You see this guy here? It wasn’t at Providence. I’M THE MAN AROUND HERE. [65][66] Decapitation is particularly associated with the ballgame—severed heads are featured in much Late Classic ballgame art and appear repeatedly in the Popol Vuh. You gotta teach me, man!”. If I truly wanted to be reborn, I had to let go. whatever, you’re from the other New York, son. I mean, people won’t even believe this story, but when I was 13, I had this P.E. The game is seen as a struggle between day and night. I’m proud that I became Coach Shamm, too. I’ve been shot at for reasons in particular. There has been speculation that the heads and skulls were used as balls.[67]. Man, even Cam’ron was super nice!!! Don’t worry about how your boys react to it, or about what people got to say about it on social media. [83][84], Batey, a ball game played on many Caribbean islands including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the West Indies, has been proposed as a descendant of the Mesoamerican ballgame, perhaps through the Maya. You not gonna be no Isiah Thomas. Kneepads are seen on a variety of players from many areas and eras and are worn by forearm-ulama players today. I remember sitting up in this tree overlooking the court at Rucker Park, watching these guys play for hours, and I was mesmerized. Like she was all alone under that streetlight, convinced that she could do it. Gun to the front of my head. Shammgod!”. Blessed to work with Dirk, one the the greatest to ever play this game. So I would be in gym class doing all these crazy tricks for my friends, and it used to piss the P.E. I just looked up at the clouds like, Oh, alright. Variations of basketball are games or activities based on, or similar in origin to, the game of basketball, in which the player utilizes common basketball skills.Some are essentially identical to basketball, with only minor rules changes, while others are more distant and arguably not simple variations but distinct games. Saddest sight you’ve ever seen in your life. This was early ’80s Crown Heights, you know what I mean? And I know a lot of athletes out there right now are dealing with those same emotions, but they’re just too proud to say it to anybody, even their homeboys. You’re not really from New York if you weren’t eating White Castle before elementary school. That was my defender. I’m playing against Stephon Marbury, Skip 2 My Lou, Alimoe (rest in peace), all these guys who would become household names, they were just kids from around the way. That dude used to be that.”. [40][41], Some Maya depictions, such as the painting above or this relief, show balls 1 m (3 ft 3 in) or more in diameter. As might be expected with a game played over such a long period of time by many cultures, details varied over time and place, so the Mesoamerican ballgame might be more accurately seen as a family of related games. It was so crisp. A bond that’s forever. You trying to be MJ? Black Power and Malcolm X and the struggle. [73], No ballcourt has yet been identified at Teotihuacan, making it by far the largest Classic era site without one. In fact, the ballgame seems to have been nearly forsaken not only in Teotihuacan, but in areas such as Matacapan or Tikal that were under Teotihuacano influence.[74]. You’re on my VHS TAPE!!! Gimmie that, son. Right after I got the call from Providence that they were gonna let me be an assistant, I was at this block party in Harlem. He’s even dripping like Jordan. It’s gray. This took place in the old Brooklyn. In high school, I started to become like a local legend. When we played Shamm in high school, we thought he was an alien. In general, the hip-ball version is most popularly thought of as the Mesoamerican ballgame,[24] and researchers believe that this version was the primary—or perhaps only—version played within the masonry ballcourt. I’m talking ’bout that one where all the teachers be lecturing you like, “Stop acting up! It’s a little better, right, Coach Shamm? It’s piping hot. Games were played between two teams of players. Jeffrey P. Blomster and Víctor E. Salazar Chávez. I put Ty’s whole squad on roller skates, man. Same person. [21] It was about this period, as well, that the so-called Xochipala-style ballplayer figurines were crafted in Guerrero. Don’t picture no smoothie shops or whatever. Few streetball players have the style and substance of Kirkland. I knew all these guys from when we was little kids playing church basketball, and now all of a sudden we got Jay-Z, Puff, Dame Dash — all these guys are showing up to our games. Among the Mayas, the ball can represent the vanquished enemy, both in the late-Postclassic K'iche' kingdom (Popol Vuh), and in Classic kingdoms such as that of Yaxchilan. [42][43], Ōllamaliztli was played within a large masonry structure. [10], One candidate for the birthplace of the ballgame is the Soconusco coastal lowlands along the Pacific Ocean. The southeast panel of the South Ballcourt at El Tajín shows the protagonist ballplayer being dressed in a warrior's garb. And this bag is steaming, man. The murals of the Tepantitla compound at Teotihuacan show a number of small scenes that seem to portray various types of ball games, including: It has been hypothesized that, for reasons as yet unknown, the stick-game eclipsed the hip-ball game at Teotihuacan and at Teotihuacan-influenced cities, and only after the fall of Teotihuacan did the hip-ball game reassert itself.