VENICE BEACH, Calif. — We come in search not of the real Los Angeles — since, we know, there is no actual real Los Angeles — but in search of a place that could pass for the real thing if necessary.
It’s late Monday morning, a day after L.A. was rattled by a minor earthquake (an omen, anyone?), the day before the Nuggets begin their best-of-seven series with the movie star Lakers (the faithful here were nervous before the earthquake), and, because it’s L.A., another day at the beach.
But if this were just any beach, I wouldn’t be wasting your time. This is the place where street ball meets the sea, where pickup-game basketball courts are framed by palm trees and white sands and ocean breezes and a full-gym set of Muscle Beach workout gear.
This is where the games can draw a crowd from the tourists, the freaks, the body piercers, the body builders, the in-line skaters, the paddle-ballers, the dopers, the seaside philosophers, the guy handing out cards for a doctor (and I was afraid to ask the doctor of what) and anyone else who wanders by on the boardwalk.
I come to talk to the guys who play basketball here, figuring to hear what you’d expect to hear from fans who have seen the Nuggets beat the Lakers over the years about as often as they’ve seen it snow.
And yet, I don’t hear any of that. I hear worried voices. I hear, mostly, Lakers in six, but a hard six. I hear, under a foggy, late spring sky, unsunny comments here about the Lakers and praise for the Nuggets. Even for Venice, it’s a little weird.
I’m talking to 55-year-old Richard Jackson, who says, smiling, “I’ve got game, for a 55-year-old.” He doesn’t play full-court anymore, but he still plays a couple of times a week.
“I think the Nuggets are hungry, real hungry,” he says. “Carmelo wants a ring. The man is ringless. Kobe’s got, what, two, three rings?”
He’s waiting for his turn to get on the court along with D’von Godluck, 23, who has a Mercedes-Benz tattoo peeking out from under his shirt. He says the Nuggets are thugs. He says that in a good way.
“This is a thuggish team,” he says. “I say that as someone who grew up in South Central L.A. Sometimes the Lakers buy into that laid-back L.A. thing. I’m someone who backs the Lakers 110 percent, but this is going to be a tough series.”
Real basketball talk
We get into real basketball talk with a few players, talking about matchups and the Lakers’ size and Chauncey Billups’ pocket 3-point shot. J.C. Thompson — they call him Big Baby for obvious reasons — wonders about the Lakers’ mental toughness.
“I just don’t think they’re championship-worthy,” Thompson says. And instead of getting an argument, he gets, basically, agreement from the players, from the kibitzers, from the man in dreads who is telling me of the ills of corporate media.
The games to 11 come and go. The players are good but not great. It’s a Monday morning, and the best games are on Saturday, or on the reels of “White Men Can’t Jump,” which was filmed here.
Soon, a man walks up wearing a gold Lakers jersey: No. 24. “Kobe,” somebody shouts. He walks to a court and starts to shoot. It’s only then you notice that Anthony Redden’s right arm ends just where his right hand should begin. It’s a birth defect, but there’s surprisingly little defect in his game.
He works the graveyard shift at Target, putting stuff on shelves, he says, while people sleep. He comes here nearly every Monday and Wednesday morning. On Saturday, he plays in a league, with his two oldest sons and one daughter-in-law.
“I get to play with my trophies,” he says. He’s 49, married for 30 years and the father of six. He plays several instruments and he plays basketball. And if this is the city of dreams, he’s living a better dream than most.
He credits his best friend for getting him to play ball. “Kids would tease me, and I’d go home and cry,” Redden said. “And one day, he said to me, ‘I’m tired of watching you run home crying all the time. You’ve got to stand up for yourself. You’ve got to believe in yourself.’ ”
When I ask him about the Lakers’ uneven — to put it nicely — playoff performance, given how hard he has had to work to play, he says, “I hate it when the Lakers don’t play the way they’re supposed to.”
Redden gets into the game. He dribbles with either hand, bouncing the ball off the end of his unformed hand. He shoots a hook shot and a one-handed set shot. He grabs rebounds. This is a game worth watching.
The man guarding him in the 3-on-3 game is wearing Celtics green shoes. Drew Christensen is 33 and plays, he says, maybe every other day. He’s a Celtics fan, originally from Connecticut, who dimly remembers Bird vs. Magic, but knows all about Pierce vs. Kobe.
When I tell him what I’m doing, he smiles. “This is not the real L.A. If you want the real L.A., go to Seventh and Alameda or Boyle Heights or downtown Inglewood.” He tells me how he knows L.A. so well: His job — he swears — is scouting locations for TV commercials.
He lives here in Venice. When I ask him whether he’d pick this location to do a setup for a Nuggets-Lakers series, he looks around — sun, sand and hoops — and pronounces, “It works.” Hey, the Nuggets would love to work half so well.
Mike Littwin typically writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but he’s on special assignment covering the Nuggets-Lakers series. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
