sporting memories: Beating a much larger and taller basketball opponent with intelligent ball-playing

I am around 6 feet tall and have been around that height since I was 13 or so. I "shot up" early in life and then it slowed down. There was a time there that there was probably some idea that I might end up being super tall but by the time I was a sophomore in high school (your second year of high school or 10th grade) I stopped going up in height. 6 feet tall or 180cm is not short, but it isn't tall enough to really be a force in basketball.

The average height of the NBA is 6 foot 7 or really close to 200 cm and obviously this is the cream of the crop and we don't have that in high school but height certainly did pay a factor.

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By the time I was 13 I already realized and saw the writing on the wall about how basketball was very unlikely to be the sport that I could excel at so my main focus at that point transitioned to soccer and american football and I excelled at both of those.

But I still would play pick up ball at the YMCA in the winter in the basketball gyms and while I wasn't good enough to play on the main courts, I was still pretty decent especially for a guy that doesn't spend most of the year so much as even playing this sport.

In the time that I was trying to be really good at basketball though, I did learn a few tricks that work really well on "showboating" players though and well, it just kind of works all the time. One of my friends in middle and high school was a black kid named JJ. It doesnt matter that he was black but JJ had the "black mentality" of playing basketball in that he was all about putting on a show. This would include very high risk maneuvers and always wanting to drive the ball to the hoop. One of his main weaknesses though was his insane desire to want to swat your shot out of the air so that he could get a reaction from the people that were watching.

JJ was decent, he wasn't one of the best that was there and I think a lot of what held JJ back was the fact that he was far too interested in getting a gotcha moment then he was at actually following the fundamentals that would make for a good basketball player. JJ did really well against other showboating players because he was about 6 foot 5 and 210 lbs or so. Dude was strong. Me, being at 6 foot even and maybe 170 or so, all the physical advantages were (pun intended) in his court.

I knew I couldn't take JJ on as far as physicality was concerned but at the YMCA, rough-housing street ball is not tolerated and it will get you kicked out. Plus JJ and I had been friends since we were in elementary school so he wasn't interested in hurting me. He was, however, interested in embarrassing me by swatting my shots out of the air and I was very aware of this.

So instead of trying to take him on in this battlefield, I tried to level the playing field by playing towards his weaknesses. I was very good at perimeter defense and was able to box him out of most drives. He couldn't cross me out because I had the quick step of an american football player and could move laterally very fast while still maintaining a boring, yet very effective defensive stance.

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This is an exaggeration and I am pretty sure LeBron is clowning a little bit here but the point is if you have a wide stance and are able to move side to side with quickness that matches the person coming at you, it is very difficult for them to get around you without fouling you.

Plus, I already knew that JJ didn't have much of a perimeter shooting game and when he would go up for a shot I knew that I couldn't block it since he is so much taller than me so instead I would just reach for his face but not touch him. This is a bit of a dirty tactic but you might be surprised how well it works to throw people off their aim. I wouldn't try to out-rebound JJ either because he was much stronger and taller than me, but since he was in the air when he would make his shots I was able to get into much better position for the rebound than he would be able to.

JJ would still get a few sneaks past me and while I would follow him I never tried to "swat his shit" because that would have been a waste of time but he got frazzled since he didn't have the sort of freedom to crush the net that he would have had in playground or street ball.

On offense, I had a few tricks up my sleeve that I knew damn well would work on JJ and it was only because of his insistent desire to swat my shots that any of this worked.

There are certain drills that I had worked on rather obsessively when I thought I was going to be a basketball powerhouse that involves arm and head fakes that mimics the movement that you would make if you were lining up for a shot.

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The above would only work at at top of the key and it is only going to happen a couple of times but the times that it did work and JJ jumped sky high to "swat my shit" I just calmly dribbled around him and put in an easy layup.

The moving head and shot fake is harder to pull off because you have to maintain a dribble as well lest you be guilty of traveling. It can be done though and JJ was particularly susceptible to this. So many times he would fall for the head fake and while this was all going on I started to take notice of his tells about if he was actually going to jump. He didn't seem to be able to control it but he would crouch to jump, probably a lot higher than he needed to because street ball had trained him to get really high up in the air presumably because he is used to playing against guys a lot taller and rougher than me. He was also used to playing in an environment where swatting a shot is the most valuable thing you can do even though I think everyone would agree that actually scoring points is much more important.

I got the point where I could tell if JJ was actually going to jump to swat or if he was just guarding close because he is no fool, he learned that I was going to fake after the first 3-4 times. But what he didn't know is I had learned his tell and when he didn't crouch for his SUPER JUMP, I would lay up a perimeter shot and not even from 3-point range, it would be around the free-throw line.

This was in the days of all baskets count as 1 point, you "make it take it" and the game is to 11. I would regularly defeat JJ by at least 5 every game. He was kind of in awe about all of that but I think that the main difference between JJ and I was that I was taught about basketball being a team sport, JJ, having only really played street ball, kind of saw the game as a way to show off with dunks and blocked shots. He never really learned the fundamentals and he didn't ever get very far with the high school team although simply because of his perfect size and physical strength, the coaches all wanted him to play.

He was never a star because I guess the street couldn't be trained out of him or at least, he didn't want it to be.

I don't know what happened to JJ but he was never going to be a star in this game because for him it was all about just having fun and have fun we did. There was never any animosity between us and I just remember him saying things like "damn dude, why can I never get the best of your little ass!" and we would laugh and get a Coke and then watch the people on the main court.

No matter how well I was able to hone my fundamentals though, I realized that at 6 feet tall this wasn't the sport for me. It's kind of like the same reason why I dropped out of American Football as well. I was fast as the wind, but not every play can be a long throw and eventually (rather quickly actually) the other team is going to realize that this is your only play because at 170 lbs, you are going to get absolutely crushed by linebackers (which is precisely what happened to me in those plays).

No, for me I landed exactly where I was meant to in football of the soccer variety and it was the obvious choice.

I lost touch with JJ a long time ago and I regret that. He was a really cool dude and didn't take any defeats personally. He was a good pal. Unfortunately he didn't have any college aspirations after high school and if i had to guess I would say that he probably didn't do a great deal with his life.

I hope he is ok... he certainly deserves to be.