Small Gyms, A State of Mind

Small gyms is a state of mind, a style of play, the place where most basketball players go to play. Though we did not play there, Boston Garden was a small gym, 13,909 notwithstanding. Madison Square Garden, the same Madison Square Garden that exists today was a small gym in the early 70s, not so small today. Rose Hill Gym at Fordham in the Bronx is small, really small, as are most of the Ivy League basketball arenas. The Palestra in Philadelphia is perhaps the Mecca, the spiritual epic center of this state of mind, plus the popcorn smells really good.

Where do you play? Where did you play? Where would you play if you had played but didn’t? Small gyms has a place for you. We fully understand that baseline to baseline is supposed to be ninety-four feet, but that’s an airport runway to some. So, we shrink that to sixty-five and still have our game, the game we know. That’s the sideline? But that’s the wall! You could fit a pair of Chuck Taylors between the sideline and the brick, but that’s about it. Sure you could run the ninety-four but that’s not what’s down the street, that’s not what Ned’s got the key for. Clear everything, wall’s out. C’mon, let’s play.

Small gyms are where you played dodgeball and darebase in phys ed as a kid, and you tap the energy, borrow the innocence of the nine year old as you step out to make your first shot. Let me warm-up. Okay, okay. I got Moose. Let’s go, let’s move the ball, let’s run, let’s rebound and run! Pick him up, pick him up!

So, where do you/did you learn to hoop? That’s right small gyms. We listen. A ball is bounced, bounced, bounced, then the surprise of the crossover dribble. Slow, fast. Soft then hard. Quiet and whack! You move, you slide and shuffle, a shot is taken at a basket on a pole in the street or nailed to a barn or garage or in a school or at school yard where you are alone (swish). The game shrinks to the focus of repetition and into the dream that you see yourself becoming, the vision of what you just know you can be and can do. Small gyms are the box that allows your imagination to not dissipate.

Basketball is nothing if it is not about playing together, using one another to make something happen that you could not make happen alone. The game fades from the lives of players who never come to understand this. Yet for those who learned, those who felt it, those who really played and play the game, it curls and stays inside like the double helix. That connection that winds from player-to-player like the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the score, tears down the walls and pulls the game in, makes every gym, every playground, every hoop, for the effort, for the player, for that team, a small gym indeed.