Singapore III

Alright, even I’m getting fatigued writing about pickup basketball in Singapore, so I promise that this will be my last entry for Singapore (for now). View Singapore part I and Singapore part II.

This was from December 2019 but I never got around posting it until September 2021

I happened to find myself in Singapore once again by the end of 2019, and the first thing I had to do was re-connect with the basketball meetup group from last time. It was pretty awesome because this time we got to play at OCBC Arena, which is where the Singapore Professional and National teams play.

That'll be a story for another time because not only did we play basketball, I also got to hang out with a couple of the guys for dinner and drinks (#makingfriends)!

Besides reconnecting with those guys, I also had some unfinished business that I had to attend to. See, when I first visited Singapore a couple months ago, there was a group I was interested in playing with but never got the opportunity because I came down with a very bad case of food poisoning.

This time around and 4 months later, I made sure to hit them up to play. And unlike the previous group I played with, this was almost too easy to join and play pickup basketball. If anybody is looking for an easy indoor basketball game, this would be a good group to start. I played on a Sunday from 9am-11am at Ping Yi Secondary. Pay was $5 per person.

The game

One unique takeaway from this pickup group was that they used an electronic scoreboard for timed games. It was either first team to 15, or whichever team leading after 10 minutes. Games were played by 2’s and 3’s. This made for some exciting basketball especially when both teams were nearing the target score with the clock running down. This also prevented games getting drawn out when no team could score.

Each team played zone every possession, continuing with the zone only defense I’ve seen around Asia. Games were still very quick because of the 3-point shooting. I don’t want to brag or anything, but for some reason in this gym, I happened to hit my first 6 three pointers, which was the complete opposite of what happened in Singapore last time and in San Francisco. For the day, I probably ended up shooting over 50% from 3, which to this day still boggles my mind.

The people

This group is on the older side with an average age of mid 40s and me being the youngest at ## (not telling). There was even one guy who was probably close to 70, but I'll admit, I thought most of these guys were in their 30s because of the young Asian gene. Even though they weren’t the most athletic, they did feature some old man strength which made it difficult when trying to score in the paint.

The court

We played at Ping Yi Secondary which featured very standard basketball equipment. I’m not really sure if I should actually include this section in future posts because most indoor basketball courts are pretty good. Not much else to say here besides that it was a pretty normal court.

Conclusion

Good group of guys who are on the ‘older’ side, but still make for a fun competitive game of basketball. Extremely easy to play and they’ll allow anybody to play without any questions asked. I even met one of the guys out on the streets randomly one day and he even invited me to play with them in another group. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do so because I don’t live in Singapore, but it’s probably for the best as I could never keep up the 3 point shooting performance from my 1 day pickup experience. Nonetheless, even if you don't continue playing with these guys, it'll be a good starting point to play basketball and to eventually network your way on to other indoor pickup basketball groups!