gym because, unlike my club a mile to the east, this one has a basketball court. It's been awhile since I last had a basketball in my hands, and I figured if I was going to have to get out of my comfy chair and drive somewhere in the middle of the night, there might as well be a hoop at the end of the trail.
A decade ago, my weekly two-hour pickup game at Anderson school in South Minneapolis was pretty much my entire fitness regimen. Sure, I bicycled a half-dozen miles to and from work five days a week, but I never really worked up a sweat, so it didn't really count. Basketball, on the other hand, was something I looked forward to every week. When I stepped out on the court, I could feel the adrenaline start to pump, and I pushed myself hard for the whole two hours.
It's been a dozen years since I blew out my right knee and retired from competitive hoops, but I still enjoy shooting baskets when I get the chance. I can work up a good lather after about an hour and work muscle groups I never seem to get to during my regular routine. That's why on Wednesday and Thursday my body was so stiff and sore that I was hard-pressed to roll out of bed.
The good news, though, was that Tuesday's hoopfest confirmed that my left knee has recovered sufficiently to allow me to move laterally; stop, start, and pivot; and actually jump a little -- developments that all augur well for my return to the tennis court in a month or two (if the snow here ever melts).
When Thursday evening rolled around, I was still pretty stiff, but MP once again persuaded us to grab our gear and hit the gym. This time, I avoided the basketball court and wandered over to the stretching area, where I found a foam roller and worked out some of the kinks in my calves and hammies. Then MP and I stretched a bit, before testing each other's strength on various resistance machinery. I'm not a competitive guy, but I was happy to be able to keep up with him on everything but the lat pull-down thingy. And at the pull-up bar, he quickly cranked out 10 reps with no assistance. I needed a little help.
Still, I made it through the evening without further injury -- to my body or my ego -- and the next day I felt no worse than I had before. At my age, this is called progress.
This is all well and good, but I have to admit that when Sunday morning rolled around I was quietly hoping that MP would sleep in, so we wouldn't be ushered out into a fast-building blizzard to sneak in a quick workout before he had to go to work in the afternoon. My prayers were answered when he wandered downstairs around 1 p.m. hunting for some breakfast. I was all set to explain the importance of recovery days, when MLW simply stated that we wouldn't be going anywhere today. He grumbled a little as he bent over his cereal, probably wondering how he got stuck living with such slackers, but he didn't seem too disappointed. There's always tomorrow.
Disaster Averted
Well, of course I played
basketball last night -- despite a weird twinge in my left knee and a general
whole-body soreness from Sunday's tennis match/basketball shoot-around. (What
did you expect?)
And it was OK. I didn't roll
my ankle or catch an elbow in the mouth or take a knee in the groin. I mostly
stayed out of the way of the big guys in the paint and tried to make some good
passes and play sort of a middling defense. All my cardio work seemed to pay
off, in that I could go up and down the court for a solid 90 minutes and still
feel pretty fresh by the end of the evening.
All my old basketball
buddies had aged -- some more gracefully than others. D.D., who's in his
mid-50s, hobbled up and down the court like a man who needs a new hip -- which
he does. T.W., who's pushing 60, can't quite get off the ground anymore when
he's rebounding. And J.Y., now in his early 50s, doesn't really drive the lane
anymore for those acrobatic underhanded lay-ups.
They weren't alone in
showing their years. I didn't expect that I would exactly light it up after so
many years away from the game, but I also didn't expect it would be so tough to
get off a shot that didn't clang off the backboard or miss the rim entirely. In
the final game of the evening, with my team needing one basket to clinch the
game (we hadn't won one all night) I broke free for an easy lay-up . . . and it
rolled off the rim.
Still, it was fun to trade
jibes with these old guys again after so many years away from the court, and it
was gratifying to realize that my workout regimen over the past three years had
kept me in good enough shape to avoid cardiac arrest.
Now if I can just get my
shooting stroke back.
Decisions, Decisions
I enjoyed a decent workout
this morning with my tennis buddy, M.E., at the Crosstown LTF. We cruised
through a set (I played OK, but got clobbered 6-2) and then shot some hoops for
about a half hour. Then it was back to the courts for another 45 minutes of
whacking the ball around (I think I lost 5-3, or something like that) before we
knocked off for the day.
