WorldBaller

Four years later, I returned to Chicago with three more goals in mind:

• Eat deep dish pizza

• Take a picture with the Bean

• Play basketball

Even though I didn’t get the opportunity to sink three-pointers on this extraordinary day, the alignment of our celestial bodies, with the moon swishing precisely across the sun's path, literally ‘shooting lights out’ around the world.

Before embarking on my quest to explore the various courts across the island, there was a prerequisite: I had to procure the official basketball jersey of Hawaii for my pickup games—an aloha shirt.

Everything was going smoothly: the flight left on time, the weather looked great in Tokyo, and I even carried all my luggage for a quick exit from the airport. It wasn't until I reached Terminal 3 of Haneda Airport (HND) that I encountered a problem.

I couldn’t exit the airport.

While Denver may be known as the Mile High City, my journey began at the Highland Gateway Park basketball courts, and regardless of whether or not I was high* during this time, I can tell you for fact that there was something wrong with this court. 

*he was not

- the editors (read in the voice of the narrator from Arrested Development)

My time in Taipei was limited, as I was bouncing between different cities of Taiwan, experiencing various different night markets and a seemingly unlimited number of bubble tea places. In fact, I got to visit the original bubble tea shop in Taichung, where even the world-famous wizard, Harry Potter, has decided to start a second career.

 ...you will encounter the players gathering in a circle and throwing signs. Now these aren’t your typical gang signs, but rather ‘Rock’ vs ‘Paper’. Don’t be confused as this is the way teams are chosen. You keep throwing Rock or Paper until it’s split evenly amongst players, forming the teams. 

There are definitely pros and cons to the new format, but I do think that it’s for the better. The biggest pro is that it gives pickup basketball a bit more meaning, as we are playing for a ‘championship’. The con is that you are playing for a ‘championship’ during pickup basketball...

I was concerned that I would have to change my blog name to NorthAmericaBaller(dot)com because all my recent posts had been in North America. However, I finally got the opportunity to travel to the other side of the world. 

With the explosion of AI and ChatGPT in the recent months, I decided to utilize ChatGPT to help me write about my pickup basketball experience in Atlanta. It should be noted that I wrote a first draft with details of my experience, and then I inputted it into ChatGPT to 'make it sound better'...

I had many potential ways to spend my time in Philly; eat a philly cheesesteak, tour the liberty bell, hunt for an ocular device, or get dunked on by Joel Embiid.

In the past week I traveled around the world – from New York to Hollywood, Paris, Rome and even Egypt – but unfortunately there were no basketball courts in sight. I even traveled back to the medieval times but to be fair, I don’t think basketball had been invented just yet.

My week in Phoenix was actually extremely packed and I was getting afraid that I would miss a chance to play pickup basketball. On the last day of my travels, I found a one hour slot between a steak dinner and a party where I hungout* with a Kardashian, I googled the closest basketball court and drove straight there in hopes there would be people playing pickup. 

This was the first pickup basketball game where we played with 2s and 3s. It just makes so much more sense as 2s and 3s are seemingly played at all levels of basketball except for pickup basketball. I approve.

We stayed at the all-inclusive Hard Rock Hotel Cancun resort that boasts “access to unbelievable All Inclusive amenities like experiential dining at 6 world-class restaurants, never-ending cocktails, legendary entertainment, and top-shelf everything across the board. It’s All Day. All Night. All Included, baby”. While all that sounded great (and expensive), I had to take care of some business and you guessed it – play some pickup basketball. 

I had some time to spare before an (basketball) event on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning and instead of sitting around at the hotel, I decided to spend the next hour driving to my destination while stopping at every basketball court along the way. Luckily for me, there was no shortage of basketball courts to choose from. It actually reminded me of the Traveling Salesman Problem, but with basketball courts. 

This was my first pickup basketball experience since March 2020, pre-covid, and while I desperately tried to keep my blog active with atypical basketball experiences, nothing could replace the experience of wandering around a new city in hopes to find a place to play some pickup basketball.

