Obama basketball pics

[Araxen]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0712/price.obama/content.7.html

There's about 3 pictures of him playing basketball.

[NYCGirl]

1. Nice pics!

[Danger Mouse]

2. cool pics, thanks for sharing!

:hi:

[gateley]

3. Did he play on any teams in school?

Is he considered good -- or just tall? :7:

[Kaylee]

5. Yeah, he did......

I watched the A & E Biography someone linked to today and it mentioned he played in high school. They had a picture of him playing.

[gateley]

29. Cool - thanks! nt

[JackORoses]

12. check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYCEnVmNkpE

[Kaylee]

21. Too cool!......

He had a little bit of game.

[gateley]

30. That was fun to watch -- thanks! nt

[Pirate Smile]

4. Here is the article if anyone missed it - it came out before Iowa:

One-on-One With Obama

By S.L. Price

Here's the beauty of pickup basketball: You may be a U.S. senator, a living symbol of racial healing and perhaps even the next President of the United States, but if you're gliding in for an easy layup and each point is precious, I've got no choice then, do I? You're getting hacked. So, yes, I'm hammering that arm and crashing headlong into your whippet-thin frame; and, yes, it's a foul so flagrant, so absurdly desperate, that all you can do, body buckling, is laugh. Hey, it's pickup. Everyone, even you, uses whatever he's got to win.

"Believe me," Barack Obama says, walking to the top of the key, "you can get shot for doing that."

He's not serious. I think. But he wants me off his back, and invoking jumpy Secret Service men is a wise ploy. With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination whisker-close, Obama can't afford to show up for some Dubuque meet-and-greet with a mysterious fat lip. His wife, Michelle, warned me, "Don't break his nose, give him a black eye or knock his teeth out. Or I'll have to come find you."

Actually, Michelle understands. She hails from a Chicago family that believes the game -- when you pass, when you call fouls, how you check the ball -- reveals character. Once her romance with Barack got serious, she pressed her brother, Craig Robinson, to conduct the acid test: Go play. Robinson tried to duck it; he had starred at Princeton, and Barack had been a benchwarmer for his Hawaiian high school team. "All I could think was, This guy's going to be terrible, and I have to report that back," says Robinson, who's now the coach at Brown. "And you can't fudge it, because if he turns out to be a jerk and you knew but didn't say it, you're in trouble."

He liked what he saw. Obama was confident but not cocky, unselfish but unafraid to shoot. On court he showed the same balance that has fueled his political rise; he could talk trash without seeming mean, compete feverishly without seeming angry. Yet few knew how central the sport -- "my first love," he calls it -- was to his self-image as a mixed-race child: How the greatest gift from his absent dad was a basketball, how playing gave him his closest white friends and a place where black skin wasn't a disadvantage. When a coach, a close friend, casually threw out the word n-----, Obama says, "It reminded me that race is complicated, that people are complicated, that you could have ugly strains even among people who were otherwise decent.... It does not necessarily mean they're bad people."

So it's no surprise that Obama bit at the chance to play one-on-one. We met at the YMCA in Spencer, Iowa, in a gym with signs scolding, do not dunk balls or hang on rim! No problem. We both graduated high school in 1979, and the days when a soda bottle could roll beneath our jumping feet have long passed. At 6' 1 1/2", Obama is all lefty, quick with long arms. Before we start, he grabs some opposition research from my son, who readily says I'm "not in basketball shape" and will thus spend his teenage years peering through the barred windows of our basement.

"All right," Obama announces. "I've got your game cased out."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/the_point_after/12/24/obama1231/index.html

[Cha]

15. Thanks, Pirate..interesting info on Michelle's

family too..

"Actually, Michelle understands. She hails from a Chicago family that believes the game -- when you pass, when you call fouls, how you check the ball -- reveals character. Once her romance with Barack got serious, she pressed her brother, Craig Robinson, to conduct the acid test: Go play. Robinson tried to duck it; he had starred at Princeton, and Barack had been a benchwarmer for his Hawaiian high school team. "All I could think was, This guy's going to be terrible, and I have to report that back," says Robinson, who's now the coach at Brown. "And you can't fudge it, because if he turns out to be a jerk and you knew but didn't say it, you're in trouble."

