Our driveway: Home court disadvantage

When our kids were little we would sometimes play basketball in the driveway of our home in Oxnard. Generally, it was the two of them against me.

The reader should understand that when the kids were ages eight and three, my majestic hook shot was deadly from five or six feet away. The double-team defense the kids employed against me was no good once I got in position in front of the basket. I was unstoppable.

But defense always comes first at our house and the kids did their best to stop me from getting into hook shot range. One of them -- usually the younger one, my daughter -- would grab one of my legs and attempt to sit on my foot while the other half of this gruesome twosome, my son, would grab the hand I was dribbling with. He never grabbed at the ball, just my hand.

It’s the same defense you see frequently during the NBA playoffs.

Now Regan, the three year old, wasn’t much bigger than the ball. She bounced the ball with both hands, when she bounced it at all, then carried it in both hands until she got tired on holding it. Then she’d shoot (with a little help). NBA fans see Lebron James making the same move to the basket nowadays, dribbling with two hands and then running all over the court without dribbling. Michael Jordan did the same thing. Jordan made a video named, Come Fly With Me, which should have been named, A Basketball Travelogue. Regan was just another travel agent.

Sean, who was eight then, didn’t need any help. He’s a mixed martial arts guy now and I must say his playing style back in the days gone by should have given me ample indication of his interest in full-contact sports. You talk about hacking! His defensive work strongly resembled the style of play the Boston Celtics are allowed to use at home in the Boston Garden.

When the kids had the ball, I didn’t play much defense. I looked a lot like the NBA All-Star Game: All scoring and no defense.

As I re-read this, it occurs to me that we should have sold tickets to our neighbors to watch us play back then. We had all that NBA style without the network TV commercial time outs. There were no cheerleaders, but our tickets would have been discounted for that reason.

You never know where the next great basketball star is going to come from. None came from our driveway, that’s a cinch. But, if we didn’t play as well as the pros, we at least played like the pros. Doesn’t that count for something?

Thanks for reading!