It was the Friday before Labor Day and thanks to Court TV’s generous summer weekend policy, I had the day off and 4 days without work to look forward to. I like to refer to this as “basketball without guilt” since I don’t have to watch the clock and then hustle back to work from the lunchtime run at the Birmingham Y. The place was jammed when I got there a little before noon and myself and 3 other guys were waiting for ‘next’. Usually at times like this, you find yourself wishing that a 7 footer would magically appear to fill out your squad. We came up short by about 6 inches, but we couldn’t complain — just as we were about to take the floor, UD’s own Ryan Perryman walked thru the door.

RP grew up down the road in Oak Park and usually works out at the Royal Oak YMCA, but has been known to appear in Birmingham, as detailed in an “FTS” from 2 years ago:

https://www.udpride.com/archives/20011126.htm

I would like to say that I played unbelievably well when teamed with RP, but that wasn’t the case — at least not initially. Since he got there so late, the other 9 of us had to wait for him to lace ’em up and he and I didn’t have time to chat before we started. I clanked several jumpers, which earned me a quick jibe from RP to take better shots. We won, but because there were 10 guys waiting, we had to sit.

Now at most gyms, winners stay on the floor, but in B-ham we have our own set of guidelines, concocted by the group of guys who started this run 25 years ago to facilitate the lunchtime/businessman crowd. It’s a complicated formula wherein winners stay on the floor if there are less than 5 guys waiting, but they have to shoot to stay on if there are 6-9 guys waiting. If there are 10 or more guys on the side, everybody who just played sits. In addition, it’s a short court, but we do adhere to the “over and back” rule. On M-W-F, it’s “losers out”, while on T-TH “winners out”. There are several other rules unique to our gym and these local ordinances never fail to confuse and piss off players who are new to this particular Y.

In between games, I asked Ryan if he was going back to Korea and he said that he was leaving in 2 days. He had just returned from UD where he attended classes and obtained his Teachers Certificate. While there, Ryan had gone to an Alumni function and saw a host of former Flyers like Donald Smith, Bucky Bockhorn, Andy Meyer, Norm Grevey and Donnie May. When asked if he had ever seen film of May in action, RP said that he hadn’t. I told him about the UNC game in 1967 when May hit 13 shots in a row in the NCAAs and how Donnie was a relentless rebounder like RP, but that Donnie “had a jump shot”. I quickly added “no offense” and Ryan smiled. I also reintroduced myself and he said “Yeah, I remember playing with you 2 years ago.” I then mentioned that I also wrote a column for UDPride.com called “From the Swamp”. Ryan looked at me and said “that’s you — you’re Swampy?” Yup, RP, that’s me. He admitted that he didn’t get the chance to visit the site too often, but that the current players liked it a lot.

I asked the P-Man if Monty Scott was as good as the reports have said he was. RP confirmed that Scott is for real and that Monty reminded him of Coby Turner when “The Cobra” first appeared at UD. I take that as a very good sign.

When we went back on the floor, jumpers are what RP was featuring — lots of ’em and not too many of his patented put-backs. I’m no shot doctor, but it’s obvious that the P-Man didn’t grow up shooting from long range. His jumper takes a long time to develop — a function of his size — and he actually got one of them blocked when we played. He made more than he missed and we won again, but this time we had to shoot to see which of us got to stay on the floor. Ryan and I both made our shots and ended up on the same team with former NBA player Jeff Grayer.

It doesn’t get any better than that — playing pick up ball with the former leading rebounder in the country and a guy who spent something like 8 years in The League.

I have to tell you that players like Grayer and RP operate at a whole ‘nother level — literally. Several times Ryan went up for rebounds and it was if he was standing on a platform and the rest of us had our feet nailed to the floor. Simply stated: RP plays above the rim. I guess that’s why they call him “The King of Rebound” in Korea.

At this point, I had gotten my game in order and the shots were dropping instead of drawing iron. I scored on a fast break after a nice outlet pass from Jeff and made a jumper behind an RP screen, but mostly I wisely passed the ball to the 2 of them and we kept on winning. We continued to do so until we ran out of guys to play 5 on 5 at about 2:30PM. Ryan and I had played for 2 ½ hours and never lost a game.

See you in another 2 years, RP!