Pickup Basketball, Ethical Fabrics, and the "Larry Bird" Moment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My erstwhile blog partner Stanley Fish has just written a post called "My Life on the Court" for the NYT on how much he loves basketball.\u00a0 I found it\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/03\/pickup-basketball-ethical-fabrics-and-the-larry-bird-moment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pickup Basketball, Ethical Fabrics, and the "Larry Bird" Moment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My erstwhile blog partner Stanley Fish has just written a post called "My Life on the Court" for the NYT on how much he loves basketball.\u00a0 I found it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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{"id":1490,"date":"2009-03-23T22:12:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/owenstrachan.com\/?p=1490"},"modified":"2009-03-23T22:12:08","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:12:08","slug":"pickup-basketball-ethical-fabrics-and-the-larry-bird-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/03\/pickup-basketball-ethical-fabrics-and-the-larry-bird-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Pickup Basketball, Ethical Fabrics, and the “Larry Bird” Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My erstwhile blog partner Stanley Fish has just written a post called \u201cMy Life on the Court\u201d<\/a> for the NYT<\/a> on how much he loves basketball.\u00a0 I found it quite enjoyable, and you might too, especially if you enjoy pickup basketball.<\/p>\n

Fish\u2019s love affair with basketball:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI have been playing basketball since I was seven years old. That\u2019s more than 60 years, and as March Madness moves into full swing, I find myself thinking about the game and my addiction to it.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t skill. I can do two things \u2014 shoot from the outside and run. (I don\u2019t get tired.) I dribble as little as possible. I drive to the basket once a decade; I\u2019ve blocked two shots in my entire life, and if white men can\u2019t jump, this white Jewish man really can\u2019t jump. Maybe twice a year my shot is on and I feel I can\u2019t miss. On days like that I think that I\u2019ve finally arrived and can\u2019t wait for the next game. But when game day rolls around again and I get out on the court, I find that I have regressed to my usual level, which is several degrees south of mediocre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fish\u2019s \u201cLarry Bird\u201d moment:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn all these years I have had two triumphs. Once when I was playing on the beach-side courts in Laguna Beach, every shot went in. The other players, black and Latino, started to yell, \u201cLarry Bird, Larry Bird.\u201d I knew it was a joke, but I savored the moment anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cethical fabric\u201d of pickup basketball:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy continue to do something I wasn\u2019t any good at nine times out of ten? Well for one thing basketball players are by and large generous. (There are exceptions.) If you\u2019re not very skilled, if you\u2019re old and slow, they will make a place for you in the game. In his recent book \u201cGive and Go: Basketball as a Cultural Practice,\u201d<\/a> Thomas McLaughlin speaks of the ethical practices that emerge in the course of a game even though no rules have imposed them: \u201cEvery time one of the players in our game says to a weak player as he is taking an open shot that he will likely miss \u2018Good shot,\u2019 he is weaving the ethical fabric of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have often been the beneficiary of that ethical fabric, even when those weaving me into it are perfect strangers. For one of the great things about being a basketball player (or pretending to be one) is that no court is closed to you which is why I always have a basketball in the trunk of my car. You can just show up wherever there is a hoop and a game and you will be included. (This holds also in foreign countries where there may be a language barrier, but never a basketball barrier.)\u201d<\/p>\n

************************<\/p>\n

I resonated deeply with Fish\u2019s basketball experience, though I would add that there are a good number of difficult moments one can have on the court.\u00a0 It is nonetheless fascinating to think on a sociological level about the ethics of pickup basketball, or any other sport.\u00a0 Man is an ethical creature, and anyone who plays sports will find that though it seems full of creativity, it is in fact bounded by all kinds of written and unwritten ethical and logistical rules.<\/p>\n

With that said, it\u2019s not the rules of the game one necessarily celebrates\u2013it\u2019s the \u201cLarry Bird\u201d moments, few and fleeting as they are.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"