[Pirate Smile]

22. More - because I love this article.

"Obama exudes none of that anxious Washington ambition; he's not weighing words. He's here to play.

The first game flies by in a blur of missed (mine) and made (his) jumpers: I lose 11-5. Obama throws out a cheap "Wooooo!" whenever I shoot but never resorts to ticky-tack calls; before the second game he notes our 15-pound weight difference. "If you wanted to bang inside a bit," he says, "you could."

I'm no fool. I start banging. After I commit that criminal foul under the basket, he lofts an air ball and I pull ahead 2-1. But we're both gasping, and proceed to play the ugliest, slowest game in history. A handler steps in, says his man must leave, so we decide to play to seven.

Obama hits two jumpers to go up 3-2, and I remember what Michelle told me: "He's very good at the last minute."

"All right," I say coyly, flipping him the ball. "This is for the presidency...."

He drills a 19-footer, heels barely leaving the ground. "Did you hear me?" I say.

"Why do you think I hit it?" he says.

I back him down twice to tie 4-4. He drains two more, but I swish one to cut it to 6-5. Now Obama closes in, blocks my last shot, grabs the ball. He shuffles out wide, turns and sets, face blank. I thunder toward him, arm outstretched, feeling suddenly like Hillary and Edwards and anyone else in Iowa trying desperately to stop Obama's rise.

The ball drops through the net like a stone."

[Cha]

23. Nice...Obama's a good

shot, allright!

[my3boyz]

28. Thanks for posting this. nt

[BeatleBoot]

6. I preferred the 34 pictures of the "Laker Girls" myself.

[Bonobo]

7. Al Gore used to play basketball in my neighbor's driveway. Ask me anything!

[AtomicKitten]

8. Cool!

[Johnny__Motown]

9. That white guy's got no game...

Shooting right handed from the left side of the key, dribbling up to his shoulder, a step behind on D, Barack had that guy beaten before he tied his shoes.


And pics of a black guy shooting hoops, I can just see the Repugs using that in adds later.

But yes, nice pics and fun to browse.

[NYCGirl]

13. And there's a problem with "pics of a black guy shooting hoops"?

Hell, McCain can barely drag himself across the stage up to the podium.

[Johnny__Motown]

Not for me, no... but some independent "swift-boat" groups may try to use them in southern states

Didn't mean to imply anything. sorry if I wasn't clear

[NYCGirl]

19. The kind of people who would have a problem with that are so right wing

that Huckabee is a socialist to them.

[Bicoastal]

20. "Obama is sooooo black, he can even play basketball when he has to!"

Yeah, I can't see them getting too much out of this.

[Johnny__Motown]

17. double post sorry

[psychopomp]

24. Please, who cares what they do with that photo

I love the photo of the young "Barry" Obama in high school playing hoops, I wish somebody would post that to this thread...

[psychopomp]

25. Found it!

[quantass]

10. Very Insightful Pictures

I quite enjoyed going through and reading through accompanying descriptions for them....

[JackORoses]

11. Here is a video of him playing High School Ball

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYCEnVmNkpE

[I Vote In Pittsburgh]

26. "Ummm, he doesn't get proper extension on his shot, I think I'll vote for Hillary."

- best quote on youtube.

[tishaLA]

14. He wears NIKE?! OMG!

He loves sweat shops and likes to keep Chinese children chained up!

:sarcasm:

[TheDonkey]

16. There are quite of few of him playing hoops. Very cool

[Eurobabe]

18. All saved. Thanks!

He looks fabulous.

[TexasObserver]

27. Obama's team won State Champion in High School. He was good.

Recently, I saw him drain a three pointer on one of the news channels, and then he turned the questioning into a discussion about what schools need.

He's definitely got game, and his nickname in high school was Barry the Bomber, because he has a nice long distance jumper. Not bad in transition, either.

[Araxen]

34. Here is the video

http://youtube.com/watch?v=daH0ltD20A0

[SKKY]

31. I've actually heard he's got nice handles...

....BO can play the game a little bit is what I'm saying.

[VolcanoJen]

32. I remember that piece, came out right before Iowa.

I remember thinking, "It's better than snowboarding!" ;-)

[KittyWampus]

33. hadn't seen these pix, thanks for posting.