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One Place Where Obama Goes Elbow to
Elbow

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Published: June 1, 2007

(Page 2 of 2)

But “he knew how to get in the mix when he needed to,” Mr. Giannoulias said.
“There are always elbows, there’s always a little bit of jersey tucking and
tugging,” he said, continuing, “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to
win.”

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The men — and it is generally men — who play with Mr. Obama are not, they
will have you know, the paunchy, lumbering type. “Most of the guys who played in
our little circle are former players in college or pros,” said Mr. Robinson, who
is still Princeton’s fourth-leading scorer of all time. “They’re real high
level.”

Mr. Obama cannot match their technical prowess, say those who played
regularly with him. But he is fiercely competitive, and makes up for his
deficits with collaboration and strategy. “He’s very good at finding a way to
win when he’s playing with people who are supposedly stronger,” Mr. Nesbitt
said.

At country clubs across the land, politicians network and raise money over
rounds of golf, a sport Mr. Obama also plays. But Chicago is a basketball town,
and over the years, Mr. Obama’s gymmates have become loyal allies and generous
backers.

Mr. Nesbitt, an owner and executive at an airport parking company and
chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority’s board of commissioners, helped Mr.
Obama get to know Penny Pritzker, who is now his national finance
chairwoman.

Arne Duncan, a top Chicago public school official, is helping with Mr.
Obama’s education platform.

Mr. Giannoulias met Mr. Obama on the court, and thanks in part to his
backing, is now the Illinois state treasurer. Other regular gymmates include the
president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the director of the
Illinois Department of Public Health and several investment bankers who were
early and energetic fund-raisers.

Though some of these men could afford to build courts at their own homes,
they pride themselves on the democratic nature of basketball, on showing up at
South Side parks and playing with whoever is around. At the University
of Chicago court where he and Mr. Obama used to play, “You might have
someone from the street and a potential Nobel
Prize winner on the same team,” Mr. Duncan said. “It’s a great
equalizer.”

It is a theme that runs throughout Mr. Obama’s basketball career: a desire to
be perceived as a regular guy despite great advantage and success. As a
teenager, he slipped away from his tony school to university courts populated by
“gym rats and has-beens” who taught him “that respect came from what you did and
not who your daddy was,” Mr. Obama wrote.

Later, the Harvard game against the prison inmates, said Hill Harper, who
organized it, was intended to show them that “we support you, we’re not removed
from everything going on.”

But the easy friendships Mr. Obama once struck up on the court are a thing of
the past. Lately, the rule in the family is “No more new friends,” Mr. Robinson
said. “You don’t know what people’s real agendas are.”

Now, for exercise, Mr. Obama pounds treadmills at hotel gyms. He played a bit
last year, with American troops on military bases in Kuwait and Djibouti, and
again at Christmas. His staff members laugh when asked if the senator has had
any playing time since coming to Washington or hitting the campaign trail. (“I
dream of playing basketball,” Mr. Obama said in a television interview on
Tuesday.) Before the first Democratic debate in South Carolina, Mr. Robinson
reserved a court and a slot on Mr. Obama’s schedule, hoping the candidate could
blow off some steam before the big night. It did not happen.

The solution, Mr. Obama’s friends say, is for him to win the presidency, so
they can all play together at the White House.

“I always tease him about that,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “If you win, you gotta
have a hoop.”

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