It isn’t in stellar shape. The hoop is too low on one end, allowing the tallest of generally small men to dunk flamboyantly from the dusty blacktop. At the other end, the basket is a little too high and there’s no net. A swish catches such momentum that it often bounces over the enclosing fence.
Street basketball is all about rough conditions, and rough’s the word at the Champs de Mars. Top players aren’t likely to drop in, as the San Antonio Spurs star Tony Parker (a.k.a. Tonee Park-air) occasionally does at a court across town. Still, this one has its charms. Lovers stroll by on dirt paths; metal petanque balls “tink” against each other nearby. Some of the ballplayers dress a little too well. Worse, they sip, rather than swig, Vittel.
If you ever need proof that basketball has become a world sport, come here. Africans and Middle Easterners dribble by Asians and Europeans. Americans shoot wildly and at great distance. Courtside, French players intellectualize extravagantly about defensive strategy while Moroccans expound upon how words like bourse, or stock market, derive from Arabic.
As an American living in Paris, it can be hard to escape the politics of Iraq. I encounter little of that at the Champs de Mars, but there are some weird ironies. French and Franco-African kids often use American basketball terms as best they can, calling “foul” instead of “faute,” for instance. For some reason, Americans speak English ball terms with feigned French accents. They also note that Europeans pass too much and are unwilling to shoot. Europeans complain that Americans forget the team nature of sports.
Everyone complains that everyone else fouls a lot, though compared with pickup games elsewhere in the world, I marvel at the politesse that usually reigns here. The “right of visitor” guarantees the challenging team the ball at the start of any game, and the “win or walk” precept doesn’t always apply. Still, the games can be fierce and unforgiving, with physical players like the Nigerian guy I nicknamed Big or the fella known as Elbow facing off against Wayne the Englishman. The commentary from the sidelines can be harsh, too. A big basket, one that devastates an opponent, brings the crowd to holler “Al Qaeda!”
Each evening, though I didn’t know it at the time, the outside world intrudes on this microcosm. Police–white men, at least today–appear at the fence and stare at the largely African and Middle Eastern young men playing. Racism, xenophobia and class divisions come alive in their gesture toward the gate, as if to say: “Out. It’s lockup time.”
Rather than comply, the ballplayers climb atop the fence. This court represents a rare source of diversion for the guys who trek in from the poor housing projects encircling Paris; they aren’t about to just get up and go. Nor are the cops. In fact, they glare at me, not at the obstinate players perched over their heads. Then I notice that the players are glaring at me as well, no less impatiently. “Get up,” one grunts.
Paris’s rich and romantic history comes to mind–the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, the student revolts of ‘68. Manning the barricades! Up I climb in solidarity. “Next,” I think, “the deluge–a night in a police slammer for civil disobedience.” But no. The lead policeman nonchalantly locks the gate and his colleagues walk away, as they do every day. “A bureaucratic rule,” a player explains. “No one can be on the court when they lock it.” At the World’s Court, everyone knows the rules.
