Nuggets ready for historic outdoor preseason game

By Chris Tomasson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 9, 2008 at 7:59 p.m.

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The Nuggets reminisced about their experience playing outdoors, before their exhibition game against Phoenix outdoors in Indian Wells, Calif.

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Memories this weekend will flow back to Kirkwood Park in Atlanta, Cloverdale Park in Baltimore and Lakewood (N.J.) Community Center.

Those were some of the places Nuggets players took it outside as youngsters, battling on cement or asphalt. It was no concussion, no foul.

It will be a lot different when the Nuggets face the Phoenix Suns on wood Saturday night at the 16,000-seat Indian Wells

(Calif.) Tennis Garden. But the preseason game will still be outside, the second one in NBA history.

"It will probably (bring back memories)," said guard Anthony Carter, whose Nuggets open the preseason tonight against Minnesota at the Pepsi Center before flying to California immediately after the game. "The sun might be out. The moon or something. It's just going to be fun."

At least the rain won't be out. With the game being held in the desert to minimize that chance, Saturday's forecast calls for zero percent chance of precipitation with a high of 78 degrees and low of 53.

If only things were that encouraging heading into the first outdoor game. The Suns beat Milwaukee 116-103 on Sept. 24, 1972, in a preseason night game on a court that had been plopped in the middle of a baseball stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

"It was just kind of odd, and it looked like it was going to rain," remembers Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then a Milwaukee center. "It was dark and the baseball lights didn't really light up the court correctly."

Bucks guard Jon McGlocklin recalls the humidity being so oppressive that players "were sweating so much, you had a hard time holding onto the ball."

He remembers the fans all being "on one side behind a fence so they wouldn't throw stuff at the players."

Dick Van Arsdale, then a Suns guard, didn't have a good shooting night. But he swears to this day the baskets "were more than 10 feet" tall.

All of that sounds more like the stories Nuggets players tell of growing up and playing outdoors.

Here are memories stirred up by three as they prepare to again take it outside:

Hoops and drug dealers

Carter dropped out of high school at 15 and turned pro.

Well, just about.

Carter, who would later earn his General Equivalency Diploma and enroll at Saddleback College in Southern California in 1994 when he was 19, spent his late teenage years playing in high-stakes games on the playgrounds of Atlanta.

"The dope man would put up the money, and we would play," Carter said. "We used to play for the drug dealers. That's how we were going to make our money. We didn't sell the drugs."

Carter said local drug dealers would spot each team an amount from $400 to $2,000 (usually on the lower end) for five-on-five games. The winning players would split the take, meaning Carter would get $400 for a high-stakes win.

"The one who put up the money, he didn't get any (if that drug dealer's team won)," Carter said. "He just wanted the bragging rights."

Carter said games were watched by 25 to 75 people. The full-court battles were not for the squeamish.

"There was blood, elbows," Carter said.

Carter played for the Kirkwood Boys, named after his neighborhood. He said his team won more than 100 games in several years, losing only once, and he pocketed more than $10,000.

"(I used the money) to buy shoes and food," said Carter, who grew up poor. "That was the only way we could eat."

Carter has made millions in the NBA. But when he plays outdoors again Saturday, his mind will drift back to his first gig.

All-weather Anthony

When Carmelo Anthony was growing up in Baltimore, he could have adopted the credo of the mailman: "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night."

The time or temperature didn't matter. When Anthony and those in his neighborhood had a score to settle, they headed to the concrete court at Cloverdale Park, where the rims usually were bent and, if there was a net at all, it was chain-link.

"You'd sit on your block and you'd be trash talking: 'I know I can beat you,' the Nuggets forward said. "Guys would say, 'All right, let's go to the court right now.' So you'd be playing with sweaters on or your sweat suits."

Anthony said he played in temperatures ranging from the 30s to 115, a bit of an exaggeration because the record high record in Baltimore is 108. But you get the idea.

One thing's for sure, when it was cold, it was a lot more comfortable playing than waiting.

"If you lost, you had to wait about four or five games to come back (and play)," Anthony said.

When Anthony started playing at the park, he was 8 and there were "guys way better than me." Suffice to say, Anthony eventually didn't have to wait long to play.

All-night basketball

Some complain about NBA Finals games not ending until midnight Eastern time. That's when J.R. Smith once started his games.

During summers when Smith was in high school, he would head to Lakewood Community Center to play outside on concrete. The court had lights that stayed on all night.

"About 5 (a.m.), until the sun came up," the Nuggets guard said of the latest he ever played. "The boys were out there. The girls were out there. Everybody was just hanging out all times of the night. . . . We had music. Hip-hop tunes."

So where was Smith's father, Earl? Certainly, he had to be wondering where his son was all night.

"He was out there with us," Smith said.

Smith said games sometimes didn't break up until players "had to go to work" in the morning.

Smith returned to the court four or five times last summer to play but said it was nothing serious. He couldn't have played until 5 a.m. had he wanted.

"Now, they turn the lights off like at 2 o'clock," Smith said.

Return to 'roots'

Marv Albert can say "Yesssss!" just as well outdoors.

During the early 1970s, Albert broadcast a summer game between NBA and ABA stars on an outdoor tennis court in Forest Hills, N.Y., then site of the U.S. Open. In the early 1980s, he announced a Harlem Globetrotters game outside at New York's Rucker Park.

Yes, the Washington Generals still lost.

Now Albert will be TNT's play-by-play announcer for Saturday's preseason outdoor gathering between the Nuggets and the Suns in Indian Wells, Calif.

"Playing outside is returning to the roots of basketball," Albert said.

Albert figures there will be ample lighthearted moments. Considering he's broadcasting alongside Charles Barkley, in addition to Reggie Miller, how could there not be?

"We'll go down before the game and gauge whether there's a slight wind," Albert said. "But I don't think the conditions will be like they were in Buffalo at (last season's) NHL outdoor game."

While perhaps another outdoor star will emerge Saturday, Albert offered his top three playground legends:

Julius Erving. Albert said he was the guy "everybody came to see" in Harlem in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Earl Monroe. Albert said his 1960s playground moves remain legendary in Philadelphia.

Connie Hawkins. Albert, who used to watch Hawkins play in the 1960s in Brooklyn, remembers gawkers were lined up 15 rows deep.

• October 10, 2008

  10:15 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  fishtanksamurai writes:

  This game sounds like it could be alot of fun. The outdoor hockey game was great too.

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