To some people pick-up basketball is a game to me it is life. Pick-up basketball created who I am today. This is not your ordinary game of basketball. I play on blacktop instead of the wooden floors. The score counts up by ones and is played until 21. It is a king of the court style of play and the worst part is waiting your turn to play the winners of the game before you. King of the court where the loser of the game switches out with a team waiting and the winning team stays on the court. There is a different feel to the game with a different set of rules to follow.  There are no fouls just consequences. It doesn’t matter if your a kid or a adult everyone is there and everyone becomes friends and plays.

There was one event in my life where pick-up basketball had a very positive experience on my. I was in Newport with a group of friends playing on a local court. We were all playing and then Middletown town kids have the audacity to show up on a Newport court. We had to protect our court and Middletown had a history of giving us a hard time. The game started with us scoring back and forth the game was very close and there was no clear side dominating. The game came down to the last possession. My team was winning 20-19 and middletown had the ball. They passed the ball down low and the kid had an easy lay up to tie the game, I came from behind him and blocked his shot preventing him from scoring the tying basket. I took the ball and passed it out to my teammate and he ran down on the fast break and scored the game winning basket for my team. We had beaten the team that came to our court and has given us trouble in the past. By the end of the game we had become friends with the middletown kids. You never will know what can happen when you play a pick-up basketball game. 

This is a sport always enters my daily life. It is something I do it everyday. I look forward to do it and I put time aside just to get out on the court, but of course homework comes first. I put on the same shoes and everyday is a different experience, you never know what you are going to get. I get caught up in the excitement that I loose track of time and end up staying there for hours. By the end of the day I make new friends and even some enemies. 

Pick-up basketball is very important to me cause i enjoy playing it. If I was told I could never play again I would be lost, I wouldn’t know what to do without it. It is something I have a passion for and I take it very serious, I want to win just as much as the next guy. I have been doing this for many years and plan on playing it for many more years to come and is something everyone should try at some point in there life.