Playground Basketball. A thing of the Past?

I had an amusing and nostalgic conversation with a Chester High basketball coach this week.

Chester had won a summer league tournament in Allentown and I was curious how it all turned out.

The first thing he told me was how happy the players were that it was raining on Friday, the first day of the tourny.

Happy?

Yeah, because it meant that they would be playing indoors.

Coach said that it hit him like a brick that this generation of top ballers are spoiled. They almost exclusively always play basketball on very nice indoor courts.

I reminded coach of the article I wrote in the Chester Spotlight about seeing no one playing on the Chester outdoor courts during a Saturday morning bike ride throughout the city. The story was accompanied by real time photos of empty courts.

Now I get it. 

Coach and I played basketball everyday as kids on any outside court we could find. The Cage, Dorian Court, Butler U, The Penn, Memorial Park -- and didn’t think nothing of hopping a ride to Darby Township, Brookhaven, Toby Farms, or Wilmington.

We played on lumpy courts, slanted courts, rims too high or too low, through rain puddles, no nets, bent rims, glass getting caught in the ball and eventually in our fingers...in short, nothing was regulation.

Today, kids play Biddy basketball inside before finding an AAU team that plays inside. Their school team plays inside, and many of them are playing at the Boy’s & Girl’s Club inside. 

No wonder you don’t see kids playing basketball outside. We can’t even keep an outdoor summer league going around here, and when we do, the best players aren’t involved.

Now I understand why the nets stay on the courts for so long at Memorial Park.