Played at Foster Park, Flatbush Bklyn back in the day. Very mixed, whites and blacks. Best games were on the first court, lesser games on the further away courts.
Mike Dunleavey was there a lot along with a bunch of other good players, Jim McMIllan, Heyward Dotson, Kenny Charles. Bunch of very good players no one ever heard of McManus brothers, George Bruns...
We played "no hanging" if it was full court.
Half court--bring it back to the foul line to give a change for the defense to set; call your own foul; if it went in it didn't count; no foul shots, you just got to keep the ball.
The games were single point each basket up to 11; you had to win by two, so you kept playing until one team won by two.
It was "losers out", so if you scored the other team got the ball behind the line.
You had to make at least two passes at the time of taking the ball out, whether it was after a made basket or out-of-bounds. Always behind the foul line which was imaginaryly extended across the court.
No three point line.
If you called too many of your own fouls no one would want to play with you--so no one did.
You also called your own turnovers, double dribble, walking, palming/carrying the ball....but again no one got crazy making calls or else they couldn't find a game. No one wanted to play with the "babies" and everyone knew who the babies were. It was sort of a man-code thing not to make calls except for teh egregious ones. And guys sometimes called a foul or turnover on themselves. That was ok. Offensive fouls were pretty rare.
If your team won, you kept the court until someone beat you. You asked for next, to get a game and if you were alone you picked from the among the guys whose team lost to get a full squad.
Most games were half court. Full-court was more rare.
Foster Park was fairly legendary for high quality of play. Immortalized in a book named "Heaven is a Playground", by a writer for SI. Played up this black guy named Rodney who was a so-so player, but was a hustler and street agent placing all sorts of kids in colleges. Later years I'd see him outside the Garden hustling tickets for all events. He remembered us 30 years later, haven't seen him for quite some time. I hope he is alive.