I also had some unfinished business that I had to attend to. See, when I first visited Singapore a couple months ago, there was a group I was interested in playing with but never got the opportunity because I came down with a very bad case of food poisoning.

Since our chief content creator has been grounded for the majority of this year due to the pandemic, as one of his faithful editors, I laced’em up and took up the pen (keyboard) to talk about these legendary courts in Taipei, Taiwan.

With the COVID-19 lockdown in effect all around the world, I have officially gone into basketball withdrawal. With no basketball to play or even watch, I decided to go down memory lane and whip out the ole Nintendo gamecube from the 18th century to get my basketball fix in.

The most interesting aspect of this for me at least was that since 3 on 3 is now an Olympic sport, and watching some games on TV and in Singapore, made me fully realize how important the 3 point shot was, especially when playing by 1’s and 2’s. Even though the 3 point shot is not my strength, I spent the entire night jacking up as many 3 point shots as possible. I started out probably 0-10 on 3’s...

If you take a look at the "Total:" you may notice that I received a discount. That's because my cheap ass remembered that their marketing emails sent me a 50% off code a year ago from my New York experience to play again. For those of you who wonder how I get to travel so much, it's partially because I save money in instances like this (Sorry Indoor Hoops, I really should be supporting you as much as I can).

But because it's a public gym, you do have to be careful with your belongings. During one of our games, this one dude ran off the court in the middle of play to chase some guy who stole his basketball (kudos for him for actually watching his stuff every time down the court). So make sure you watch your stuff.

You must be persistent. Lots of people want to play in this group. I was on the wait-list for 3 weeks before I finally got an in on the 4th and final week I was in Singapore. Not only did I accept placement on the waitlist, I messaged the admin every Tuesday asking if there were spots to play. And when denied, I would politely ask again next week. 

Shooting 3’s isn’t my strong suit so I tried to stay away from playing, but because they had an odd number and needed one more, I was reluctant but obliged to play. Terrible decision on my part because 1. My stock is already low for pickup because I don’t look like a basketball player, and 2. I suck at 3’s. And it went pretty much as expected. My teammate was amazing and hit like 75% of his shots, taking a commanding lead, only to get to me where I shot maybe 5%. Long story short, we lost...

Have you ever played outdoor basketball in pants before? Even when it’s almost 90 degrees and sunny? Well, it’s pretty customary to wear pants everywhere in China, no matter how hot it is. Now, you would expect people to wear shorts while playing basketball, right? Wrong...

The next 10 minutes of basketball were probably the worst 10 minutes of basketball anybody could have experienced. 4 of the players were referees, so we did not have refs. Nothing against young kids trying to play, but it’s always odd when you have people who are probably 20-30 years old and over 6 ft tall with 13 year old kids who are hovering 4 ft tall. I knew this was going to be a bad game from the get go, but I needed my ‘experience’, so I decided to give it a go.

The most memorable players that I will take away from my visit to NYC is this guy in a Chicago Bulls jersey with the strongest “Noo Yawk” accent and mentality I’ve ever heard. I was happy to have him on my team because there was no way he was losing any argument...

Typically, I am not the one to show off during warmups or shooting around or even during games because my game is rather fundamental and dull, but I had to make myself look good enough for people to pick me up, so I started doing some fancy moves and stuffs to hopefully catch an eye. I did seem to make a somewhat high percentage of my jump shots as well and held my follow through for lasting effects (I cringe just thinking about this now…)

I stumbled upon two different pickup basketball programs and actually had time to try out both. Both pickup basketball programs had two completely different business models and I think it’s worth mentioning both because the use cases fit the need of two separate groups of players...

What better way to spend Valentine’s day than to play basketball in Abu Dhabi right? Well 7 years ago, I spent Valentine’s day anxiously watching Watson compete on Jeopardy, which I have to say was pretty awesome. But basketball in Abu Dhabi is pretty cool too...