[76]. Captives were often shown in Maya art, and it is assumed that these captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ballgame. This was two hours of nothing but dribbling a basketball. You not gonna be no MJ!! He would pull up to the Rucker and double-park his Rolls Royce then ⦠War. And I don’t know what came over me, but I remember I just started laughing. Hun Hunahpu's head spits into the hands of a passing goddess who conceives and bears the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. And then he gets on the court and he’s shooting all the basketballs, man. Villagers, and subsequently archaeologists, have recovered a dozen balls ranging in diameter from 10 to 22 cm from the freshwater spring there. He specialises in misdirection and passes. I was telling my boy Howie, “Man, I’m 34 years old. For example, the Late Classic site of El Tajín, the largest city of the ballgame-obsessed Classic Veracruz culture, has at least 18 ballcourts, and Cantona, a nearby contemporaneous site, sets the record with 24. “Origins of the Mesoamerican ballgame: Earliest ballcourt from the highlands found at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico”, "Indigenous groups keep ancient sports alive in Mexico", "El Corazón del Juego: El Juego de Pelota Mesoamericano como Texto Cultural en la Narrativa y el Cine Contemporáneo", "Olmec Ritual Behavior at El Manatí: A Sacred Space", Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, "Glyphs for "Handspan" and "Strike" in Classic Maya Ballgame Texts", The First Basketball: The Mesoamerican ballgame, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mesoamerican_ballgame&oldid=1002644692, Indigenous sports and games of the Americas, Articles with dead external links from December 2018, Articles with permanently dead external links, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles containing Yucatec Maya-language text, Articles containing Classical Nahuatl-language text, Articles containing Epigraphic Mayan-language text, Articles containing Spanish-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. How it works: each friend you refer will receive a special url email that will gift them an immediate $5 credit that can be used to join a league (all thanks to you). Made of perishable materials, none of these girdles have survived, although many stone "yokes" have been uncovered. Man, the third dude in the picture was Biggie Smalls. Now I’m the bum-ass teacher trying to get these dudes to listen to me talk about fundamentals. He did a crossover and he shook our whole zone. [35] In addition to providing some protection from the ball, the girdle or yoke would also have helped propel the ball with more force than the hip alone. In 1528, soon after the Spanish conquest, Cortés sent a troupe of ōllamanime (ballplayers) to Spain to perform for Charles V where they were drawn by the German Christoph Weiditz. Finca Acapulco, San Mateo, and El Vergel, along the Grijalva, have ballcourts dated between 900 and 550 BCE (Agrinier, p. 175). The Aztec version of the ballgame is called ōllamalitzli (sometimes spelled ullamaliztli)[77] and are derived from the word ōlli "rubber" and the verb ōllama or "to play ball". Gun to the front of my head. Over the next 10 years, I worked my way up from Providence to the Dallas Mavericks as a player development coach. And I know that he led me to that moment with those girls, for reasons that I don’t have to understand. Harlem was showtime. If you could’ve seen them two sweat puddles on the floor — it was crazy. "rubber people") since the region was strongly identified with latex production. That’s how insane New York City basketball was at that time. I’m like, “Kobe, you want me to teach them for two hours?