Dave HuggardSuburban North Vancouver has the world’s highest density of free-standing basketball hoops*. (*Not a scientific study. I haven’t looked anywhere else). They reveal much about us.
The hoop’s height is adjustable – no child should be disadvantaged just because they are a pipsqueak. The hoops start their lives elementary-school low, shiny and clean, the net gleaming white or patriotic red-white-and-blue. They are raised over the years as their users become broody hulking adolescents. Metal rusts, grime accumulates. In our climate, mildew, algae, and moss grow. The net becomes tattered, the hoop askew. The backboard cracks, the pole lists, and everything languishes as the youth scatter to Yale Business School or Millhaven Maximum Security. Maybe there is one last game of Twenty-One at Christmas before the elders down-size and the old hoop is hauled off as scrap.
Sometimes, though, I see fully decayed hoops still at the 6- or 7-foot stage. What happened? How did the system go awry? Did the boy get drafted into the $20,000 per year hockey development leagues as an 11-year-old? Did the girl’s Mandarin-immersion violin lessons take over? Or, I can’t help wonder, is there a sadder tale, a suburban version of “baby shoes, never worn”?
Free-standing basketball hoops are a socio-economic indicator. They range from the high-end professional-looking Spaldings and GoalSetters, to the popular mid-range but still NBA-approved LifeTime series, both with clear plexiglass backboards, the latter prone to catastrophic failure. The lower end is dominated by TuffStuffs, their solid grey plastic backs providing excellent surfaces for aesthetic decay. The occasional Bison 400 or plywood-backed contraption inherited from Uncle Norbert round out the choices. All houses on a block tend to have the same class of hoop.
The greater socio-economic contrast is with the public asphalt and chain-link ball courts of places like Newark and the south side of Chicago. I’m guessing that different lessons are learned there than in the driveways of North Vancouver – hard lessons about social structures, what it means to be small or weak, or big and strong, how to survive, and ultimately how to get along – maybe the lessons that are needed to learn how to run a city or a country or a planet.
I’ve only ever seen one person using a free-standing basketball hoop in North Vancouver. A 10- or 11-year-old girl was shooting free throws by herself in a lane in a light drizzle. The net was almost full height. She was pretty good, better than I ever was. The next time I walked by, she was balancing two spinning plates on sticks while riding a unicycle. I’m not sure what that tells us.
