Ready or not...
here we come!
It’s February 1997, Slam magazine has just dropped the 96 NBA Rookie cover, “Ready or not, here they come”, short hair Metallica recently dropped the Load album, and it has been 6 months since Tupac was murdered, shortly before his ‘final’ album “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory” dropped.
Those two albums would be played on a loop for much of that year…
I am 16 years old with a basketball in hand, standing at the center of the* Basketball universe..
At that point in time, my life could be summed up by that old slogan, “Basketball is life, the rest is just details”
Outside school hours, you could find me playing basketball, with small breaks for trips to the local shops. In the morning, it was rolls in square sausage to eat as we walked to the court, or afternoon breaks for deep fried ‘pizza crunch’
Playing that much Basketball was of course thirsty work, so there was always glass bottles of Irn Bru on hand to rehydrate… Nutrition was a big thing in those days…
My partner in crime at this time, was Donald, he’s the one who introduced me to Basketball, his house was at the top of those stairs that led down to our tiny ‘home court’
We’d play for hours and hours, day or night, sun or rain, before going up the stairs to his house to clean our hands and blast his hip-hop albums on the CD player.
It’s December 2024 and I am back home for Christmas, heading to do some last minute shopping, and we drove passed that sacred spot from my past. The sight of it unleashed a wave of memories, emotions, and a feeling.
The feeling that all I ever needed, was a ball and a hoop…
And in that moment, an idea was born, life is Ball & Hoop.
To be continued…
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