TUPATALK: Rims

I hope you take a moment and think back to some of your early basketball memories and the family and friends that make them so sweet.

Perhaps those recollections include a younger or an older brother, a dad, a uncle, a mom or sister, a friend, a stranger or any classification of fellow human beings.

I loved — I yearned with all my heart — to play football and baseball/softball whenever the opportunity opened. But, those activities include some semblance of organization, the right location and a minimum amount of other players.

Basketball requires just a rim and as little as a 15-by-15 square of open space.

I’m sure many of you that are closer to Social Security than adolescence feel that nostalgic impulse for those days, when the legs moved without pain and hours were carefree and the horizon of your life seemed to stretch on forever.

Probably, many of you have memories of shooting a ball, or dribbling it, by yourself.

I recall an across-the-street kid, about a year younger than me, who would be shooting literally for hours in his driveway. He had dreams of playing big-time ball. I don’t know if he ever made it.

This month marked the 83rd year since Dr. James Naismith invented the game of basketball, while working at Springfield (Mass.) College. Naismith wasn’t yet a doctor, just a fairly new full-time employee of the school.

At the instruction of a superior, he created basketball as a new indoor winter sport to keep athletes occupied.

Within less than a decade, it had spread from Springfield to places throughout the nation, college competition had started and other nations began to pick it up.

Naismith lived until 1939, to see basketball become a truly international sport at the 1936 Olympics.

Incidentally, Bartlesville enjoyed a direct link with Naismith. He eventually put down roots in Lawrence, Kan., and went to work for the University of Kansas. Paul Endacott grew up in Lawrence in the shadow of Naismith.

Paul — who would work for Phillips in Bartlesville and eventually become company president — told me how that when he was still a boy, Naismith asked him to help refine the rules of basketball.

Endacott and other young boys gathered in a gym at Naismith’s request. When Naismith blew a whistle, they took off as fast as they could. When he blew his whistle again, the boys stopped as quickly as they could. That’s how Naismith determined the rule for traveling.

As I think of my love of the sport, I also dive into a vault of treasured memories. Just little things, really, by themselves.

I recall how after we moved to a different city, a guy I had met in school stopped by our house a couple of times during the summer and we walked over to a nearby school and shot baskets at the outdoor rims.

We pretended we were the current NBA or ABA stars of the era. When we shot a free throw, it was in front of thousands of people with the league title on the line.

Here, this game brought together two boys without a brother into enjoyable hours on that court.

Later during our high school years, Calvin, another friend named Steve, and I went across the street from the high school to the youth center and shot around several afternoons, or even on a Saturday.

None of us were athletic studs — although we weren’t exactly slugs. We would end up on the debate club together. But, the magnet of basketball drew us to the mecca of roundball with an inexplicable magic.

Our favorite game was Red, White and Blue — a rotating one-on-one game. When a guy made a bucket, the defender went off the court and the other guy came in to play.

I remember playing a neighborhood game on a guy’s driveway court. One of the players got up, undercut and dropped like a 180-pound apple right on his noggin. I swore when he hit the ground it sounded like glass breaking.

But, after a few minutes of recovery, he was back out there mixing it up again.

During my teenage summers, I remember walking across the street from my mom’s place to a city park where some older guys played pretty intense pick-up games. Some of these participants didn’t look exactly like police academy trainees. But, I just loved to play and to get in and be a part of the game now and then.

I even suffered a pretty painful knee injury playing for my church team while I was stationed with the Marines at a training base near Memphis, Tenn.

Oh man! I jumped up and came down wrong and felt that wrench of agony I’ve become familiar with.

But, it didn’t stop me from distance running — or playing basketball. I guess I really stormed the court until my mid-40’s in Bartlesville.

I still love the feel of a basketball in my hand.

Thanks, Dr. Naismith.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: TupaTalk column