“3… 2… 1… *Swish* *BUZZER*”
The shot. The glory. It’s a situation every kid has imagined, often while perfecting their mid-range jumper in a driveway.
Hoop dreams are born as a kid, wide-eyed and attempting to imitate basketball stars who seem larger than life. The arena is the driveway, playground, the odd church parking lot — anywhere a dad can hang a backroom with a rim and a net, purchased at Dick’s Sporting Goods or Wal-Mart for a couple hundred bucks.
My hoop dreams took place on an adjustable backboard and rim my old man installed in the middle of our cul de sac. Eventually, we moved it to the driveway where it became a gathering place for pick-up ball with the neighborhood kids. Since we lived in a small neighborhood in the woods, if someone heard me out there dribbling around, it became an invitation to come over for a 2-on-2, 3-on-3 game.
Basketball brought us together. That fiberglass hoop is still at the bottom of my parent’s drive away, gracefully looking more and more weathered as the years go by. The last real game I remember playing on it was when I was 19, on summer break my freshman year of college. Around dusk, right after finishing up dinner, my dad challenged my best friend and to a basketball game. 2 vs. 1, just a handful of days before he was scheduled to have a major surgery to treat cancer.
First to 11. He hit 11, then we made it first to 21. He won. There were no gimmies, we were just both that bad at ball and out of shape.
We looked at each other kind of stunned: “49-year-old with cancer just kicked our ass.”
My dad just laughed.
—
Millions and millions of kids growing up in the Ahmad Rashad NBA Inside Stuff era have similar childhood memories. Mine aren’t uniquely special; They just encapsulate how an entire generation came to the game. Now that we can look at life and basketball through the lens of adulthood, an Instagram photography project called Neighborhood Hoops feels… significant. The gist is simple enough: Seattle-based Shaun Swick snaps pics of neighborhood basketball rims and backboards in their natural environment — on streets, mounted on garages, above barn doors, etc. But there’s a certain loneliness in seeing a basketball hoop just exist in its outdoor element, going completely unused. Where are the pick-up games? Where is the random kid bored and practicing his cross-over penetration in the driveway by himself, just for the hell of it? All those desolate hoops are not what James Naismith intended.
To Swick, this questions go unanswered on purpose. I hit him up to hear a little bit more about the project. If you’re anything like me, it will make you nostalgic for those years where you can spend an entire afternoon playing Horse or knockout with your neighborhood pals.
—
Tell us a little bit about the Neighborhood Hoops Instagram. Why did you start it?
In 2013, after finishing a project of sorts where I wanted to walk all the streets of my neighborhood in north Seattle, I was looking for something else to get me out and about (and looking at familiar things in new ways). On my walks I slowly became aware of the great variety and frequency of basketball hoops on garages, in driveways, alleys and curbs. It struck me enough to take a few pictures.
I posted my first #neighborhoops photos to my own account, @shaunline, beginning on December 16, 2013. By the following spring, after 13 posts, I decided to start @neighborhoops officially. What was once a reason to revisit familiar places is now, a couple years and a few hundred hoops later, a reason to visit new places.
Are you taking the pictures? Are you receiving submissions from followers yet?
I do not take submissions from followers. There are others in the submissions game, but this is more of a personal quest thing for me.
As someone who played a lot of neighborhood street ball, the pics make me feel completely nostalgic, yet a little sad that I’m all grown up. Is the lack of people actually playing hoops — and therefore, the desolation in the pics — intentional?
The lack of people is intentional, but not in any desolate sense. I’m interested in the variety of the backboards, setups and environment, and the stories those things tell.
What was your driveway set-up like as a kid?
My block as a kid had 6 or 7 houses with hoops on garages/in driveways. They’re sadly all gone now, signs of aging homeowners. My hoop setup, though, is still up, in the back yard.
Who were some of the players you imitated playing in the driveway?
I don’t know if I imitated anyone, but my guys were Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton.
—