Team Chemistry: Pete Holmes and Bill Simmons on the bonds one makes through pick-up basketball

Pete Holmes and friends

Pete Homes' You Made it Weird' is my favourite podcast. I've quoted it extensively for my travels as his outlook echoes many of the observations and epiphanies I've found in my own life. Whilst Pete and Bill share a history growing up in Boston, Pete is unabashedly not a sports aficionado.

AUDIO: Pete Holmes on Conspiracies, Humor, and ‘Crashing’
PETE HOLMES: (18m 28s) This is a joke I've told before but when we used to play pick-up basketball, I didn't count points. I counted friends I'd made. Which is true. Like when guys fight and stuff, I'm like "Fellas. It's f*cking pretend."
BILL SIMMONS: Right.
HOLMES: It's 11 to 6 like who f*cking cares. We just made that up. That's two, that one's worth three. It's all baloney and people getting along mattered more to me than that.
SIMMONS: That's my favourite part of basketball.
HOLMES: Is what?
SIMMONS: Is the relationships. Is the going and playing, staying on the court for three hours. Making like weird friends you'd never make normally. Never seeing those people again after the game.

This exchange resonates with me. For my European and South American trips spanning 2 years, I sought out basketball experiences and pick-up games with locals in each country visited. Sometimes these came via Couchsurfing, more often than not connections were created organically.

December 25, 2013. Bogotá, Colombia.

A conversation struck up over a basketball tee might lead to a pickup game the next day. I reconnected with the driver who picked me up while hitching and watched a game at his nightclub days later. During a lonely holiday period in Colombia, my Christmas day spent hooping with locals punctuated my trip with indelible memories.

A post shared by Loz In Transit (@30homegames) on Jan 9, 2018 at 12:11am PST

It's moments like these that have me pursuing my hoop dreams of travel even as that shot clock winds down. I recently embarked on my Australia tour to tip-off 2018, having just completed my first jaunt in Adelaide. There I met a German backpacker, his "Frankfurt Basketball" tee immediately catching my attention. He remarked over beers, "I want a life I'm happy with on the inside rather than living one other people enjoy from the outside".
Echoing Pete Holmes' sentiment, sometimes we find joy in the little things. From parts of the game where one might not expect it.