Why did you start playing basketball?

I started playing basketball because I was smoking so much weed at the time, it was taking up most of my days. I was trying to stop doing that and I had to replace it with something. I've been trying to get my friend down here. With him, his issue is drinking and taking coke all the time, which is obviously a bit heavier. His grandfather died recently, and he was like a father to him. So, I went to his, I could tell he was in the headspace of like, ‘I'm gonna take gear every day on my own…’ So I just asked if he wanted to go play basketball. He said ‘I  haven’t played basketball since I was a kid’ but I told him to come down and then we just kept going recently. Now he's bought his own ball and is obsessively doing it as well.

I think a lot of the time when you're in that headspace of just self-destruction and you have friends around you that don't really care, or also want to get fucked up, you can’t change. Sometimes you need other people to be like, ‘yo, you don’t have to do that’.

Yeah, to find supportive friends that truly deeply care about you and want to change is hard. Often, if you are both going through something you can become a crutch for each other or enable each other’s coping mechanism.

I'd given up for a while when I went to Uni but then started up again after a friend of mine killed himself. I started bunking off Uni and giving myself a rest and just smoking weed all day. Then the pandemic started… that was fine because it seemed everyone was just sitting around all day, so it didn’t really matter. But it was starting to make me completely nuts.

I know a lot of people are fine smoking all the time, but I was not getting any sleep. I have ADHD and I think maybe it doesn't affect me the same as someone normal. It makes me like hyperactive… it will keep me up all night. I was so paranoid as well… pissed off with everyone and feeling hard done by. I think I wasn’t dealing with the issue of my friend dying. I was just smoking it away.

How has it been learning something new at 26?

I've been playing for like just over a year. I hated sports when I was younger because I was a fat kid and I felt like I was shit, so I didn't want to do it. People at Turnpike Lane… a lot of them can be really encouraging. If you find that you're missing a lot of shots, people are gonna be like ‘hey don't worry’ and they'll still pass to you. Not everyone, some people don't, but that's when you start thinking, ‘okay I need to prove myself to this team and if I can't be the guy who will win this, I need to be defensive.’

It's funny because I know a lot of people say masculinity is negative and that was always my take. When I was younger, I hated playing football with people… everyone's saying I'm fat and slow. My own team would kick the ball at me. But if you show you really want to get better, when people get older and more mature, they’ll support you.

It’s difficult to get out of that headspace and put yourself out there again after having those experiences.

Because you're in your comfort zone. You're in a defensive space, like perpetual sort of, making yourself feel shit and then trying to soothe yourself because of the fact that you've made yourself feel shit. Whereas, when you're here, you can tell you're not really trying to make yourself feel shit. I think putting yourself out there, talking to other people, that's productive.

I was sent away when I was younger to a state funded boarding school for challenging children. I got there and it was like a prison you see in American movies. The first day someone started shit and you have to fight them otherwise they’re gonna think you’re a pussy.  Like, fucking hell… the whole reason I came here was to be away from that. Now it's 24/7.

I think those experiences is what instils that fear in you. If you see a group of guys, that's what's gonna happen. If you say one thing, someone's just gonna start trying to beat you up. I suppose that’s the worst-case scenario. But most of the time, the real worst-case scenario is that you never talk to anyone, and you just drift through life with no friends, just being afraid.

What do you feel baskbetball adds to your life?

First of all, discipline is good… trying to do one thing every day. It’s positive for your physicality. I’ve lost a lot of weight coming here. But I think mostly interacting with other people when I wouldn't normally do that with strangers. It's a team game, you must play with other people. You have to learn to read people.

With basketball, it has constant tiny risks. That’s if you're quite risk averse… I guess I’m not risk averse. I've done a lot of stupid shit in my time. But I think that's sort of trained me to be very cautious about things. Every time you shoot the ball and it leaves your hand, there's like a moment of ‘is it gonna go where it’s supposed to go?’. I think being able to take risks applies later in life and being able to keep your cool in tense situations.

If you wanted to talk to someone you're interested in romantically, to be able to say like, ‘Okay, there's a risk here that they're gonna say no, take the piss out of me and everyone's gonna think I'm a fucking weirdo’… but still being able to shoot that shot.

How do you feel about living in Haringey?

The court’s nice… it’s really not the worst place in the world. A lot of people think it’s where Tottenham is so you're gonna get stabbed or shot. It's not really like that if you're not involved in that kind of thing. But if you're a kid, there's not that many youth clubs… they're all being shut down. The more things for kids to do, the less likely they will get caught in the trap. I mean, they call it a trap for a reason, because you get stuck in it. There’s something enticing about it if you don't have any money, or you don't have a stable family. Someone offers you that stability in a sort of grooming sense and then you're stuck in it.

I think that next time I move in London my first thought is… I don't even care about how many bathrooms it has, is it within walking distance of a basketball court?

What type of person do you want to be?

When I was younger, all I really wanted to be was cool. Whether that meant doing good things, getting chucked out of class or being a badass or whatever. Sometimes… this might be odd for a Jew to say but be ‘Christ like’, you know… hang out with the lepers, the people that have been labelled as worthless.

I'd like to just be a good person. I know, in the past I've sold drugs and hung around with the wrong kind of people. I'd like to be like the kind of people that I know helped me out of those situations.

What would you say is your biggest struggle is right now?

 

Trying to get a job. I was working in prisons teaching music until governmental cutbacks. I really loved it because it allowed me to help other people and it was creative. Also, it kept me busy because I think a lot, and in that environment, it pays to overthink. In the prison system, you can’t really be too cautious with a situation. That would be the biggest struggle. Its not really a money issue because I have savings, but I would like to feel like I’m doing something.

What would you say your favourite memory of playing basketball is?

When you have those days where you’re doing really well… last night was good. I really wanted to come down and just shoot on my own but as soon as I walked over these guys said they needed an extra person. I hadn’t even warmed up… I thought I wasn’t going to be an asset to the team. But I was just getting everything in, it just felt good.

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