Basketball Hoop Quotes

You take 5 white guys and you take 5 black guys and put em together for a week and what you won't have is 5 blacks guys talking like, 'Golly gee, we really won that big basketball game' but you will have 5 white guys talking like 'Yo slick, whuzzup...we be shootin hoops and mad playin, slammed those mofos

The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score,” Harry recited. “So — that’s sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn’t it?” “What’s basketball?” said Wood curiously. “Never mind,” said Harry quickly.

He checked out his surrounding. More books. A drinking fountain. A poster showing a guy slam-dunking a basketball with one hand and holding a book in the other, urging kids to READ! Weird, thought Steve. How can he even see the hoop? ... You see, Steven, Librarians are the most elite, best trained secret force in the United States of America. Probably in the world." "No way." "Yes way." "What about the FBI?" "Featherweights." "The CIA?" Mackintosh snorted. "Don't make me laugh. Those guys can't even dunk a basketball andd read a book at the same time.

So – that’s sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn’t it?’ ‘What’s basketball?’ said Wood curiously. ‘Never mind,’ said Harry quickly.

Basketball Rule #9 When the game is on the line, don't fear. Grab the ball. Take it to the hoop.

Sorry!' Dave's friend yelled when he saw me. 'That was my-' But i wasn't listening as,instead,i took every bit of the anger and stress of the last few minutes and days put it behind the ball, throwing it overhead at the basket as hard as i could. It went flying, hitting the backboard and banging through the netless hoop at full speed before shooting back out and nailing Dave Wade squarely on the forehead. And just like that, he was down.

I put a basketball hoop in the trees, to help the squirrels and give them a nice net to store their nuts for the winter. But that’s just the kind of thoughtful guy I am.

Have the WNBA lower the hoops. Because even though layups get the job done, they're lame. Seriously, layups look the way Woody Allen talks. Wimpy as fuck.

He drove past a couple of communal basketball hoops and some black and Latino kids on bicycles, who stopped and stared until he was gone. School had been out for a couple of weeks.

Anybody can throw a basketball toward a hoop. But only a relative few can exercise the athletic prowess of dribbling down the court, account for and surpass a variety of obstacles, and actually get the ball into the hoop consistently and repetitively contributing toward an ultimate win for the team. In the same way, anyone can open an investment account with M1 or Acorns or Robinhood or Cashapp… or even with the big guys like Ameritrade or Fidelity or Charles Schwabb or Morgan Stanley… but only a relative few can navigate an ever-changing economic paradigm, overcome various financial, legal and social obstacles, maintaining alignment with values, and achieve substantial growth and profits - contributing toward an ultimate win for the team. It’s better to hire a professional investor if you expect professional results.

Watching Castro, whose tiny hands looked like marshmallows, hoist the ball from his waist and through the hoop seemed like the human equivalent of an ant lifting fifty times its body weight.

I don't get it. Basketball is so supremely boring. I can't understand the point of watching ten giants running from one end of the field--court--to the other throwing an orange ball through a hoop in the air. I guess it's better than golf, but so is watching paint dry.

During discussions in his office, Bradlee frequently picked up an undersize sponge-rubber basketball from the table and tossed it toward a hoop attached by suction cups to the picture window. The gesture was indicative both of the editor's short attention span and of a studied informality. There was an alluring combination of aristocrat and commoner about Bradlee: Boston Brahmin, Harvard, the World War II Navy, press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, police-beat reporter, news-magazine political reporter and Washington bureau chief of Newsweek. -- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

He tells me in the way he knows melts me into a puddle—with a song. “You have stolen my heart with one look of your eyes.

Shit, I don’t want to lose my feet.  I like my feet.

Georgeta paused by the door and turned around to look at the boys. “Keep in mind there are humans around. Don’t show off with your physical strength, like you did last time.” “It was an accident—” Erik tried to protest. “An accident? You bent the basketball hoop with one hand.” “Erm.” Erik sheepishly looked at Bogdan for reassurance, but Bogdan didn’t comment, just chuckled.

