One Place Where Obama Goes Elbow to Elbow (NYT 2007)
By JODI KANTOR - June 1, 2007
Senator Barack Obama, seated at center, with his junior varsity basketball team in the 1977 yearbook of the Punahou School in Honolulu.
Last Christmas, Senator Barack Obama flew to Hawaii to contemplate a presidential bid in the peace of his childhood home. But there, on a humid playground near Waikiki Beach, he found himself being roughed up by some of his best friends. It was the third and final game of the group’s annual three-on-three basketball showdown, and with the score nearly tied, things were getting dirty.
“Every time he tried to score, I fouled him,” Martin Nesbitt recalled. “I grabbed him, I’d hit his arm, I’d hold him.” Michael Ramos, another participant, explained, “No blood, no foul.”
Mr. Obama, like everyone else on the court, was laughing. And with a head fake, a bit of contact and a jumper that seemed out of his range, Mr. Obama sank the shot that won the game.
From John F. Kennedy’s sailing to Bill Clinton’s golf mulligans to John Kerry’s windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence, on cracked-asphalt playgrounds and at exclusive health clubs, developing a quick offensive style, a left-handed jump shot and relationships that have extended into the political arena...
It might include the time he and several Harvard Law School classmates played inmates at a Massachusetts prison; the students were terrified to win or lose, because the convicts lining the court had bet on both outcomes. (“I got two packs on you!” they called out...)
More at the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/us/politics/01hoops.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
“He can be himself, it’s a safe haven, he can let his competitive juices flow and tease his buddies,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “It’s just a relaxing respite from the every-moment and every-word scrutinization that he gets.”
It's like the BOG!
What a great article freshwest! I never saw it or that picture. Damn that is great!
Love his free spirit.
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PBO surely loves his burgers!
And shaved ice~
freshwest!
Hey I like hot peppers too~
Our President is such a guy! Gotta love him.
You mean you don't miss a president that,
tried to leave a press conference through locked doors,
looked like he was trying to strangle the German Chancellor,
partied during a hurricane,
stumbled around like he was drunk while trying to dance with an African dance group,
sat and looked like a deer in the headlights when told about 9/11,
joked about not finding WMDs in Iraq,
The guy that should have named one of his dogs Clue so that he would have one?
You don't miss that???
Instead we end up with an articulate guy that treats people with respect, even the ones that, in my opinion, he shouldn't.
He thinks things through instead of reacting with a knee jerk response or remark to a situation or emergency.
No...I don't miss it either.
BartCop called him 'Bush the Lesser'. It was probably one of the least derogatory things he called him.
I don't think that anyone else that ran for president could have pulled the country's fat out of the fire the way that President Obama did given the tremendous obstacles that were put, and will continue to be put, in his path before his term is up. I think that the rethugs would have been almost as obstinate if any other Dem had been elected but his race really sent them over the edge.
It's been really something to see how things in the country have turned around.
Thanks for the article freshwest and everyone's pics were great too.
