High School Hoops

When you can’t dunk, you seem to be obsessed with dunking. As a teenager with keys to the Y gym, I would open up after the Y closed, and my friends and I would jump off the gymnastics springboard and dunk. Floating through the air I would imagine I was…..well really I was just hoping too land without hurting myself or catching a nosebleed.

But my dunking fantasy came to reality pretty much every day after school. That is when my best friends in the entire world would gather at the driveway of Frank Selvy. Frank was an ex-NBA player with the Lakers, the only person to ever score 100 points in a NCAA game and the hero to all of us neighborhood NBA wannabees. Frank was also the father to Mike Selvy, maybe the only real basketball player in our group.

The court was our haven. It had an 8 ½ foot goal at one end of the driveway and a regulation 10 ft goal at the other. The entire court was a little shorter than a real half court. And this 8 ½ foot goal was no adjustable job that these spoiled neighborhood kids get today. This goal was held together with about 6000 nails, two rolls of duct tape and four gallons of paint.

These games daily were not just a bunch of white boys lined up practicing our dunks. We had a team, the Honolulu Surf. David Catron, was our center, our tallest player and started as the ‘A Train’ Artis Gilmore. Sean DeVine was our power forward and a great role player so we made him Buck Williams. William Poole was that annoying point guard so he became Mo Cheeks. Selvy was younger than us and he wanted to be George Gervin but we made him Danny Ainge. I was the oldest and the loudest so I anointed myself Bernard King. (To this day, I feel like I single-handedly beat the Pistons in a 1984 playoff series.)

Other kids from the neighborhood wanted to play, and we always needed one more to give us three on three. So we would call Larry ‘Tree Rollins’ Jones. Or Ken ‘Jon Koncack’ Binkley. High School friends like Scott ‘Kelly Tripucka’ Cochrane and Lee ‘Danny Vranes’ Lester would show up begging to play and to be on the Surf.

We played so much at the Selvy Back Yard Arena that we really became instinctive. Our real high school basketball team was awful and David Catron and I were the only ones that got to play any significant time. One day at our real high school practice I asked our coach to let our neighborhood play the rest of the team. So the bet was that if we won he would put us on the court together during the next game. We killed them. But then again what NBA team could match up against Gilmore, Williams, King, Ainge and Cheeks. But that noble coach never lived up to his end of the bargain.

The competition in the back yard was the best. In the winter we might have to play around some icy patches. During the summer we may have to jump over the garden hose watering Mrs. Selvy’s flowers. One afternoon the Selvy’s left there VW bus parked on the court. We weren’t old enough to drive, so we played around the vehicle. That led to one of the greatest plays in the history of the Honolulu Surf. (At least in my record book) Mike Selvy took an ill advised jumper on the 10 ft goal. William Poole got the rebound and just as somebody screams, “Where’s Cam?” I came running out from behind the bus on a fast break and caught a full court ally-oop pass for the game winner.

Another memorable moment came weeks after Daryl Dawkins shattered his first back board. David Catron went baseline with a thunderous dunk that brought down the 8 ½ foot goal. And brought it down on my head. Even though the play was really cool, it took the better part of that Saturday afternoon to get the goal back together. In all honesty the goal was never the same.

I look back at those days with great memories. A yard full of bikes and a driveway full of dreamers. Mrs Selvy would come home and always greet us with “Hey Girls.” We would only hope that Frank would come outside and watch just some of our game.

It was a sad day when I graduated and went off to college. The days of basketball in the Selvy driveway ended for me. Kind of felt like Dr J’s retiring!
I don’t even watch the NBA today. If I did I would probably sit around and tell my kids that Shaq wasn’t half as strong as the A Train. And if Ben Wallace could shoot he might be as good as Buck Williams. None of these teams have a point guard and leader like Mo Cheeks. And there aren’t competitors like Danny Ainge anymore. And then I would get the far off look and say, “Kids, did I ever tell you about the time I single handedly beat the Pistons in a 5 game series?”