When they find out what I do for a living, many people tell me they love music listening, but their music lessons 'didn't take.' I think they're being too hard on themselves. The chasm between musical experts and everyday musicians that has grown so wide in our culture makes people feel discouraged, and for some reason this is uniquely so with music. Even though most of us can't play basketball like Shaquille O'Neal, or cook like Julia Child, we can still enjoy playing a friendly backyard game of hoops, or cooking a holiday meal for our friends and family. This performance chasm does seem to be cultural, specific to contemporary Western society. And although many people say that music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even just a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are enhanced and more efficient than for those who lack training. Music lessons teach us to listen better, and they accelerate our ability to discern structure and form in music, making it easier for us to tell what music we like and what we don't like.

We need good liturgies, and we need natural ones; we need a life neither patternless nor over patterned, if the city is to be built. And I think the root of it all is caring. Not that that will turn the trick all by itself, but that we can produce nothing good without it. True liturgies take things for what they really are, and offer them up in loving delight. Adam naming the animals is instituting the first of all the liturgies; speech, by which man the priest of creation picks up each of the world's pieces and by his wonder bears it into the dance. "By George," he says, "there's an elephant in my garden; isn't that something!" Adam has been at work a long time; civilization is the fruit of his priestly labors. Culture is the liturgy of nature as it is offered up by man. But culture can come only from caring enough about things to want them really to be themselves - to want the poem to scan perfectly, the song to be genuinely melodic, the basketball actually to drop through the middle of the hoop, the edge of the board to be utterly straight, the pastry to be really flaky. Few of us have very many great things to care about, but we all have plenty of small ones; and that's enough for the dance. It is precisely through the things we put on the table, and the liturgies we form around it, that the city is built, caring is more than half the work.

I've never understood how martial arts aren't more popular. Especially here in the states. There's countless fanatics for Football, Basketball and other stuff here. Yet martial arts are considered a niche interest. Throwing a ball through a hoop is supposed to be more interesting than watching two trained fighters compete against one another? Ridiculous.” ​

One billion b-balls dribbling simultaneously throughout the galaxy. One trillion b-balls being slam dunked through a hoop throughout the cosmos. I can feel every single b-ball that has ever existed at my fingertips, I can feel their collective knowledge channeling through my veins. Every jumpshot, every rebound and three-pointer, every layup, dunk, and free throw. I am there.

One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a – this hurt my feelings – “real” game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. ‘In the second overtime,’ Joel told me, ‘when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportunity to shoot from the line for the game, they looked mighty smug as they took their positions along the key. Oh, Pop-A-Shot guy, I could hear them thinking to their smug selves. He’ll never make a foul shot. He plays baby games. Wa-wa-wa, little Pop-A-Shot baby, would you like a zwieback biscuit? But you know what? I made those shots, and those songs of bitches had to wipe their smug grins off their smug faces and go home thinking that maybe Pop-A-Shot wasn’t such a baby game after all.” I think Pop-A-Shot’s a baby game. That’s why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or margaritas or munches cupcakes. Unless one is playing the Super Shot version at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, in which case, one orders the greatest appetizer ever invented on this continent – a plate of cheeseburgers.

So,” Will begins, “do you play ball as well as you run?” I laugh a little. I can’t help it. He’s sweet and disarming and my nerves are racing. “Not even close.” The conversation goes no further as we move up in our lines. Catherine looks over her shoulder at me, her wide sea eyes assessing. Like she can’t quite figure me out. My smile fades and I look away. She can never figure me out. I can never let her. Never let anyone here. She faces me with her arms crossed. “You make friends fast. Since freshman year, I’ve spoken to like . . .” She paused and looks upward as though mentally counting. “Three, no—four people. And you’re number four.” I shrug. “He’s just a guy.” Catherine squares up at the free-throw line, dribbles a few times, and shoots. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She catches it and tosses it back to me. I try copying her moves, but my ball flies low, glides beneath the backboard. I head to the end of the line again. Will’s already waiting it half-court, letting others go before him. My face warms at his obvious stall. “You weren’t kidding,” he teases over the thunder of basketballs. “Did you make it?” I ask, wishing I had looked while he shot. “Yeah.” “Of course,” I mock. He lets another kid go before him. I do the same. Catherine is several ahead of me now. His gaze scans me, sweeping over my face and hair with deep intensity, like he’s memorizing my features. “Yeah, well. I can’t run like you.” I move up in line, but when I sneak a look behind me, he’s looking back, too. “Wow,” Catherine murmurs in her smoky low voice as she falls into line beside me. “I never knew it happened like that.” I snap my gaze to her. “What?” “You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that.” “It’s not like that,” I say quickly. “You could have fooled me.” We’re up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop. When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap. With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line. Will’s there, fighting laughter. “Nice,” he says. “Glad I’m downcourt of you.” I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. “Happy to amuse you.” His smile slips then, and he’s looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember . . . must recognize me on some level even though he can’t understand it. “You want to go out?” he asks suddenly. I blink. “As in a date?” “Yes. That’s what a guy usually means when he asks that question.