I only had less than 24 hours in Dubai, so I had to make the most out of it. My airplane landed at 7pm on a Sunday night and I knew that was the only day in which I could play pickup basketball, so I had to be decisive on where I wanted to go...

Today’s post is going to be a little bit different than others in that this post is from one of my readers. It’s always great seeing other people stumble upon my blog and get inspired to play basketball around the world and share their experience...

In route to the basketball courts through the park we passed by many exotic wildlife including giant lizards! These lizards which are officially called Asian Water Monitors roam the park by land and by water. I assumed that they are harmless as any local person would just go on about their day, but to us tourists, it was a perfect picture taking opportunity with these lizards. We saw many with the largest probably 5 ft long (my editors point out that I am probably exaggerating)...

I had high expectations for Milan, Italy because of my previous Italy experience from Rome, but Milan turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. It may be my fault because I didn’t research well enough but I went to 4 different courts within the city of Milan and 2 of them were under construction or completely gone, 1 of them was reserved and the 4th court I was finally able to play...

Stereotypical fouled guy: every time this guy drove into the lane and went up for a shot, ‘FOUL’ was shouted out. It was apparent he did this and probably even knew he did that based on routine. There was this time he yelled out ‘FOUL’ when no one was near him and we all looked at each other with the ‘what? reaction’ and he immediately said ‘ok no foul’….and the opposing team received the ball...

I have no idea which city to choose so I went with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim naming convention…

I recently got to play on the basketball courts inside the Capital One Arena (formerly known as the Verizon Center) and it was an incredible experience. Yes, I know, travelers who want to play pickup basketball here may never have the chance to, but this experience was far too great for me not to write about it, so consider this a special edition (plus I just wanted to brag a bit)...

There were plenty of players in the gym and it made me wonder how many players would be in there if it had been during the actual school year. UBC is also nicknamed University of Billion Chinese and probably 75% of the people there were Chinese...

Kitsilano Beach Park’s Basketball courts are my favorite basketball courts to date. The scenic views from the courts are magnificent and the court itself is very well maintained. With the court being in the center of a very popular beach park, don’t get nervous because you will always be playing in front of a crowd...

With a group of 800 members, I had to be one of the first 18 to respond so this naturally became a game to me. I needed to plan accordingly and being somewhat of a stats nerd, I went through the past 12 posts by the guy, and inputted in excel the time he first posted, as well as the time when the last 18th player signed up...

I will admit that this was the first time playing pickup where I felt intimidated. When I arrived, there were 2 half court games going on, with a lot of people waiting for both. One could easily tell that one half was recreational while the other half was legit. I decided to suck it up and forced myself to try playing on the ‘A’ side for once...

It’s always fascinating finding out about pickup basketball games around the world. I found my Amsterdam pickup basketball through Meetup.com, Zurich pickup basketball through forums, Johannesburg pickup basketball through the hotel I stayed at and other cities through Google searches. Lisbon just adds to the list as they actually have a very well run Facebook group called ‘Campo Mártires da Pátria STREET BASKET’...

The first basketball court I stumbled upon featured 2 players shooting around with a deflated basketball that didn’t bounce, so I decided that it would be best for me to keep moving until I could find a court with more people playing and an inflated ball...

I was so desperate I started going to the 2nd and 3rd pages of google in hopes to finding a place to play...

I arrived in Amsterdam in the middle of the winter where it was below freezing. Outdoor basketball was not happening so I had to get creative on finding an indoor court. I googled online for pickup basketball in Amsterdam and was surprised to find a meetup group that just happened to be playing indoor basketball on the day that I was free. I had never done a meetup before so I was skeptical at first...

When walking through the park it is impossible to miss. In fact, while I was walking towards it, I thought I was going to the Roman Coliseum. With its raised courts and the high rising pillars, you will feel like you are walking right into a gladiator match...

I got to travel to South Africa for the first time in my life, and of course the first thing I do is to look for a basketball court to play on #bballaddiction. I thought it was going to be difficult...