Post by ~ ♥ Mariska ♥ ~ on Oct 15, 2008 10:02:17 GMT
One Tree Hill’s James Lafferty introduces us to the sport of SlamBall
Ever heard of SlamBall? We hadn’t either, until we found out about the crazy sport’s appearance on One Tree Hill starting tonight (The CW, 9 p.m ET). It’s a full-contact basketball-hockey-football hybrid, with TRAMPOLINES. Seriously, trampolines. As SlamBall website user djdchamp93 so eloquently puts it, “this is wat nba shud look lyk.”
In terms of made-up sports, we were feeling like SlamBall ranked up there with Quidditch, so we asked James Lafferty — who plays Nathan, the promising NBA prospect/high school hoops star-turned-paralyzed alcoholic-turned-less-promising NBA prospect/high school hoops coach — to kindly explain what, exactly, it entails. “[Slamball] is like the closest thing to flying you can do without jumping out of an airplane or being strapped to a harness and swung around,” he says. “It’s set on a spring-loaded wood floor with a basketball hoop on each end. It’s the size of a normal basketball court. Each basket is at ten feet, and under each hoop there is an area that goes from courtside to courtside that has four trampolines. The entire court is surrounded by Plexiglass.”
If you want to play (or watch), you need to learn the lingo: “‘Juice the tramps’ is basically manipulating the trampoline to get the highest jump that you possibly can,” Lafferty says, and “‘Popcorn’ is when a defensive player jumps [on the trampoline] at the same time or right before you’re trying to shoot and takes your jump away.”
OTH executive producer Mike Tollin is a partner in SlamBall, which airs Sundays on Versus through Oct. 26. Aha, so that’s how they came up with the idea. But, as Lafferty argues, it’s actually not too unbelievable for Nathan to play. “It fit right into the storyline of Nathan trying to make his way back to the NBA,” he says. “SlamBall seems like a way to showcase his athletic abilities and [prove] he is healthy enough to play again.”
If you’re a OTH fan, you appreciate his effort to explain the logic, but you know it’s unnecessary: This insane-sounding spectacle fits right in with the show’s nonstop, out-of-left-field drama ever since it wisely skipped over the Tree Hill High gang’s college years and inserted them straight into their early twenties. A spoiler from last week’s show for the uninitiated: a crazy nanny attempts to kidnap a small child for the second time while holding his grandfather, who’s in need of a heart transplant, hostage in a fake hospital bed. She chases the small child through a cornfield and dies via a magnificent axe/gun combo assault. Follow? “The Nanny Carrie storyline has got to be up there — definitely in the top three,” Lafferty admits. “That one was pretty good.”
Source: OTH Blog
Ever heard of SlamBall? We hadn’t either, until we found out about the crazy sport’s appearance on One Tree Hill starting tonight (The CW, 9 p.m ET). It’s a full-contact basketball-hockey-football hybrid, with TRAMPOLINES. Seriously, trampolines. As SlamBall website user djdchamp93 so eloquently puts it, “this is wat nba shud look lyk.”
In terms of made-up sports, we were feeling like SlamBall ranked up there with Quidditch, so we asked James Lafferty — who plays Nathan, the promising NBA prospect/high school hoops star-turned-paralyzed alcoholic-turned-less-promising NBA prospect/high school hoops coach — to kindly explain what, exactly, it entails. “[Slamball] is like the closest thing to flying you can do without jumping out of an airplane or being strapped to a harness and swung around,” he says. “It’s set on a spring-loaded wood floor with a basketball hoop on each end. It’s the size of a normal basketball court. Each basket is at ten feet, and under each hoop there is an area that goes from courtside to courtside that has four trampolines. The entire court is surrounded by Plexiglass.”
If you want to play (or watch), you need to learn the lingo: “‘Juice the tramps’ is basically manipulating the trampoline to get the highest jump that you possibly can,” Lafferty says, and “‘Popcorn’ is when a defensive player jumps [on the trampoline] at the same time or right before you’re trying to shoot and takes your jump away.”
OTH executive producer Mike Tollin is a partner in SlamBall, which airs Sundays on Versus through Oct. 26. Aha, so that’s how they came up with the idea. But, as Lafferty argues, it’s actually not too unbelievable for Nathan to play. “It fit right into the storyline of Nathan trying to make his way back to the NBA,” he says. “SlamBall seems like a way to showcase his athletic abilities and [prove] he is healthy enough to play again.”
If you’re a OTH fan, you appreciate his effort to explain the logic, but you know it’s unnecessary: This insane-sounding spectacle fits right in with the show’s nonstop, out-of-left-field drama ever since it wisely skipped over the Tree Hill High gang’s college years and inserted them straight into their early twenties. A spoiler from last week’s show for the uninitiated: a crazy nanny attempts to kidnap a small child for the second time while holding his grandfather, who’s in need of a heart transplant, hostage in a fake hospital bed. She chases the small child through a cornfield and dies via a magnificent axe/gun combo assault. Follow? “The Nanny Carrie storyline has got to be up there — definitely in the top three,” Lafferty admits. “That one was pretty good.”
Source: OTH Blog