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “On dribbling?” He’s like, “Yeah, like we used to do.”, But I didn’t even say anything. I see what it is. And Ty was cracking them up, man. Bracelet. A hood celebrity, if you will. For the Aztecs, the playing of the ballgame also had religious significance, but where the 16th-century K´iche´ Maya saw the game as a battle between the lords of the underworld and their earthly adversaries, their Aztec contemporaries may have seen it as a battle of the sun, personified by Huitzilopochtli, against the forces of night, led by the moon and the stars, and represented by the goddess Coyolxauhqui and Coatlicue's sons the 400 Huitznahuah. You know that smell. Since then, they are 7-0 and headed to the Super Bowl. The Wildcats are now 4-7 on the season. Me? In modern-day ulama, the game resembles a netless volleyball,[30] with each team confined to one half of the court. A two-player game in an open-ended masonry ballcourt. point guards. Someone discovered that by mixing latex with sap from the vine of a species of morning glory (Calonyction aculeatum) they could turn the slippery polymers in raw latex into a resilient rubber. My boy is sitting there on the sidewalk, crying. Formative period ballplayer figurines—most likely females—often wear. I’d be out there dribbling by myself with these ankle weights strapped to my wrists. The Twins themselves, however, are usually absent from Classic ballgame scenes, with the Classic forerunner of Vucub Caquix of the Copán ball court, holding the severed arm of Hunahpu, as an important exception. We’re walking, we’re talking. [26][27] Some games were played on makeshift courts for simple recreation while others were formal spectacles on huge stone ballcourts leading to human sacrifice. You’re not really from New York if you weren’t eating White Castle before elementary school. As a consequence of this vanity, the Toltecs suffered a four-year drought. Just the other day, somebody sent me an Instagram DM with this old Kodak photo of me and Steph standing in the tunnel after a random high school game, like “Remember this?”. Finally, I work up the courage to go up to him, and I’m like, “Hey, Mr. Archibald, this is crazy but … did you used to play for the Celtics?”, And I’m losing my mind. The Shammgod was born in the streets. I mean, picture me. The first kid I got cool with was this dude Mason Betha, and he introduced me to the culture. Now, on this particular morning, I had a little change in my pocket, so we stopped at White Castle. NOBODY is trying to blink, man. They are highly addicting and fun. Nah, man. To be honest, one of the best days of my life was when I called my mom and told her that I was going back to Providence to finish my degree, and that I was going to lobby the basketball coaches to let me help out with the team. He was like, “Man, you think you’re gonna be Isiah Thomas, huh? Ballplayer painting from the Tepantitla, Teotihuacan murals. He also reported that players were even killed when the ball "hit them in the mouth or the stomach or the intestines".[29]. And I’m like, “Wait a minute. We’re alive. And I know I did that. In fact, some of these extant votive balls were created specifically as offerings. Whatever you say.”. He’s pointing at me like, “Man, y’all want to talk to me about Iverson? [64] Rather than nearly nude and sometimes battered captives, however, the ballcourts at El Tajín and Chichen Itza show the sacrifice of practiced ballplayers, perhaps the captain of a team. Little sister crying. The number of players per team could vary, between two to four. Listen, man. He always used to tell the class, “I know Shamm sits here and jokes with y’all, but when I look in his eyes, I can see his mind is somewhere else. It’s cold. By 300 BCE, evidence for ōllamaliztli appears throughout much of the Mesoamerican archaeological record, including ballcourts in the Central Chiapas Valley (the next oldest ballcourts discovered, after Paso de la Amada),[23] and in the Oaxaca Valley, as well as ceramic ballgame tableaus from Western Mexico (see photo below). I’m like, “Alright, Kobe. Madison Square Garden? Keep in mind, this only works if they⦠I’ll never forget when they came back the next morning, Gigi was dribbling the ball with the biggest smile on her face, man. I’m like, Smell my bag? I remember they were talking about how they were all gonna go off and play at the same college together someday. It’s a little better, right?”. They’re like, “Hurry up. I know that when I’m dead and gone, Shammgod will live on. They ain’t even want a lunch break!!!! [52] Ixtlilxochitl, a contemporary of Torquemada, relates that Topiltzin, the Toltec king, played against three rivals, with the winner ruling over the losers. Right out the side of his mouth like MJ, aggressive. However, the twins are unsuccessful in reviving their father, so they leave him buried in the ball court of Xibalba. They’re bawling. We’ll kill you, man.”