On the Basketball Courts and Beyond

Courts of the World was on TrueHoop

Damn that cheap server!

Bunsen Honeydew, Web Scientist at COTW.

On monday, we were included in Henry Abbott’s daily bullets on TrueHoop, which led to way more traffic on courtsoftheworld than we usually experience. More people registered, more people added courts. We also got tons of advice on what still needs to be done better, hints what might be missing. And we got a lot of encouragement and positive feedback.

The two most important lessons we took away from this?

1) There is a real need for what we do. That’s why we’re going to go back to the lab, lock ourselves in and work on all your suggestions to get it right.

2) It’s the ballers putting their homecourts on the map and displaying their skills on video who make this site colorful and informative (which we of course knew all along). Giving you even more opportunities to interact and edit information on courtsoftheworld is the next thing on our to-do-list.

So watch out for some big changes coming up. And keep spreading the word!

Tags: Courts of the World
Posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 in Updates by Courts of the World | 5 Responses

The Awakening of a New Lipik

Streetball in Croatia

Basketball is a national sport in Croatia, which gave birth to numerous NBA players like Dražen Petrović, Toni Kukoč, Krešimir Ćosić, Gordan Giriček, Žan Tabak and many others. While most of these players derive from the famous clubs in Zagreb and Split, the heart of the country’s streetball scene lies in the rather small city of Lipik. This is even more surprising if you take into consideration that the city’s infrastructure was burned down and destroyed in the Yugoslav wars in 1991. The tournament is organized by a local youth association, a generation from whom the war has taken a major part of their childhood.

The annual streetball tournament at the basketball court at Lipik Orphanage exists since 1999 and has grown over the years to one of the most popular streetball events in Croatia. While being regional at the beginning, its popularity and importance has increased year by year. In 2007, the Final Croatian Championship for Young Players were carried out, and in 2009, the Final Croatian Championship Masters will take place in Lipik – being the highest step in Croatian streetball.

Impressions of the Streetball Tournament in Lipik, Croatia. Read the rest of this entry.

Tags: Croatia, Tournament
Posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 in Events by Courts of the World | No Responses

Uplifting Ghana’s Youth

Hoops Care is Making a Difference Through Basketball

There are good reasons why we don‘t hear a lot about Basketball in Africa. First off, in many African countries, people have to deal with very serious issues such as poverty and HIV. And you can make the case that showing kids how to throw a ball into a hoop is not really something that has to be tackled with the same kind of urgency.

Secondly, accessibility to media we use everyday, i.e. the internet, is much more scarce (Insert „hot spot“-joke here). That‘s probably a big reason why a lot of things going on in Africa are not „visible“ to the rest of the world.

But we have started courtsoftheworld.com four weeks ago to show what‘s happening on courts all over the globe. So Africa has got to be represented, regardless. Read the rest of this entry.

Tags: Africa, Tournament
Posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 in Events by Courts of the World | No Responses

Romanias VIT – The Sportarena Streetball Championships

Very Important Tournament

Some streetball tournaments are known worldwide – the EBC in NYC or Quai54 in Paris just to name two… – others are not and still they are most important to a regional scene. The Sportarena Streetball Championships is such a series of tournaments that without a single doubt became a social phenomenon on the top basketball court of Romania – Politehnica!

Streetball tournament at Politehnica in Bucharest, Romania

This streetball tournament is the most important 3on3 and 5on5 streetball tournament series in Romania having hosted almost 1.000 teams (4.000 players) in 2008. 2009 is the 5th consecutive year the series takes place and the aim to make things even more spectacular than in 2009 is set high. Making it even more spectacular also means topping the list of VIP dunkers such as Flying 101 (USA), Slam Nation (France), Kadour Ziani (France), Ken Golden Child (USA), Guy Dupuy (France), Troy McCroy (USA), Justin Darlington (Canada), Peter Kostic (Serbia) and Dmytro Kryvenko a.k.a. “Smoove” (Ukraine). Read the rest of this entry.

Tags: Romania, Tournament
Posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 in Events by Courts of the World | 3 Responses

Reppin’ the Canaries

Talentino23

If you haven’t heard of the Canary Islands, there’s a good chance you’re not the only one. But since COTW is all about representing world streetball, it´s about time to change that and put the Canaries on your map. Although you may never have heard of any of them, there are quite a few ballers on the small islands located west of the North Africa coastline. One of them is Tino del Toro Velasco who earned his nickname “Talentino” due to his blacktop skills. He represents his home island Gran Canaria and StreetFlavour Crew.

Tino breaks down a defender.

Only 5’6″ (1.73cm) and 149 lbs. (70 kg), Talentino is foremost a spectacular scorer who is quick, athletic and can throw it down, despite his size (or lack thereof). He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he still lives and plays ball along with his StreetFlavour teammates Andres “What’s the Method” Leon, Christian “c-aL” Almeida, Gabriel Bermudez, Orlando “Tito” Canino and friends like Rayco Hernandez. Read the rest of this entry.

Tags: Player Profile, Spain
Posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 in Ballers by Courts of the World | 1 Response

The brooklyn boogie – these guys are not to be played with!

Soul in the Hole

A couple of days ago I listed the “Raymond Bush Playground“ which is located in Brooklyn and was formerly known as Putnam Playground. Raymond Bush Playground today honors the memory of Raymond Bush (1924-2002), a local community activist and basketball coach.

Something that directly came to my mind was the classic documentary “Soul in the Hole”. Large parts of this legendary movie (directed by Danielle Gardner and starring Ed “Booger” Smith) were shot at Raymond Bush Playground. The last time I watched it was a real loooooong time ago, when people used to insert black plastic bricks a.k.a. VHS-cassettes into a video-recorder to watch movies. But since this is not the 90´s anymore and there is this crazy new thing on the “Internet”, called “YouTube”, we can enjoy a few highlights without having to do anything at all (Now, that’s progress!). Please also pay close attention to the hairdos on some of those guys. Classic, indeed.

And by the way, “Soul in the Hole” came with a great O.S.T., too. It featured the likes of Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang, Dead Prez and Cocoa Brovaz.

Tags: New York City, Playground
Posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 in Miscellaneous by CG | No Responses