The worst pick up players.

[The 24th Letter]

Re: The worst pick up players.

Some gyms have a strict no continuation rule for one reason or another. I never understood it myself.

Never really push back on it though, it’s rare I call a foul

[ehh]

Re: The worst pick up players.

but foul calls also cancelled out made buckets?

I have always and only played pickup with this rule in CT/NY/MA but only if the offensive player calls it. If the defender acknowledges the foul the bucket it still counts.

[ojandpizza]

Re: The worst pick up players.

I probably mentioned this earlier in this thread years ago but it just sprang to mind again today.

Has anyone else ever played in an open gym/pick-up environment where not only was the shooting foul onus on the defensive player, but foul calls also cancelled out made buckets?

I know that's a confusing question so I'll paint a picture. James drives to the rim and elevates for a layup. Steve comes over from helpside and demolishes him midshot. James makes the shot anyway, but Steve—the defensive player—follows the house rules and calls a foul on himself, wiping the shot off the board.

I played at a spot like that for a few years and I thought it was insane then and I still do now. Why in the world would that bucket not count? I brought that up at one point and folks responded like I'd used the lord's name in vain during Sunday mass.

Pretty much every gym I played at back in my college days was offense calls fouls and if the shot goes in it doesn't count.

The reason for "why" is the offensive player would just call a foul when there wasn't one if it meant getting the game winning bucket with no punishment. Hell a lot of them just kept calling them anyways until a shot "felt good".

I rarely called fouls at all because of it. Just expected to be able to play through. I'd hit game winners where I wound up on my back and didn't say anything. Then the stupid defender, knowing he fouled, looked down "did you call it?"... So stupid IMO

Usually if I fouled someone defensively I would just call it myself. That way if they made the bucket it counted but I was still calling the right play if they missed but didn't call the foul because that stupid rule. Some people didn't like that but I'm out there trying to hoop not find ways to cheat the game. It's pickup not the NBA finals lol.

[jfsolo]

Re: The worst pick up players.

I feel like the bucket not counting if a foul is call is 100 percent an East Coast thing. In probably more than 30 different places here in So Cal I never played at a court without continuation.

The best places that I have played in, mainly the invite only private games, the defense was supposed to call the foul although the offense still could.

I agree with OJ, it's a garbage game when someone is trying to manipulate the game with cheap tricks. In games without refs or someone who is the "commissioner" of the court, the super hyper competitive players pretty much make the game terrible.

[VDusen04]

Re: The worst pick up players.

For the record, I was talking about a gym where both the defense called fouls and And-1's didn't fly, meaning a defender could nullify continuation by calling a foul on themselves. It was madness.

As for the more standardized "offense calls fouls, no And-1's", I've always hated that rule, too. I don't think there's any way you can cheat-proof a game when someone's hellbent on abusing the rules. So all the no And-1 rule did was make people wait to see if their bucket dropped before calling anything (inevitably leading to arguments down the line about late calls). At best, it slowed games down as guys were punished for calling their fouls in a timely fashion only for their shots to still go in.

I spent most of my time hooping at a spot where if the foul threshold was reached, you called it when it happened. If you still made the bucket, then congratulations, we're moving on. Taking away and-1's turned everything into guesswork, where the onus was on the offensive player as to whether they wanted to gamble every time an opponent roughed them up. It makes no sense.

[The 24th Letter]

Re: The worst pick up players.

Oh, Now that I’ve never actually seen on the court.

I’m fighting that every step of the way, lol

[ojandpizza]

Re: The worst pick up players.

Another nitpick thing.. But 99% of gyms I played at went by 1s and 2s, and I cannot stand that either lol. A 3 pointer is not worth double a 2 pointer. I'd much prefer if the game is to 12 make it 24 and play by 2s and 3s, because a 3pt shot being worth double every other shot has never made sense.

[jfsolo]

Re: The worst pick up players.

