Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Poetry | Tags: Basketball Photography, Basketball Poetry, Lowell, Tom Meschery
Our red brick square gymnasium was an anachronism
Among the steel-ribbed, concrete muscled ellipses
And angles of the day; it was full of shadows –
The floor corduroy, the backboards wood
And the rims were bent with age
(the relentless ricochet of basketballs),
It had none of the embellishments
Found in more modern gyms.
It was simply a no-nonsense structure
Built to house players not spectators.
Surrounded by its gray walls and wrinkled floor
We practiced two-to-six, six days a week.
And throughout that time – four years –
Our coach, who was as old as the building,
Taunted and inspired us, swore and cajoled us,
He taught us to play without frills.
We became red brick and corduroy
And learned to see through shadows.
by Tom Meschery
PART I.
Solid but not spectacular. Good hands. Pure passer. Looks like a man.
I went for the loose ball and I felt my knee move. Then I felt it give up underneath me.
PART II.
Blow-by abilities. A surprisingly pure outside shot. Bit of a hot dog.
Coach was up in Sean’s face, and I swear, he was two seconds away from decking him. Go ahead, ask anybody who was there. Ask them. Sean’s my boy, so… I don’t care who you are. Even if you are the coach. That’s when I decided to step in.
PART III.
Brings a calming influence. A quality desire.
You could see the two state troopers walking up in the rear view mirror, moving in all the red and blue light. I remember I was trying to see their faces. I don’t know. I thought maybe, somehow, I’d recognize one of them. Or they’d recognize me. And it would be alright.
PART IV.
A pure wing. Flashes of quality. Looks like he’s just now getting good.
You should have seen his brother. Oh yeah, his brother was even better. Bigger, too. I played against him once in Arizona. He got benched. Why? For grades, I think. He quit the team. I never saw him again.
by Jake Lemkowitz
Ward Roberts’ colorful basketball court photographs look like playgrounds from after the apocalypse. I found them on Tumblr and couldn’t get enough.
The tropical public spaces that Ward records are abandoned. No people or players. The empty courts with neatly painted baselines have this mix of careful human attention to detail and impersonal detachment. It’s totally spooky and rad.
I wanted to see more, but I had no idea who the photographer was. Nobody gave any attribution. So I went down a deep Tumblr rabbit hole to find their source… No luck. Only after some hardcore reverse-Google-Image-searching did Ward Roberts’ name finally pop-up.
I discovered that Ward’s court photographs are showing right now in NYC’s new TUNICA gallery, so I got in touch to ask him a few questions about his thoughts on Tumblr.
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, Phoenix Suns | Tags: Patrick Ewing, Reggie Miller
“He was a great con man. Ya know, he was always crying to the ref, running off, flopping. Ya know, knock you down, smack you and act like he was the one getting smacked. I … ya know … tell ya … I hated Reggie.”
– Patrick Ewing
image via Fat Shawn Kemp
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, Michael Jordan, New York Knicks | Tags: 1990s Culture, Courtside, John Starks, Jonah Hill, Michael Jordan, NBA
“The evolution of the Hollywood seat began in 2007, when the NBA allowed teams to shrink the size of their scorer’s table to boost the number of revenue-generating seats…
In New York, the Knicks have 145 floor seats priced from $2,850 to $3,600 per seat per game, or between $122,550 and $154,800 for a typical full regular-season schedule at Madison Square Garden. All are sold out and the majority of floor-seat ticket holders are individual ticket holders. Yes, Lee owns his seats.”
– From Sports Business Journal, 5/21/2012
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Los Angeles Lakers | Tags: Basketball Art, James Worthy, Jonas Woods
From artist Jonas Woods’ solo show at L.A.’s David Kordansky Gallery. For everyone on the left coast, Woods’ show closes on this Saturday, May 12th.
