The ultimate goal remains the same: to tell stories which spark emotional responses and meaningful ‘conversations’. Throughout history the Street Basket, especially in the U.S., has proved an infinite source of awe and wonder for us mere mortals. Almost impossible to comprehend, it has spawned countless books, films, slangs. I can’t believe that as a human species we can’t come up with fresh thinking and new ways to apprehend the meaning of this playing, the peculiar performance that is so appealing to the young people.

‘The Street Basket It’s our means to explain our contrasting ways of seeing the world and what we value. We send messages that include music and ‘art’ and a description of who we are as human beings. The ‘Court’ experience is almost about exploring the infinite and the inner at the same time; it’s about really thinking about, ‘who are we really?’ Without wanting to sound like old hippies, vibration is everything. It’s sound waves and light waves. It’s all just information hitting our bodies. And then we interpret it and give it all this meaning. That’s just the most beautiful concept to us. And it’s just connection. The human body has always been how we’ve tried to connect with something greater than ourselves’.

In the information-overloaded basketball world, instant gratification, and techniques that are imposed by the stereotyped convention of a short-sighted, closed-in society and has lost not only creativity, but also the ability to dream, the Street Basket is cutting through the ‘noise’. It’s a portrayal of a heart caught in a conflict, stymied by a complex web of preconceptions.

‘Once you begin a journey, never lose heart. Through steadfast perseverance, you will attain success. To help with this, focus on the joy of the journey, the process, rather than the goal. The experience itself is worthwhile. The Street Basket tells us that ‘we lose and in this way, win’. Understand that all your mistakes, errors, setbacks, looses, and failures as an athlete are your coaches’.

The essence of Street Basketball is its ability to create, on the sidelines, a ‘locker-room’ filled with confrontation, content without veils, where the word ‘competition’ returns to its true meaning. Competition means ‘seek together’.

‘I recommend that you consider all of your opponents as partners who help each other to seek greatness. It’s not about winning, it’s  about competing for something bigger and more important than beating your opponent’.

Page after page, leafing through the book you realize that images are not ‘documents’ but rather a portal to re-imagine another way of life and conceive basketball. It’s about seeking out the moment when the ordinary transforms into the majestic. In that sense, photographs are ‘spell-like’ for me, magical containers that reach for the surreal, and trying to conjure the ineffable and imagine alternative ways ‘of making and being’. The basketball court a place free of judgement and conformity, where ‘diversity’ is not just celebrated but crucial for the survival of the soul.

‘Magical photos conjuring new realities. An euphoria that was created due to the transformation of a thought, through creativity, and a new way of approaching basketball’.

One of the most important things I have learned on my ‘Street Baller journey’ is the importance of establishing standards for my play instead of numerous rules. Rules are something to be broken. Standards are there to be aspired to. While sports clubs establish rules and hope for standards to emerge, it is more effective to set high standards and motivate yourself to work towards achieving them.

‘Most people naturally play to one thing, and that is winning. Playing to a standard is the biggest secret to our success’.
- Dave Brandt

Standards are not only about Sports, but also about life. A camera captures a never-ending teenage summer of some ‘Street Ballers’, documenting their hopes, dreams and fears in that fleeting moment in the ‘last minutes of adolescence’ doing all the things you do during those summers when you don’t really have any responsibilities. Those sunny, heady summers of late teenage-hood that seemed to never end. No scene was staged, no agenda was set. The more I spoke to them, the more I realized these kids have more to say than people think they do. Teenagers and their opinions being disregarded by the older generations. How deaf they are ...

‘Guys my age, I don’t know what it is, they’re angry. People are not trying to hear them out, and when people don’t wanna hear you, you feel like you have to do something’.

For these kids, that ‘something’ is the Street Basket. If you were to ask a lot of people here how Street Basket makes them feel, ‘free’ would be the answer for a lot of them. For many of them, it’s been a constant in their lives, something they could always turn to, and it’s not just the sport that acts as an escape for them, but the incredible community spirit they’ve fostered around it.

‘My life, to be honest, is not the best, but I’ve got the people around me that will help me become better and love life. I just wanna stay young’.

And in this time capsule, where that endless teenage summer keeps rolling on in all its beautiful light, they can. It is about really listening to how they want to be seen.

Street basket is just a tool. It’s a means to find the others. Whoever they are, they’ll recognize themselves. I usually define them by ‘orphans'. The orphans of the world, the people who’ve never quite settled in whatever situation they came into. Anyone who doesn’t feel at ease, anyone who struggles to adjust to their identity. For a moment I wonder if there’s anyone left in this world who does feel they completely belong. Aren’t we all orphans? It’s impossible to tell.

I wish kids would realize the power they hold in their hands and stop doubting it. I wish ‘people’ could see more of the ‘beauty’, and the complexity of what it means to be Street Ballers in this crazy world.

The court is a call to take up space, dream big and inspire other young people to believe that turning an ‘idea’ into a tangible result isn’t out of reach.