This sort of cross-training
works way different muscle groups, and I'm really feeling it tonight in my
knees and back. Tennis doesn't generally do that to me, but basketball is
another story.
You may recall an earlier
post in which it appeared that whole competitive basketball thing had been left
for dead. Well, M.E. now is talking about re-joining our old basketball buddies
for their weekly two-hour game (the first of which convenes tomorrow night),
thus the sudden interest in hooping it up this morning. Unlike our earlier shoot-around, this morning I really felt pretty good. I was hitting those little 18-footers like the old days and feeling pretty comfortable with the ball in my hands. Still, I'm a little
ambivalent: On the one hand, I haven't played competitively for seven years. On
the other hand, I haven't played competitively for seven years. You get the idea. So I thought it might help if I listed the pros and cons:
Pros:
• It would be interesting to
see if I can still compete after seven years of retirement.
• It's always a great cardio
workout.
Cons:
• I could sprain one or both
of my ankles.
• I could wrench my back.
• I could blow out my one
gimpy knee.
• I could blow out my one
good knee.
• I could dislocate one or
more fingers.
• I could break my nose.
• I could develop some great
new blisters.
• I could really suck.
So, of course, I'm leaning toward heading over to the gym tomorrow night and letting it all hang out. Getting back on the court
holds some allure simply because I'd like to see how much I've lost as compared
with how much these other old guys have lost. And I do like the game. It's just
that, well, it could be the dumbest thing I've done in a long time (and that's
saying something).
I guess I'll just see how I feel tomorrow night. Maybe the universe will give me a sign. Like If I can't walk or something...
End of Conversation
I think I've mentioned once
or twice on these pages how I used to play basketball back in the day with a
bunch of guys who were within shouting distance of my age. We got together one
night a week at a local school gym (and, in the summer, at a local playground).
We'd run up and down the court for a couple of hours, talk some trash,
occasionally twist an ankle or dislocate a finger, and then go have a couple
beers. I did this from 1985 until after my 50th birthday in 2001. I
recall attempting a poorly calculated comeback a year or two after that, but
I've basically been out of the game for the better part of a decade.
So, I was a little taken
aback recently when my tennis buddy, M.E., told me that the old gang was
reconstituting the weekly game and was extending an invitation to him and me to
return to the court. I was flattered, of course, but circumspect. I mean, on
the one hand, I really don't think I can recapture whatever skills I once
owned. And the chance of injury is pretty good. On the other hand, these guys
haven't exactly grown younger in the past decade; I suspect the game would be
played more or less in slow motion.
There was some fine print to
be considered in this deal, as well: It wouldn't just be old guys on the court,
actually. Apparently, there was a gaggle of twentysomethings that kind of
filled out the roster, M.E. noted. Could we convince them to let us old guys
slog along on our own while they pranced, gazelle-like, on a neighboring court?
Part of me -- the
testosterone-fuelled idiot part -- loves the idea
of playing against guys young enough to be my sons. It would be a great
challenge. It would push my limits. Clear out the cobwebs in my fitness
routine.
I was kind of in that zone
Wednesday night, when M.E. and I arrived at the LTF Crosstown club for a 9 pm
tennis match. We had about a half-hour to kill, so we tossed our tennis gear
into a corner the gym, grabbed a basketball and started reliving our former
glory on the hardwood. I was surprised to see that, after a few bricks clanked
off the rim, I began draining 18-footers like the old days (which is to say,
intermittently). Meanwhile, M.E. was starting to feel pretty good about himself,
which meant he needed a little one-on-one.
That was OK. He's not as
tenacious as he was in his 40s. And nobody was going to be driving the baseline
for reverse lay-ups. Just a couple of middle-aged guys reliving the good old
days. But, here's the pathetic part: We went at each other for maybe 10
minutes, neither of us presenting much in the way of defense, and the ball
never actually managed to travel through the hoop.
Hmmm.
We grabbed our stuff and silently
shuffled off to the tennis courts, where we battled through an exhilarating
14-game set before I prevailed 8-6. It was the best tennis we'd played all
season: long rallies, great shot-making, much scampering from baseline to net.
We worked up quite a lather.
And on the way home, I don't
recall any talk about basketball.
