Basketball Jones: Lou Waxman and the IBA Years

entered a time machine when he came across Cheech and Chong’s 1973 45 single “Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces” b/w “Don’t Bug Me” from the comedy album Los Cochinos.  “Basketball Jones” was a song by a supergroup.  George Harrison, Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner, Carole King, Nicky Hopkins, and Billy Preston all played on the track with Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector, and Michelle Phillips on board as back up singers.  The song was a parody of “Love Jones” by Brighter Side of Darkness.  But to Lou, Cheech and Chong touch on some serious business, because once upon a time, Lou had a basketball jones.  Lou absolutely loved playing basketball.

Listening to this song takes Lou back to high school.  Lou’s alma mater was a sports powerhouse during his time there.  Three quarterbacks on the football team played major D-I college football with two of them having long NFL careers.  As good as the football team was, it was the basketball team that itched Lou’s jones.  In 1986, the high school basketball team made it to the district finals losing to a team with a young Billy Owens, one of the greatest players ever in the state, who was also a massive star in college and was a lottery pick in the NBA.  Some argue he was a player before his time, a prototype for the modern big man.  As Lou remembers it, our outmatched high school squad trailed by only four points at halftime before Billy Owens, Billy’s brother, and the other superior talent took over.  On the opening tip of the game, Owens won the tip and ran down the court for an alley-op dunk that was unlike anything Lou had seen up to that point.  These high school football and basketball games were so superior to the sport teams of Lou’s college years that Lou never attended any college sportingevents in disgust.

Needless to say, Lou, even with his basketball jones, did not play basketball in high school.  The team was just too good.  The star player would go on to be a D-III standout, play in Europe, and become a successful head coach in the NBA.  But for those with passion but no talent like Lou, there was a rollicking and extremely fun intermural basketball association.  The IBA played their games in the high school gym with referees and scorekeepers.  It was like a real league.  There was a draft and after each game there were box scores and write-ups detailing each of the game’s highlights.  It was easily the most fun Lou had during high school.

From “Basketball Jones”:

Gimme the ball
I'll go one-on-one against the world, left-handed
I could stuff it from center court with my toes
I could jump on top of the backboard, take off a quarter, leave fifteen cents change
I could, I could dribble behind my back
I got more moves than Ex-Lax
I'm bad
I could dribble with my tongue
Here I go down court, try to stop me
You can't stop me cause
I got a Basketball Jones
Here I come
That's my hook shot with my eyebrow
Yeah, I could dunk it with my nose I'm, I'm bad as King Kong, gimme the ball I'm hot, I'm hot as...,
I'm hot as..., I'm hot as... uh Uh, uh, uh, uh

This encapsulates Lou’s intermural basketball career in a nutshell.  Complete delusions of grandeur and acts of unrestrained selfishness.  Lou was an absolute gunner and ball hog, who only cared about jacking up shots and scoring points.  Winning was secondary.  Just fill up the box score and get his name in the write-ups.  And Lou did get featured in the write-ups often.  The teacher who ran that league must have seen the humor in a kid with minimal talent acting like World B. Free.

(Halftime:  Have a few orange slices.  To hell with Hoosiers, Love and Basketball, Hustle, or Above the Rim.  The best basketball movie of all time is The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.  Julius Erving in a star turn as Moses Guthrie.  James Bond III as a more talented Gary Coleman.  Meadowlark Lemon.  Jonathan Winters.  Flip Wilson.  Enough said.  But wait there is more.  Cameos by seemingly hundreds of NBA players including Connie Hawkins, Spencer Haywood, and Chris Ford.  Marv Albert as himself.  Long live Set Shot Buford.  The movie is great, and the soundtrack is even better.  This movie is solid gold.  It might very well be the only work of art created on cocaine that is any good.  Besides the work of Sigmund Freud.  The only basketball movie that is even on the same court is White Guys Can’t Jump, a true masterpiece.  Honorable Mention to He Got Game.  Not because of Spike Lee, Denzel, or the surprisingly good acting by Ray Allen, but because of the scene featuring Jill Kelly and Chasey Lain that steals the entire movieand that Lou must have watched a billion times.

