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On the court, Obama escapes from
politics

By
Jodi Kantor

Published: June 1, 2007

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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 explained: "No blood, no foul."

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, 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.

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If one were somehow to play a highlight reel of the Illinois Democrat's
on-court exploits, it would start in Hawaii, with a pudgy junior high school
student in short shorts and high socks who had a Julius Erving poster plastered
on his bedroom wall.

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.)

Cut to the Obama's future wife asking her brother to take her new boyfriend
out on the court to make sure he was not the type to hog the ball or call
constant fouls. The reel might then show Obama playing with former NBA stars in
a tournament fund-raiser for his Senate campaign, and at the family gatherings
that always seem to end with everyone out by the hoop next to the garage.

Basketball has little to do with Obama's presidential bid - in fact, he has
trouble finding time to shoot baskets anymore. But until recently, it was one of
the few constants in his life.

At first, it was a tutorial in race, a way for a kid with a white mother, a
Kenyan father and a peripatetic childhood to establish the black identity that
he longed for. In "Dreams From My Father," Obama described basketball as a
comfort to a boy whose father was mostly absent, and who was one of only a few
black youths at his school. "At least on the basketball court I could find a
community of sorts," he wrote.

Craig Robinson, Obama's brother-in-law, said: "He didn't know who he was
until he found basketball. It was the first time he really met black
people."

Now, Obama's friends say, basketball has been his escape from the sport of
politics, but also a purer version of it, with no decorous speeches, no careful
consensus - just unrestrained competition.

"He can be himself, it's a safe haven, he can let his competitive juices flow
and tease his buddies," Nesbitt said. "It's just a relaxing respite from the
every-moment and every-word scrutinization that he gets."

Before Rickey Green, a former NBA all-star, played with Obama in a 2004
Senate campaign fund-raiser, "I didn't think he could play at all, to be honest
with you," Green said. But "he's above average" for a pickup player, Green said.
"He's got a nice little left-hand shot and some knowledge of the game."

Robinson, now the coach of Brown University's men's team, said the
6-foot-2-inch senator is too skinny to be an imposing presence, but he is fast,
with good wind even when he was a smoker. Obama is left-handed, and his
signature move is to fake right and veer left, surprising players used to
guarding right-handed competitors.

On the court, Obama is confident, even a bit boastful.

"If he would hit a couple buckets, he would let you know about it," said
Alexi Giannoulias, who played in the late 1990s with Obama at the East Bank
Club, a luxurious spot in downtown Chicago.

He is gentleman enough to call fouls on himself: Steven Donziger, a law
school classmate, has heard Obama mutter, "My bad," tossing the other team the
ball.

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