Another nitpick thing.. But 99% of gyms I played at went by 1s and 2s, and I cannot stand that either lol. A 3 pointer is not worth double a 2 pointer. I'd much prefer if the game is to 12 make it 24 and play by 2s and 3s, because a 3pt shot being worth double every other shot has never made sense.

I would never play at a place that played 1s and 2s, as you say regular basketball is not 2s and 4s, the logic is supposed to be that the "games go faster" but it's the stupidest idea ever created that somehow a large percentage of courts decided to go along with.

[The 24th Letter]

Re: The worst pick up players.

My peeve lately is gyms who don’t play “Win 2 and sit when there are 20+ heads.

I feel like that’s too many for a hoop session anyway, but if that’s the case, no reason for guys to be sitting 3 plus games.

[jfsolo]

Re: The worst pick up players.

15 players with 3 balanced teams where everyone knows everyone else's game is the perfect environment. No one sits more than one game, a team can stay on if they're on a roll, adjustments can be made to knock off the hot team and they have to fight fatigue and loss of focus as well.

[ojandpizza]

Re: The worst pick up players.

15 players with 3 balanced teams where everyone knows everyone else's game is the perfect environment. No one sits more than one game, a team can stay on if they're on a roll, adjustments can be made to knock off the hot team and they have to fight fatigue and loss of focus as well.

Yeah invite only runs are so much better for this reason alone. Don’t have 20-30 dudes sitting watching and waiting.

The rec center back in college dudes would call “downs” and then pick 4 guys to play with them. Only problem is they would tell everyone they have 5 and then pick 2-3 dudes off losing team. So even though 20 dudes were sitting out you could be 10 games back if you weren’t picked up because it wasn’t like the 20 guys sitting out would just split into 4 teams and go in order that way.

Used to have a church we played at that only invited 10 guys and it was all guys around the same level. You didn’t shoot for teams, or pick teams as a captain, but instead each guy had a matchup that was closest to his body/position/skill and teams were super balanced that way. Probably the best pickup games I ever played in as far as just balanced competitive games go.

[The 24th Letter]

Re: The worst pick up players.

Funny tweet from Coach Nick considering the earlier discussion

https://twitter.com/bballbreakdown/status/1553092167337291776?s=21&t=siifU93An0BqV5-lyieLYA

[VDusen04]

Re: The worst pick up players.

My takeaway over all these years is that there's no format that's immune to abuse.

If you call your own fouls, then you'll inevitably encounter a guy who calls everything. If the defense calls their own fouls, then you'll inevitably encounter the guy who plays super physical defense and won't call anything on himself. And if you don't count And-1's, then you'll inevitably get two things: defenders playing obnoxiously over-physical because they know you won't want to call the foul or offensive players making late calls (to see if the bucket drops first, no doubt leading to an argument).

The deeper you delve into "well, if you score but midway through your shot you were clotheslined, thus leading you to call a foul, we'll have to take the bucket away because of that one guy a few weeks ago who called fouls a lot", that's when the experience got frustrating for me.

It always felt like an unwinnable situation. You want me to call the foul immediately when it happens but then if I do that, I get punished if I'm somehow able to find a way to finish the shot anyway. So then everyone says the solution is to just not call fouls then, which leads to a sharp increase in defensive bailouts on account of lazy and pour defenders getting away with fouling as a means of getting stops.

[TMagic]

Re: The worst pick up players.

I honestly don't remember that ever being a problem (in Florida)

We called our own fouls. If you were fouled on a shot attempt, you call for an And-1. And if the ball went in, game continues. And if you missed you kept possession, check ball up top

No issues

[jfsolo]

Re: The worst pick up players.

I honestly don't remember that ever being a problem (in Florida)

We called our own fouls. If you were fouled on a shot attempt, you call for an And-1. And if the ball went in, game continues. And if you missed you kept possession, check ball up top

No issues

Yes, normal common sense rules.