India: One country, many basketball courts.

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There are 1.2 billion people in this country. How does anyone arrive at that number anyway? All Indians please raise your hands. Right. One...two...three...thousand and one, thousand and two...one million and counting. By the time you arrive at a billion, a bunch of Indians will have taken birth and died. It's hard to believe that one can actually keep a tally of the number of people in a country. But it's being done.

If something that outrageous can be done, surely it's easier to try and get all the pictures of basketball courts in India and display them in one place. Judging by the number of cricket fans around here, one could well believe that there are a billion people in this country. They say a fool is born every minute. So there must be a lot of fools around, no other way to explain why they choose to stand for hours in one place doing something called 'fielding'. If you ask me, cows grazing in a field move around a lot more than a fielder during cricket does.

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It's a tangent I always get irresistably drawn on. Comparing the beauty of the fast paced game of basketball and contrasting it with other sports, usually putting the latter in a disdainful light.

The beauty of the game itself I have comprehensively detailed:

Contrasting it with cricket:

About my love for it in general:

About my attempts to do weird stuff with the game:

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That right there is actually eligible for a Guinness World Record. If you can do the same and from a greater distance, give the record books a shot. I hope to make it official someday soon. I thought I had gone over most aspects of what appeals to me about the game. I've just realized that there's more beauty here than I gave it credit for.

Besides the game itself, there's another aspect to it which is often lost. The court itself.

In football, you need a field and two posts. In cricket you need a oval boundary. A basketball court on the other hand, just like the game itself, gives you unlimited scope for creative self expression.

The rim, it can be a perfect rod, or a H iron twisted round, or flat bottom and round top. The net can be nylon mesh, or chain linked. All different designs. And with wear and tear, each net acquires its own look. The backboard can be of endless variations, besides the regulation size. Fiberglass, wooden, iron, plastic. Square shaped. Oval. You name it.

As for the painted area, one can truly go wild with different decals and paint combinations. There are few other sports which offer such wide scope for creative self expression for the designer.

[caption id="attachment_662545" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Sometimes the artist gets too creative. Corner 3s will be a dream here[/caption]

The beauty of the immediate surroundings of the court itself are magnified because the court is only about 84 x 50 feet, and unlike a cricket or football pitch the surroundings of a court add more flavour to it.

[caption id="attachment_662572" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Pic by Hoopistani, which will be included in FIBA's 80 years anniversary official photobook[/caption] What brought this realization on was the submission of so many beautiful pictures by the fans of the game. I've put in a few at the top but they are just a teaser, if I could I'd put all 75 pics I have got thus far. That realization sparked off a dream, to make a collection of pictures every single basketball court in India, in one place. That dream will only go as far as you, the reader will take it. Maybe it appeals more to me because this is the court I grew up on:

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Here's what I have in mind: - You go and post a picture of your court, a picture which represents basketball for you, on the wall of this page. - I'm one of the admins of the Basketball India Facebook page, I'll keep uploading the pictures every day and posting over here: - I'll try and do something where the pics with the most likes are put up as the cover photo for a week, and the pics which win one week are out of contention from the next weeks. But I can't promise that before looking into the logistics of comparing 100s of pictures every week. If there's a way, I'll do it. The contest is on for the next week for sure though. The pic in the above album with the most number of likes will be the cover photo of the Basketball India Facebook page for next week. So much beauty has been assimilated in one place in less then a week. I can't wait to see the more different forms in which the courts exist in India.
Edited by Staff Editor
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