Attend a Streetball Tour

Streetball tour remains the hoops version of reality TV – the appeal is in wondering how you would fare out there – and a decade after AND1 tied its fortunes to showboating amateurs, here now comes along Ball4Real (bypassing numerical possibilities such as Hoops2Live, BBall3D and Porou5Defen5e). The AND1 Mixtape...

By Sam Eifling

July 19, 2007

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Streetball tour remains the hoops version of reality TV – the appeal is in wondering how you would fare out there – and a decade after AND1 tied its fortunes to showboating amateurs, here now comes along Ball4Real (bypassing numerical possibilities such as Hoops2Live, BBall3D and Porou5Defen5e). The AND1 Mixtape Tour swelled so that it helped to propel Rafer “Skip to My Lou” Alston from playground legend to underground mixtape sensation to scrappy Miami Heat guard to grossly overpaid NBA free agent signing.

Alston’s old vids remain eminently YouTubeable. Take a second to see what started it all, and then ask yourself whether he would have looked like something out of “The Matrix” had he not been playing against guys who might as well have pleaded guilty, such was their lack of defense. No matter – this is an All-Star game every night, populated with traveling local legends. This particular crew boasts such marvelous nicknames as Circus, ½ Man ½ Amazing, Spyda, Pharmacist, and Mr. 720, who used to go by Air Up There until he began incorporating two full spins into his dunks. Are they all that? Who knows? The tour’s web site, ball4real.com, contains some informative such and such, but the “Dunks” section reads only, forlornly, “Page Coming Soon.” On a Saturday afternoon, it may be a tossup between this and lacing up your Shox. If the weather makes the decision for you, hit the American Airlines Arena (601 Biscayne Blvd, Miami) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets run from $10 to $75 on ticketmaster.com.

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