To Play or not to play hoops

By Don Lechman

donlechman@socal.rr.com

            I have a big decision to make. To hoop or not to hoop, that is the question. I have ten good reasons to quit playing basketball:

            10. I have two bad knees after 60 years of  hoops.

            9. Ditto a bad back.

            8. I hurt my left shoulder, and it still bothers me..

            7. I had a detached retina and have to be careful of that eye.

             6. I was playing with three broken fingers on my right hand. Now one is permanently bent and is arthritic.

            5. My thumb and first two fingers on my left hand are numb. I am supposed to have carpal tunnel syndrome, and the doctor recommends surgery.

            4. I had a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder, had surgery and was not able to lift my arm for three months; no basketball for 16 months..

             3. I have atrial fibrillation – irregular heart beat.

              2. I am 71 years old.

            And, the number one reason…

1.      I ain’t no good.

Remember, Ollie, the short kid who said that in “Hoosiers” and later made two

free throws to win a critical game? It is true that talent never stopped me from playing before. I told my friends once that I have two qualities: heart and height.

I started playing basketball regularly when I was 9 in 1949 on a farm in northeastern Colorado. We played on the dirt against a backboard that my older brothers nailed to a shed. I played hour after hour, even when there was snow on the ground. Just like Laker great Jerry West, I loved the solitude of playing by myself. The only difference between me and Jerry (who is one year older than I) was that he became great, and I, mediocre. I have fair to average athletic ability, but I eventually became a decent player. Why? Because I refused to give up.

I began playing competitive hoops in 1950 in the new gymnasium at St. Anthony’s School in Sterling, Colo. I loved the sound of the ball on the floor and the swish of the net, the sweaty smell of a stuffy gym. I loved everything about basketball – especially practice. I was of average size in elementary school and a starter from fifth through eighth grade, probably because I went to a small school. I became 6-4 in high school, and I played  but was forgettable. I weighed 150 pounds and was a nonentity on the court.

            I didn’t play too much in college or when I was in the army, but I returned to the court in earnest when I started at the Daily Breeze in 1966.  My friend Dave Polis, I and a few other guys joined the Torrance Parks and Recreation Dept. Amble League. It was half court, and the opposing team had to yell “freeze” when one rebounded the ball, and then it was taken out again. Then we joined the full-court Redondo Beach Summer League and - lo and behold - we won it in 1970, no thanks to me. One time, we played the USC Trojan staff . We lost, but I scored 33 points by some miracle. A guy on the other team came up to me afterwards and said, “Man, you got the softest shot I have ever seen.” Translation: the ball bounced around on the rim a lot until it fell through the net.

I played at El Camino College circa 1969 on a Saturday morning, and Paul Westphal (future NBA great) and Ron Riley from USC showed up. They only had nine guys for a full court game and asked me to play. When they jumped for a rebound, I never saw so many belly buttons at eye level before. But guessed who scored the winning basket on a jump shot from the free throw line?

I played  everywhere in the South Bay:  Torrance high schools like Bishop Montgomery, Torrance, South, West and North, Redondo Union High girls’ gym,. Aviation High in Redondo Beach, a church gym in Torrance, Alondra Park gym.

When we couldn’t play at those places anymore, we started playing on outdoor courts all over Torrance and Redondo Beach. Hoops was life.

 When the YMCA decided to build a gym in the early 1990s, I was one of the first guys to sign up. One of my friends from 1970, who said he quit about 1975, was aghast that I was still playing. “Dude,” he said without malice, “you couldn’t play then; how can you play now?”

At the YMCA, I met Dan Sullivan, a 1956 graduate of Notre Dame  who asked me if I wanted to play in the Senior Olympics. I said, “Sure” without even asking when or where or what Senior Olympics was. We got a team of guys together over 55 and played several years at the Huntsville Senior Games in St. George, Utah, in Pasadena, on Catalina Island, in Palm Desert and Loma Linda.

            One day in 1998, a guy from Nike showed up at Peck Park in San Pedro where were playing and took candid shots of us. Then another day when I was working on the desk at the Breeze, I received a message: “Call Christine at Nike.” I said, “What? Knock it off you guys, I ain’t calling no Christine.” But they insisted it was on the level. So I called Christine, and sure enough she said to show up at Peck Park at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. They wanted to shoot a bunch of old guys playing hoops.  The film crew gave us some Nike shoes (which we later had to give back), and they shot us playing hoops for three hours.  I thought that was the end of it, but a few weeks later  I came home from work and turned on the tape I had set to watch basketball on ESPN, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There I was in a Nike commercial with a bunch of old guys, young guys and kids, all of us shooting and missing. There was a closeup of  bare-chested me grimacing after I missed a hook shot. The words at the end said: “I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.” My mantra. I must have shown that commercial to everyone I knew and people I didn’t know. I was a professional basketball player at last! Well, at least I was paid $3,300 for playing basketball.  Then I went through a series of injuries and had to lay off. Now I am back playing but with no strength in my right arm - yet.

So here’s the dilemma. Do I give up? Do I continue to make a fool of myself? Am I  kidding?  I am going out to the backyard to practice, while I – and you old folks, too -  heed the advice of poet Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
          Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
          Rage, rage against the dying of the light.