These so-called Black Ops sessions at Life Time Athletic at Sky in New York City have given us undoubtedly the best pickup basketball of the summer. Organized by Hoodie Melo, previous sessions have been enticing enough for LeBron James to fly into town on a private jet just for the afternoon to get some run in.
Monday, however, featured the most star-studded collection of talent yet, with Melo, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Enes Kanter, Tim Hardaway Jr., Iman Shumpert, JaVale McGee, Lance Thomas, and Kenneth Faried all in attendence. From the videos, the games certainly looked uptempo and competitive.
But were they best pickup games these guys have ever played in? Harden, for his part, wasn’t willing to go that far, although he did admit that Monday’s games were solid. He went on to clarify that the very best pickup games he’s played in happened during a now-iconic summer in the not so distant past.
Here’s what he told Max Resetar of SLAM:
SLAM: So what was the best pickup run you ever played in? Was it the 2011 lockout summer?
JH: For sure.
SLAM: What comes to mind when you think back on that summer?
JH: There was a game in Oklahoma City that KD put on. There was a game in Miami that LeBron put on. The Drew League was crazy. That whole entire summer was lit.
Yesterday was my first time playing at Lifetime. There was a lot of quality, quality talent. A mixture of everything. You don’t really get that often in the summertime. Yesterday was a pretty dope vibe in the gym.
Harden has a point about the lockout summer. Numerous stars got together and organized impromptu pickup games all across the country to give fans something to cheer about while the collective bargaining agreement kept the NBA season in limbo. Still, with start of the 2017-2018 season more than a month away, we hope to see more of these Black Ops sessions and can’t wait to find out which stars might show up next.
(SLAM)
