[quote="Logen" post=401038][quote="Monte" post=401025][quote="Logen" post=401022][quote="Monte" post=400987]Speaking of movies, I watched "Blackjack; The Jackie Ryan Story" on PPV the other night. I know Jackie and have played ball against him, . Great guy and phenomenal talent even in his late 50s. The actor who played him did not do Jackie justice at all on the court. For starters, the actor is lefty. He's also ploddingly slow and not very athletic, which made the basketball scenes look unrealistic. Some interesting subplots and def worth a watch, especially if you know Jackie's story and/or grew up in Brooklyn(even though much of the movie was filmed in Newburgh) in the 70's/80's.[/quote]
My brother has been playing in central Jersey with Jackie lately; he certainly can still play at a level that belies his age.[/quote]
He's been really in to fitness for a number of years. Rides his bike everywhere, etc. Last time I played with him is about 3 years ago in a pick up game. We covered each other. He went easy on me, but could have destroyed me had he wanted too. He's still got game for sure. He played for the Harlem Wizards for years. Not sure if he still does.[/quote]
I will say, I have seen my brother hold his own defensively against some pretty good players. I don’t remember if it was a Baker League game or a lesser Philly summer league but I saw him asked to pick up and face guard Harold Jensen once and I don’t think Jensen touched the ball 15 times the whole game. Carl is an adequate offensive player but at 50+ in tremendous shape and still a defensive nightmare.
Out of curiosity, I called him last night and asked him about Ryan and he said the first time he played against him 6-8 weeks ago someone told Ryan how good a defensive player Carl was when they matched up. Anyway, Carl said for the first couple of games Ryan just abused him, as he put it, ‘I was able to stay right in his jock and it didn’t matter, he got the shots he wanted off and hit more than his share of them.” Said he was hands down easy the best player he ever guarded and the guy is pushing 60.
The punch line is that after that initial display, Ryan has eased up a bit as you describe above, which pisses Carl off to no end. Not at Ryan, but himself for not being able to make him work.[/quote]
He could have blown by me every time he had the ball, but he didn't. Years ago I would have had the same reaction as your brother. Nowadays I'm just happy to not be publicly humiliated. Funny story; little over a year ago I had an audition for a Dick's sporting goods commercial. They were looking for 50 something basketball players. In talking to the casting agent on the phone, and she said to me "let me know if you know anyone else who would like to audition". So I reached out to Jackie and we went down to the audition together. They were auditioning people 4 at a time. So they bring Jackie and me in to a room along with a middle aged guy and woman. There's a bunch of casting people and a camera man. They line the 4 of us up in front of the camera (I'm far left and Jackie is next to me) and ask us to tell them about ourselves and our basketball background, and that they're going to pass us a ball and they want us to dribble the ball and pass it back to one of the casting people. They start with a women on the far right, then the guy next to her. Tthen they get to Jackie. He runs down his basketball background(former NYU High School POY, 3 time ESPN 3 point contest winner, etc etc etc etc) and then proceed to do a slew of tricks(spinning the ball on his finger, around his back, on his head, etc, etc) and then passes the ball behind his back to one of the casting people. And then they say "Ok Mark, your turn". I replied "you really expect me to follow this guy???". lol. Needless to say, Jackie got the commercial and I didn't. I was really happy that he did. Think it ran super bowl Sunday, not during the game.
