If you don’t count that he had to dribble in dirt and that the venue was in his back yard in Mississippi … if you paid no attention to the fact that the makeshift hoop actually was a bicycle tire frame with the spokes plucked out and then MacGyvered to a tree …
Malik Newman’s first basketball court was exactly like the Staples Center, his father says with a laugh.
In fact, this was improvisation in every way, his father crafting “a way out of no way, again,” as Newman put it.
And that was almost a necessity in this case, since the child was smitten with basketball and the big kids at the nearby court wouldn’t let him play with them and usually sent him home crying.