by Scott Thill

"Embarrassing folks just comes naturally to me. Embarrassment comes with the territory." -- The Bone Collector

Professional basketball's face is changing color and shape on a daily basis in the new millennium. Before 2K hit, icons like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley ruled the sports media; nowadays, the covers of Sports Illustrated and ESPN are flavored with a burgeoning international contingent featuring Yao Ming (China), Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), Steve Nash (Canada's finest) and more. Similarly, the game itself has changed dramatically. Magic, His Airness, and the Round Mound of Rebound cut their teeth in a tightly structured college atmosphere dominated more by congenial (and in the case of Bobby Knight, jealously defended) coaching personalities than eye-popping on-court theatrics. Individuality, as a rule, was something you wore on the inside, not on your game; the college game was all about collective execution, so players spending time on excessive dribbling and footwork was seen as selfish "showboating", not a desire to win.

He's an eye-opener. "Bone Collector's star turn on the EBC DVD is blast to watch, if only because you'll be scratching your head wondering how he can pull any move off considering his spliffed-out, heavy-lidded interviews."

Which is one reason why the majority of phenoms that populate the pickup courts across America, including legendary Rucker Park in Harlem, can barely hack the rigid college game, to say nothing of the pro ranks. But it was nevertheless only a matter of time before the distinctly entertaining playground game entered the mainstream, and it has hit with the force of a hurricane. Stop by any pickup court in America and you will see kids of all color and size not only displaying a bag of footwork, dunking and dribbling tricks, but actually defending those tricks rather than just backing up and seeing if the player can actually shoot.

Like the rabbit-quick Larry Williams AKA The Bone Collector, who gets his own chapter in the second-season DVD release of Entertainer's Basketball Classic at Rucker Park, asserts, "I live to destroy whoever is in front of me and if you got a name, I need that name." In other words, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. And Bone has got game to spare and knows what the ecstatic crowd wants, which usually involves confusing dribbles between his opponents' legs, stop-start drives to the hoop, bouncing balls of his defenders' heads and the like. Bone Collector's star turn on the EBC DVD is blast to watch, if only because you'll be scratching your head wondering how he can pull any move off considering his spliffed-out, heavy-lidded interviews. Whether or not his team wins is irrelevant, because the only thing you see are his dazzling moves, not the end results of any extended matchups. But it's all about entertainment, not competition, a Harlem Globetrotter's extravanganza for the Murder, Inc. (whose Irv Gotti subsidizes one team) contingent.

Everybody is a Starbury. "Forget that Marbury's teammates are pros like Ron Artest and Shawn Marion (and that the Terror Squad had no chance until those pros jumped on board), because the Rucker crowd doesn't care; after all, everyone still wants a winner.

Like Bone Collector argues, the players at Rucker's feel like "superheroes", and they've got the nicknames and convention-defying games to prove it, no matter whether they're streetballers like Whole Lotta Game (Adrian Walton), Best Kept Secret (Kareem Reid), and Prime Objective (Lonnie Harrell) or NBA pros like Kobe Bryant (Lord of the Rings), Stephon Marbury (Starbury) and the hops-heavy Shawn Marion (The Matrix). And although the real treat (and marketing highlight) on the DVD is watching these superheroes clash on the court, an entire chapter is devoted to Kobe's stint at Rucker's, mostly because, besides being the perceived Air Apparent, he's the only NBA champ to join the Entertainer's Basketball Classic and lend it some of that pro ball shine. While Rucker's has street credibility to spare, very few top-echelon players have guest-starred in Harlem and given it the type of next-level attraction it needs to expand its market beyond the streetball set.

Similarly, New York hoops legend Stephon Marbury (whose score-first street game will probably keep the Phoenix Suns out of the playoffs for another year) adds the Rucker Park proceedings a degree of NBA luster when he leads rapper Fat Joe's Terror Squad to the championship in the third and final chapter of the DVD. Forget that his teammates are pros like Ron Artest (the fiery forward for the Indiana Pacers) and Suns teammate Shawn Marion (and that the Terror Squad had no chance until those pros jumped on board), because the Rucker crowd doesn't care; after all, everyone still wants a winner. Even Marbury asserts that, while most of Rucker's games are about "guys doing tricks and stuff", the championship game is "for real, guys are really getting after it". The fact that it takes NBA pros to cash that particular check only reinforces the idea that, while playground hoops may be a Mecca for pro ballers looking for some street cred, it still takes a polished gamer to win it all.

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But sports has never just been about the championships; those are for sports historians, after all. Sports fans usually live in the here and now, marveling over feats they know will be long forgotten in a scant few years. And when it comes to feats of physical skill, no one can beat the players of Rucker Park, whether they're pros or amateurs.

If that's your kind of game, you'll dig the EBC Rucker Park DVD. If you're a numbers fiend, a Bobby Knight, John Wooden or Dean Smith fan, or a hoops traditionalist, you'll be crying on your stat sheet when this disc is done.

26 March 03

Scott Thill usually finds the time to write on everything that does not include those fearsome words, "boy band". He's also a gainfully employed editor who writes for XLR8R, Popmatters, All Music Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps, should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over.

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