. I just got named a McDonald’s All-American and he was about to sign a record deal with Bad Boy, and we’re looking at eachother like, “Damn, my bad!!! I probably spent like 10,000 hours just trying to cross up my shadow in the park. !”, He’s looking at me real calm, like Yoda. And that ain’t bad for a kid from 142nd Street in Harlem, you know what I mean? I was actually the second God Shammgod. teacher who kept giving me hell for the way I played the game. I didn’t know anything about basketball. I’m squinting. The Mesoamerican ballgame is known by a wide variety of names. Ballcourts were public spaces used for a variety of elite cultural events and ritual activities like musical performances and festivals, and, of course, the ballgame. I just looked up to the clouds, like, Alright, I got the message. He was trying to teach me how to do a crisp bounce pass or whatever, but I wasn’t hearing it. I’ve been shot at for no reason in particular. At that point, I had started making a little bit of name for myself playing in the streets. I wanted to help the next generation. The Mini Mamba, for real. Why didn’t you say something?!? They’re like, “We know who you are. [16][17] A stone "yoke" of the type frequently associated with Mesoamerican ballcourts was also reported to have been found by local villagers at the site, leaving open the distinct possibility that these rubber balls were related to the ritual ballgame, and not simply an independent form of sacrificial offering. Somehow, some way, through the grace of God, I became a teacher. I was nervous, but I was so captivated by the lights, the energy, the nicknames. You know, when I first met Kobe, I thought I would never meet anybody like him in my lifetime. In Maya Ballgame the Hero Twins myth links ballcourts with death and its overcoming. The basic hip-game outfit consisted of a loincloth, sometimes augmented with leather hip guards. When instead of precious stones and feathers, the rain deities offered Huemac their young maize ears and maize leaves, Huemac refused. Today's hip-ulama players are "perpetually bruised"[28] while nearly 500 years ago Spanish chronicler Diego Durán reported that some bruises were so severe that they had to be lanced open. Late in the history of the game, some cultures occasionally seem to have combined competitions with religious human sacrifice. So now I’m holding the bag up, real confused, like, “Huh? Are you really CHRIS PAUL, man?”, That’s a true story. You’re sitting around depressed, aimless. They had won three straight games coming into Tuesday night, but they proved they are nowhere near being a tournament team. [37], However, based on a review of modern-day game balls, ancient rubber balls, and other archaeological evidence, it is presumed by most researchers that the ancient hip-ball was made of a mix from one or another of the latex-producing plants found all the way from the southeastern rain forests to the northern desert. In the most common theory of the game, the players struck the ball with their hips, although some versions allowed the use of forearms, rackets, bats, or handstones. He now plays as a regular with Seirin with the goal of bringing the team and Taiga Kagami to the top of Japan. So make sure he’s not late.”. The stone ballcourt goals are a late addition to the game. Is that … is that White Castle?”. Overall, there appears to be a negative correlation between the degree of political centralization and the number of ballcourts at a site. In many cultures, further protection was provided by a thick girdle, most likely of wicker or wood covered in fabric or leather. The same ball game match, with its unfortunate aftermath, signified the beginning of the end of the Toltec reign. We got heated, and you know when you get mad at your friend when you’re like 15 years old and you go right for his soul? Chill! It was like a mixtape of all the best NBA guards — Kevin Johnson, Jason Kidd, Isiah Thomas. The players who are going to do the jumpshot will be across from each other. Ballislife.com - Ballislife.com is your 1 stop shop for everything basketball! Then we’ll go from 12 to two.”, I’m like, “Kobe, you want me to teach them for two hours?”. And it’s so funny, man … because it’s so similar to this other memory that always sticks with me. I remember I had this teacher, Mr. Baker. Gun to the back of my head. Get a little paper for my mother and my siblings. I’m fumbling with the locks on my chain, trying to get them off, and my friend is shaking. Pictorial depictions often show musicians playing at ballgames, and votive deposits buried at the Main Ballcourt at Tenochtitlan contained miniature whistles, ocarinas, and drums. In the 16th-century Aztec ballgame that the Spaniards witnessed, points were lost by a player who let the ball bounce more than twice before returning it to the other team, who let the ball go outside the boundaries of the court, or who tried and failed to pass the ball through one of the stone rings placed on each wall along the center line. And he’s looking at the bag, real curious. My homeboys used to walk past the park on the way to some block party, and I’d be like, “I’ll catch y’all later.”. I been robbed before, but this was some Biblical shit. When I got into my 30s, and my career overseas was winding down, I was a little bit lost, to be honest with you.
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