The PBA was a symptom of the Philippines' basketball obsession, not the cause. I was thrilled to be witnessing the professional game from inside Alaska's locker room, but that wasn't what brought me to Manila in the first place. I was inspired by the idea that a Southeast Asian nation populated by five-foot-five men and mostly forgotten by America except for its political corruption, widespread prostitution, and violent Muslim separatist movement could be devoted to hoops with a passion unequaled by any other country. It was a nationwide tale of unrequited love. Forty million short men obsessed with basketball--they might as well have been a nation of blind art historians.

EVOLUTION DID NOT ENDOW HUMANS with the ability to play pick-up basketball. True, it produced legs for running, hands for dribbling, and shoulders for fouling, but all that this enables us to do is shoot hoops by ourselves. To get into a game with the strangers we find in the schoolyard on any given afternoon, we not only have to work in concert with four teammates we may never have met before—we also need to know that the five players on the opposing team are playing by the same rules. Other animals that engage strangers in ritualized aggression do so largely by instinct—puppies throughout the world have the rules for rough-and-tumble play hard-wired into their genes. But American teenagers have no genes for pick-up basketball. They can nevertheless play the game with complete strangers because they have all learned an identical set of ideas about basketball. These ideas are entirely imaginary, but if everyone

About four months into it, we were shooting hoops in my dad’s driveway when Chip stopped in his tracks, held me in his arms, looked into my eyes under the starry sky, and said, “I love you.” And I looked at him and said, “Thank you.” “Thank you?” Chip said. I know I should have said, “I love you too,” but this whole thing had been such a whirlwind, and I was just trying to process it all. No guy had ever told me he loved me before, and here Chip was saying it after what seemed like such a short period of time. Chip got angry. He grabbed his basketball from under my arm and went storming off with it like a four-year-old. I really thought, What in the world is with this girl? I just told her I loved her, and that’s all she can say? It’s not like I just went around saying that to people all the time. So saying it was a big deal for me too. But now I was stomping down the driveway going, Okay, that’s it. Am I dating an emotionless cyborg or something? I’m going home. Chip took off in his big, white Chevy truck with the Z71 stickers on the side, even squealing his tires a bit as he drove off, and it really sank in what a big deal that must have been for him. I felt bad--so bad that I actually got up the courage to call him later that night. I explained myself, and he said he understood, and by the end of the phone call we were right back to being ourselves. Two weeks later, when Chip said, “I love you” again, I responded, “I love you too.” There was no hesitation. I knew I loved him, and I knew it was okay to say so. I’m not sure why I ever gave him a second chance when he showed up ninety minutes late for our first date or why I gave him another second chance when he didn’t call me for two months after that. And I’m not sure why he gave me a second chance after I blew that romantic moment in the driveway. But I’m very glad I did, and I’m very glad he did too--because sometimes second chances lead to great things. All of my doubts, all of the things I thought I wanted out of a relationship, and many of the things I thought I wanted out of life itself turned out to be just plain wrong. Instead? That voice from our first date turned out to be the thing that was absolutely right.

If I grew an inch a day, in 365 days I’d be one year tall. I’d be over three basketball hoops high, but I’d still only be able to palm a Sunday once a year.