Hoop Dreams
"Rabbit grabs the rebound but then can't move with it, his body weighs a ton, his feet have lost their connection to his head. Tiger knifes in between him and the basket, leans right in his face with a violet snarl, then eases back a little so Rabbit feels a gap, a moment's slackness in the other in which to turn the corner; he takes one slam of a dribble, carrying his foe on his side like a bumping sack of coal, and leaps up for the peeper. The hoop fills his circle of vision, it descends to kiss his lips, he can't miss."
I was reminded last night of that scene in Updike's novel Rabbit at Rest where the sixtysomething Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, former high school basketball star, goes one-on-one with a young buck on a dirt court in Florida. He sinks the winner just as a massive heart attack levels him.
My return to the hardwood last night after a long, self-imposed exile was not quite that dramatic (no myocardial infarction), but it did remind me how much I love the game -- and what a great workout it is. To review: For more than 15 years, I played once a week with a bunch of guys at a local school gym. The two-hour session was, along with my bicycle commute, the only real exercise I did. Then, in 1998, I blew out my right knee. I came back several months later and played (tentatively) until 2002, when I figured I'd pretty much outlived my usefulness as a teammate.
Recently, though, my knees have been feeling pretty OK, and in an effort to add some variety to my workout regimen I started thinking about getting back on the court again -- just some casual shooting, maybe a game of HORSE, or something. And when my son, Martin, 18, who spends way too much time indoors, indicated an interest in the climbing wall at a suburban Life Time club, I figured it was a good time to take the leap (so to speak).
So, last night after dinner, we climbed into the Crapmobile and headed to the Eagan club, where the basketball courts and climbing wall share a high ceiling. We grabbed a ball and started clanging shots off the backboard and rim when we weren't throwing up airballs. (I'm stronger in the upper body than I was a couple of years ago, when I last did this, and my range was all off.) Eventually, though, we started to get the hang of it -- Martin started to drain 3-pointers and I managed to rattle in a few short-range jumpers. It felt good.
Martin went off to scale the Eagan version of el Capitan. I demurred, content to continue the search for my old shooting form, until three fresh-faced twentysomethings approached, looking for a game. "You wanna play?" they inquired.
I looked around to locate whoever they might be talking to, but there was nobody but me in the vicinity. It's really what any serious player wants to have happen -- a little friendly competition to get the juices flowing -- and though I haven't played in years, I couldn't resist.
"You'll take it easy on the old guy, right?" I asked, jokingly, but not really joking. "No posting up, right?"
They thought that was pretty funny.
Two other guys joined us and we shot for teams -- first three to sink a shot from behind the arc would be on one team. The three twentysomethings each calmly buried a three. Hmmm, I thought.
That put me on a team with a large, muscular fellow who I'll call Shaq and a younger, more angular dude who seemed to model his game after Kobe. Our opponents were quick, but not tall, so I figured maybe Shaq would give us an edge inside, until I discovered he didn't jump much, and every time I lobbed him the ball he kicked it back outside to Kobe, who would do a little shaking and baking but didn't really know how to pass the ball.
The young guys did know how to pass and set picks and drive and spot up for threes, plus they could rebound -- especially when Shaq and Kobe neglected to block them off the boards. So we soon found ourselves on the short end of a 9-5 score.
They were not great defenders, though, so Kobe eventually found his way into the lane for easy layups and even I was able to pick up a couple of easy assists on drive-and-dishes around the basket. Shaq hit a couple of threes and a layup, I turned a couple of steals into easy baskets, and we closed the gap.
I wasn't exactly channeling Magic Johnson out on the point, but I was distributing the ball and forcing some turnovers. Then, with us down by two, I lobbed it into Shaq on the left block. He kicked it back out to me. I gave my guy a little ball fake to get him up in the air, drove the lane, and shoveled it up off the glass and in. No big deal.
Down 14-13, I inbounded to Shaq behind the arc, but his shot rattled out. They rebounded and hit an open jumper to win 15-13. I was sucking fumes, but my knees held out. I looked over at Martin, who had conquered the walls and had been watching the game for the past few minutes. He smiled in a way that might have been construed as a momentary sign of respect for his old man's game, but I know him better than that.
This morning, I awoke with a blister on my left big toe and some excellent stiffness in an impressive variety of muscle groups and joints. In other words, I've never felt better.
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