Who's In?

Fun hoops piece in the LA Times Sunday (true, I am rooting for the Celtics in the Boston-LA matchup now ongoing, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the opponents' local paper). It’s about women playing pickup basketball with guys, a situation I have a lot of experience with. So has the author, Melissa Rohlin. She describes the phenomenon perfectly, particularly the “male dilemma.”

Say you’re the guy matched up with the one female player: Do you play hard and risk looking like a jerk, or do you back off and get beat and consequently embarrassed? I’ve felt this dynamic at play myself. I'm usually the smallest player out there; I'm not necessarily the worst. I try to match up with the person closest in size (that’s gonna be a smaller guy, who may have unresolved issues there anyway), or someone who doesn’t love to live in the post. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re stupid not to use that in playing against me. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re an asshole to use that in trying to hurt me, shove me around, or discourage me from playing. I’ve run into both those kinds of stupidity, and just as much straight-up play, thankfully. One big guy swatted a shot attempt of mine halfway across the gym, and then said, “Sorry,” kind of sheepishly. That’s at least a happier medium … acknowledging the awkwardness but not letting it affect the play. We could both laugh about it.

Rohlin talks about the issue of even getting into the game, sometimes. I haven’t run into that so much, but haven’t tried to join in many new games where I don’t already know somebody. One place where I did, I got a distinct feeling that some of the guys feared a feminization of the game. (It's a run where supposedly Doug Flutie plays sometimes, but not that day.) There was one other woman there, a college player. Size and skill-wise, it didn’t make real sense for me to be guarding her, but we were both female so it was a foregone conclusion. At some point in the game I stepped on the back of her heel and pulled her shoe off. I said, “Oop, sorry,” while continuing to play. Some guy nearby barked, “Hey! We don’t say 'sorry' here!”

For a variety of reasons (like cost and location, but including that benighted attitude), I didn’t go back there.

In the LA Times article, Rohlin quotes another ball-playing friend of hers, which sums up the inclusion issue and the whole scenario, really:

Guys who are good at basketball, she said, are inclusive and encourage women to join. Guys who are insecure about their basketball skills, well, they are insecure, period.