Cohesion on the offense, intensity on the defense, is the game plan. When a coach puts multidimensional skilled players on the court who have the savvy to create the balance on the floor, move the ball, take high-percentage shots on the offense, and stifle their man on the defense, his team stands a good chance of winning the championship. That is what old school ball is all about. Old school players make timely hoops at the ends of big games. They have good body control and hands, dexterity is always the catalyst for old school players. They can go right and left when they make their moves. They know when to dish and when to swish and they prosper in the paint. They're not over-zealous in their play, falling into early foul trouble. They're omnipresent on defense, creating havoc for the opposing team. They play under control, not hell-bent, and have a rhythm and continuity in their offensive games. Basketball is a game of momentum and old school players know how and when to pick their spots to make their prolific moves that break the opposing team down.

the Covenstead at the center of the town . . . no, the Saints called it a Meeting House. The center was a big hall lit by clerestory windows around the edge where the bright light of dawn showed. One half was full of pews, the second—oddly—equipped with basketball hoops and a recessed

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

What is it you want from me Dad? You want me to be the big basketball star you never were?"-Scott

In the aftermath of his sizzling four-game summer league run, Bryant expected to join the team and immediately emerge as a superstar. Only, well, he did something extraordinarily stupid. Because Bryant was young and dumb and a 24/7 hoops junkie, on the afternoon of September 2 he visited the famed pickup courts of Venice Beach to get in a few runs. After leaping at the hoop to tip-dunk the ball, he fell toward the pavement and tried to catch himself with his left wrist. His 200-pound body landed atop his arms, and moments later he saw three knots bulging below his hand. The wrist was broken—and Jerry West was dumbfounded. He greeted the news of the malady with stunned silence, responding to Gary Vitti, the team’s trainer, with a blank stare. “He was doing what?” West asked. “Playing basketball at Venice,” Vitti explained. “Wait,” West said. “Wait, wait. Wait. What?” It would be one of the last times the Lakers didn’t include a NO PICKUP BASKETBALL clause in the contract of a rookie signee.

Plus, guards did not jump straight from prep hoops to the NBA. It just wasn’t something to be done. In the history of basketball, five other high schoolers had gone direct to the Association, and all five were forwards or centers. The last one to make the move, a Farragut Career Academy senior named Kevin Garnett, stood 6-foot-11 and was a rebounding and shot-blocking machine. Even with his size and strength, he joined the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1995 and averaged but 10.4 points per game. “It was,” he later said, “really hard.

She stepped back into the house. “I want to show you something.” Trying to get his legs back, his head wobbly, and his internal referee still giving him the eight count, Myron followed her silently up the stairway. She led him down a darkened corridor lined with modern lithographs. She stopped, opened a door, and flipped on the lights. The room was teenage-cluttered, as if someone had put all the belongings in the center of the room and dropped a hand grenade on them. The posters on the walls—Michael Jordan, Keith Van Horn, Greg Downing, Austin Powers, the words YEAH, BABY! across his middle in pink tie-dye lettering—had been hung askew, all tattered corners and missing pushpins. There was a Nerf basketball hoop on the closet door. There was a computer on the desk and a baseball cap dangling from a desk lamp. The corkboard had a mix of family snapshots and construction-paper crayons signed by Jeremy’s sister, all held up by oversized pushpins. There were footballs and autographed baseballs and cheap trophies and a couple of blue ribbons and three basketballs, one with no air in it. There were stacks of computer-game CD-ROMs and a Game Boy on the unmade bed and a surprising amount of books, several opened and facedown. Clothes littered the floor like war wounded; the drawers were half open, shirts and underwear hanging out like they’d been shot mid-escape. The room had the slight, oddly comforting smell of kids’ socks.

Ivy started to follow her mom but paused when Ezra wrapped his arm around Nash’s shoulders and her brothers basically boxed him in. “We’re going to go shoot hoops for a minute, Ivy,” Ezra said. “We’ll meet ya’ll in a while.” “What—” “It’s fine, I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a few minutes,” Nash said. And there was no give in his voice or his expression. His face only softened when he leaned over and kissed her again. She could swear one of her brothers made a growling sound, but then Ezra tugged Nash back and they all headed out. Ivy stared at the front door as it closed, debating if she should follow. She wasn’t worried that her brothers would actually hurt him. Not really anyway. Right? As she stepped into the kitchen, she frowned as she eyed her mom. “Wait a minute, we don’t have a basketball hoop anymore!

