Dr. J, Jumpman and Kareem

Showing off my jumping ability

“Go ahead Dr. J!”

With that challenge hanging in the air, Paul Eckert picked up the ball and promptly banked it in many moons ago on a visit to Kings Dominion when we probably weren’t too much older than my son.

I wouldn’t throw that gauntlet down to Connor Sunday afternoon when we headed to the elementary school to shoot some hoops. Mainly because he doesn’t know who Julius Erving is.

He didn’t play organized basketball this year, but we have been playing on his small hoop in the driveway. But with the temperature reaching into the 60s, it was the perfect day to take it to the courts.

It was like an NBA All-Star game as not much defense was played, well at least by me. It reminded me of playing 1-on-1 in high school with my friend Sean Kelly. I had a good 3-4 inches on him but he was much quicker. It made for some good competition.

Against Connor it started with a bang as I tripped over my feet and went crashing to the ground after bouncing off the metal support. The game went about as expected, I used my height to shoot over him while he was able to get a lot of second-chance points. I didn’t get many rebounds as I thought if I bent over to get them my back might not let me get back up. And it was harder for him as he’s used to dunking on his hoop.

Along the way I showed him the Kareem Abdul Jabbar sky hook and the Albert King jumper I used to practice in our driveway growing up. He knew of Kareem as that was one of the names on his NBA2K game. And there’s nothing like a 7-foot basket to make you think you have jumping ability as I was able to go in for some knee-pounding dunks. I took the half-court game 40-36.

Once we got into a full-court situation it was all over. He ran by me time and again and was way ahead before he got tired and wanted to go home, which was fine by me.