In He Got Game

The real pros

Jumped from

The P League

And finally

Made the show

Chasey

And Jill Kelly

The moment

Basketball movies

Finally embraced

The three

And cause

This is a

Spike Lee number

You also

Get a little bit

Of Heather Hunter)

From ninth grade to eleventh grade, Lou was on terrible teams full of teammates who acted like he did, just hot dogging and ball hogging their way to terrible records and never making the playoffs.  That is until Lou’s senior year, when he decided to get serious and head his own team.  That team was Projectile Vomit.  No definite article.  One of the fun things about the IBA was that each team designed their own t-shirts as a uniform.  The shirt would be made in the school’s graphic design department.  Luckily, Lou was good friends with a guy who can only be described as the school’s R. Crumb.  He was a genius at creating characters and caricatures.  He had a real talent.  In grade school, Lou and his friend made a stop-action animated movie called Krakatoa:  An Adventure, with a Gilligan’s Island collection of characters who one by one met their demise after they were shipwrecked on a volcanic island.  Lou’s friend designed the Projectile Vomit t-shirt, which Lou is confident remains to this day the greatest ever made in the history of the IBA.  On the front, a player drives with a basketball into a defender and proceeds to projectile vomit into his face, blinding him.  The back of the shirt reads, “We’ll throw it up from anywhere!!!”  Inspired stuff.  Projectile Vomit scraped together enough wins to make the playoffs and play a longer game on a full court in the high school gym.  As Lou remembers it Projectile Vomit won their first-round game and entered the semi-finals, only to lose to The MDs, also known as The Muff Divers, when their original name The Cunning Linguists was banned by the Commissioner.  The Muff Divers were not only superior pussy hounds compared to Projectile Vomit they were also better basketball players.  Like the high school team in 1986, Projectible Vomit fought valiantly but were just out matched.  

The IBA should have been made into an eighties teen comedy.  Lou remembers vividly when he first walked into the high school gym as a ninth grader to play his first IBA game.  Kurtis Blow’s “Basketball” thundered from a boom box and Lou thought there was nothing cooler than being right here, right now.  The opponent in that first game was The Jokers, named after rolling papers.  A group of stoners and Vo-Tech guys who proceeded to bully and beat the fuck out of Lou’s squad of swimmers and water polo players who played like fish out of water.  All the jocks had teams, the nerds, the stoners, the tech guys, the popular dudes, the school faculty.  Every clique there was had a team.  There was an all-girls team as well, who were allowed to foul at will and do whatever it took to get the ball and score.  Including ripping off your clothes.  These girls were serious, so serious that they would cling all over a lovestruck Lou even though outside of the gym none of these girls would so much as look at Lou.  In an effort to combat the girls’ aggressive tactics one of the popular dude squads came into the game completely covered in Vaseline.  A classic move.  Pure genius.  Lou would never have thought of that.  No, he came up with projectile vomit gags.  

Basketball Jones, I got a Basketball Jones
Got a Basketball Jones, oh baby, oo-oo-ooo

It‘s like yesterday that Lou was jacking up shots in the high school gym in his Projectile Vomit shirt.  And it’s like yesterday that Lou was playing pick-up with his father every second weekend from the age of five to seventeen.  For a lot of reasons, Lou had a basketball jones.

I need someone to stand beside me
I need, I need someone to set a pick for me at the free-throw line of life

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Billy Owens – Legend:  Billy Owens: The Career of the Man who INSPIRED KEVIN DURANT’S GAME | FPP

A Sneak Peek at The Fish:   The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979) Official Trailer - Julius Erving, Jonathan Winters Movie HD

James Bond III on The Love Boat:  James Bond III on The Love Boat

We’re Going Sizzler:  Free Throw Contest Scene | WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP (1992) Movie CLIP HD - YouTube

The IBA Theme Music:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_shxzlTRK44&list=RD_shxzlTRK44&start_radio=

 

--Lou Waxman