He couldn't understand today. Who can? How can you pay a man a hundred thousand dollars a year to hit a baseball or put a basketball though a hoop—and pay a teacher only twelve thousand a year to teach a kid to become a citizen? Is that waste? Give it some thought.

But always, since age three and a half, he [Malik Flowers] had known he wanted to ball, every minute of every day. Because hoops had it all: architecture, poetry, drama. Hoops was a dance, and a battle, and a story all at the same time.

And you can take that to the hoop!” said Michael Jordan as a basketball net appeared on the keystone of the arch leading into the rotunda. Jordan took two giant strides as an arena full of cheering fans and a play-by-play announcer’s excited voice roared out of the ceiling speakers.

was running out of valuable athletic clichés. Would beach volleyball say much about proposals for federal health care reform? Could I use mumblety-peg comparisons to explain the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations? Golf, however, is ideal for these purposes. “Christian fundamentalists put a wicked slice in the Republican party platform.” “Somebody should replace the divot on the back of Al Gore’s head.” “Let’s go hit Congress with a stick.” I also wanted a sport with a lot of equipment. All truly American sports are equipment intensive. Basketball was strictly for hoop-over-the-barn-door Hoosiers and Jersey City Y’s until two-hundred-dollar gym shoes were invented. And synchronized swimming will never make it to network prime time because how often do you need new nose plugs? I’m an altruistic guy, in my own Reaganomics way. Sports gear purchases are about all that’s keeping the fragile U.S. economy alive, and you’d have to get into America’s Cup yachting or cross-country airplane racing to find a sport that needs more gear than golf. I’ve bought the shoes, hats, socks, pants, shirts, umbrellas, windbreakers, and plus fours—all in colors that Nirvana fans wouldn’t dye their hair. Then there are the drivers, irons, putters, and the special clubs: parking-lot wedge, back-of-the-tree mashie, nearby highway niblick. MasterCard has installed a plaque on the wall of its headquarters to commemorate my taking up golf.

enjoyed the view from the stratosphere. Maybe they were closer to the angels, like an old woman once told him. He didn’t really believe that, but either way, taller men had no issue asserting themselves faster and with less effort than shorter ones. Than him. He’d done everything he could think of to gain an inch or two while it was still possible. He’d spent all his high school and college years on the basketball court, where he was barely tolerated because of his height. He’d seen pro players and had envied their stature, convinced that hoops had something to do with it.

and college years on the basketball court, where he was barely tolerated because of his height. He’d seen pro players and had envied their stature, convinced that hoops had something to do with it. Believing he could maybe override his genetics and squeeze a little more elevation from his growing bones, he spared no effort. He ended up almost three inches taller than his father, which meant his efforts had probably paid off some, but he was no Michael

With five players on each team taking the field, the goal is to get the orange basketball in the hoop. Two points are scored for close shots, three points if it is behind the large arc. While popular in the United States, other countries also play this sport. Michael Jordan is the stand out player in this game.

I silenced my phone and walked down to the fifth floor of Trump Tower, which once housed the set of The Apprentice. It was now a large, open, warehouse-style room, with some tables and chairs and a portable basketball hoop in the center, which had been brought in by campaign aides as a way to blow off steam. I grabbed a ball and shot by myself for a while

Thanks to basketball, I started worrying less about fitting in and more about standing out.

As my ecstatic teammates and I finish shaking hands with the other team, my mother reaches me, grabs my arm, and pulls me into a hug that smells and feels like every comfort and encouragement it’s taken to get me here. I sink into it, burying my face in her thick, red curls that always smell like strawberries. When my dad died and my world upended, my mother was my constant. When she married Matt and moved us to the suburbs outside of Baltimore, she was my rock. When I got the scholarship to play basketball at St. Joseph’s Prep and had to leave my friends and all that was familiar, she anchored me. At every turn, when things have spiraled or changed, she’s been the same source of support.