Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Collage, Politics | Tags: 1990s Culture, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole
We’ll put more police in public housing, crack down on illegal gun trafficking, and fill vacant apartments where criminals hide out. And we’ll provide more programs like midnight basketball leagues to help our young people say no to gangs and guns and drugs.
– President Bill Clinton, April 16, 1994
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EPILOGUE: One of Bob Dole’s most-ran campaign ads in 1996 attacked Clinton’s inner-city midnight basketball program initiative, which cost (according to Dole) $76 million. The ads called the program, among other things, “a subtle and sickening appeal to racism.” The midnight basketball program was eventually scrapped.
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, cheerleaders, Fiction, Photography | Tags: basketball fiction
WHAM! Bread City just double scooped you with the photo of the year. For everyone that’s coming over here for the first time via my short story on Free Darko, what’s up!
photo by listen missy
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, History | Tags: Basketball History, Digital Art, James Naismith, William R. Chase
This guy, William R. Chase, scored the first point ever in the history of basketball. It was about 15 minutes after James Naismith nailed up two peach baskets in a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, History, New York Knicks, Sports Photography | Tags: Basketball Archeology, Basketball History, European Basketball, Patrick Ewing, Toni Kukoc
The McDonalds Open was an international basketball cup that was held more or less every year between ’87 and ’99, pitting three Euro champion teams against one NBA team. The whole thing was a farce, and the NBA team won easily every year. Except in 1990, the Knicks were invited to play, and they almost blew it. In the very first round New York barely managed to get past to the Italian team, and needed overtime to pull out the 119-115 win. The tournament’s final game was against Split, which was what they called Croatia before the wall fell, I guess. The Knicks took the chip, but along the way Toni Kukoc stuffed a Patrick Ewing jump-shot right back into his face, a clip that was given such heavy Soviet Bloc rotation that it’s credited with increasing Yugoslavian production rates by 3%.
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, History | Tags: Basketball Art, Basketball History
In 1942, over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were removed from their homes and placed in detention camps. Basketball was pretty much the only thing for kids to do, and it gave the older inmates something to watch. Organized games, under the guard of military police, were the social highpoint of the weekend. Even during the week crowds would show just to check out some kids running a pick-up game on makeshift courts.
Japanese prisoner basketball teams were sometimes allowed to compete with schools outside of the camps, allowing a rare glimpse into the outside world. Upon the dissolution of the camps in 1945, inmates were given $25 and a bus ticket. (GATE MONEY.) In 1988, reparations were paid out with a signed apology from Ronald Reagan on behalf of the American people. Today it’s estimated that 14,000 Japanese-Americans in Southern California play basketball regularly in clubs and weekend leagues.
Filed under: Baseball, Bread City | Tags: Boston Red Sox, Derek Jeter, New York Yankees, Rivalries
How many games back are we? We’re not just coming from your team now, Boston, we’re coming for each and every last one of your sandal-wearing fratboys. How many games back?
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Poetry, Women's Basketball | Tags: 1950s Culture, Basketball Archeology
I’m running everything
from Bed Stuy to Manhattan
17 girls looking tight in mad satin.
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, Collage, High School Basketball, History | Tags: Basketball Archeology, Basketball Art, Digital Art, Greg Procell, Louisiana, Native American Basketball
Between 1967 and 1970, in a swampy dream of rural Louisiana, Greg Procell set the national high school scoring record: 6,702 points. It’s a stat that puts the unknown Procell into the company of names like Chamberlain and DiMaggio. His senior year at Ebarb High, he lit it up for 46.7 a game. Procell was Choctaw-Apache, and stood at only 5-11. Legend has it that as a kid, he learned how to shoot by throwing his dad’s empty beer cans into an empty foot tub. Procell grew, and his father built him a scrap-wood hoop and backboard. The backyard, perched at the edge of the woods, became Procell’s home court. At night he soaked pine knots with kerosene and lit them on fire, so that he could practice in the dark.
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Collage, College Basketball | Tags: Duke Basketball, Rivalries, Rushing the Court, Sean Singletary, UVA
Overtime. Score deadlocked. Virginia basketball. 17 seconds on the clock in the biggest basketball game ever played in the brand new John Paul Jones arena. The Wahoo faithful are on their feet. The nine-game losing streak to the despised Duke Blue Devils is finally poised to end. With one second left, Cavalier superstar point guard Sean Singletary hits a falling one-handed floater over the outstretched arms of 6-foot-10 Duke forward Josh McRoberts. The arena explodes into mayhem and Singletary looks right at the camera, a moment that will be No. 1 on Sportscenter that night. There’s no hesitation in the stands. Everyone knows it’s time to rush the court for the first time in the arena’s history. As the buzzer sounds, we stream from the stairwells onto the hardwood; students, alumni and even adolescent kids pour onto the court at the John. It doesn’t matter who you’re next to – every fan is your best friend at that moment. Belting out the Good ‘Ole Song with thousands of orange-clad fanatics around you – that memory will never fade.
by Jeremy Root
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Photography | Tags: Basketball Photography, Tom Bland
photo: Tom Bland
CLICK HERE for full size image
