Salvador Castanada, Don Cohen and Carmelo Brugalatta
Basketball has been very good to Don Cohen. From winning his first championship game playing church ball as a kid in Minnesota to bringing home a bronze medal from the Olympics, the Redding resident has rubbed elbows with some of the sport’s greatest names.
The fact that those two milestones, the church league championship and the bronze medal, are separated by 70 years hasn’t slowed down the 82-year-old Cohen in the slightest.
On a recent morning at the Shasta Family YMCA, Cohen and a handful of his senior ball cohorts were holding their own in a high-paced half-court five-on-five game featuring players one-third their age.
Salvador Castanada, 87, and Don Cohen, 82, square off at the top of the key.
Carmelo Brugalatta, 66, crashes the boards as a 3 clangs off the rim. He got the rebound.
To be sure, the youngsters (anyone under age 50, aka “apprentices”) were showing maximum respect to their elders, and not just because the court is reserved for seniors from 10 a.m. till noon weekday mornings. They know these codgers—Cohen has been coming to the gym for at least 15 years—and look up to them as mentors. Both young and old alike make adjustments, but everyone plays to win. The competition is fairly intense.
“You sort of pick what you do,” Cohen explained before the game. “You learn to play with guys who are aware of you. If you’re going to set a screen on a guy bigger than you, you want to let him know you’re there.”
Standard half-court pick-up game rules apply. Players shoot from the foul line to determine teams. It’s done by age so an equal number of seniors are on each team. The ball is checked in from the top of the key. On this morning, the seniors on court included Cohen, 87-year-old Salvador Castanada, 66-year-old Carmello Burgalatta and Joe Sombath, a former apprentice who barely makes the cut at age 50.
Cohen was matched up against Castanada in a seesaw Battle of the Octogenarians. On one series, Castanada got open out past the arc. A younger teammate crashed the boards and hucked him a quick outlet pass. Cohen couldn’t get a hand in Castanda’s face in time. The 87-year-old hopped, popped and nailed the 3-pointer.
That’s what they call a “senior fast break,” and not to be outdone, on the very next play, Cohen, behind a screen set by a mountain of a man who blotted out the sun, hoisted up a rainbow from downtown that hit nothing but net.
“I can shoot the three,” Cohen explained. “It’s called a hopper, not a jumper. A lot of guys prefer to hang out by the three-point line.”
Photographic evidence later determined that both Cohen and Castanada got exactly 2 inches off the floor when shooting the 3.
Meanwhile, Burgalatta and Sombath battled down in the paint, the younger Sombath granting no quarter as Brugalatta slashed to the basket, throwing up an array of floaters and hook shots, more than half of which rolled into the basket.
It was fun to watch and perhaps even more fun to play. It’s easy to see why basketball is considered such an addictive game.
Basketball As A Gateway Drug
Almost since basketball was invented by Canadian James Naismith in 1891, sports researchers and aficionados have remarked on the game’s addictive properties. The first official recognition came in 1973, with cultural researchers and comedians Cheech and Chong’s minor hit song “Basketball Jones.” Assisted by noted guitarist and ex-Beatle George Harrison, it goes something like this:
I need someone to stand beside me
I need, I need someone to set a pick for me
At the free-throw line of life, someone I can pass to
Someone to hit the open man on the give-and-go
And not end up in the popcorn machine
So cheerleaders, help me out
Basketball Jones, I got a basketball jones
Don Cohen is an 82-year-old poster child for basketball jones. He began dabbling in the sport as a grade schooler in Minneapolis. One of the ganza machers (big shot) at the local synagogue happened to own the Lakers.
You wondered why the L.A. Lakers are called the Lakers when the City of Angels is pretty much bereft of lakes? They played their first year, the 1947-48 season, in Minnesota, which has more than 10,000 lakes, according to the license plates.
That’s how two starting guards from the Lakers ended up coaching Cohen’s church league team. They won the championship, which was played in a large stadium the name of which Cohen can’t remember. We can forgive him, it being some 68 years ago.
His basketball career mostly fizzled after the victory. “I peaked when I was in middle school,” Cohen admitted. “But to say the least, that got me hooked on basketball.”
He got some play in during high school and college, but once he began chasing a real career instead of rebounds, basketball became out of bounds. Being good at math, he soon found himself trading shares on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange.
He played some pick-up ball back in those days. Once, he was practicing on one side of the court when a ball rolled over from the other side. He picked it up and pitched it back to none other than Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, who was shooting baskets on the other end.
It gets better. Keep in mind this was 30 or so years ago, when a young Chicago community activist had yet to run for office. No one knew this Barack Obama kid would one day be president of the United States.
“One of the little known facts about Obama is that he once played with me,” Cohen says with a wink.
A “mid-life freakout” sent Cohen to Los Angeles, where he opened several semi-successful art galleries, specializing in Latino art. That lasted until the art market collapsed. He spent most of the rest of his real career commuting between Chicago and San Francisco, working as an independent floor trader back in the day before all the big corporations took over the market.
His wife was there all the way, and didn’t ask questions (he says) when he set up Nerf hoops in first the Chicago loft and then the San Francisco condo. But everyone has their limits. “One day my wife said go buy a basketball and go to the park.”
Still in his early 60s, he began hitting all the open courts in the Bay Area. The Marina. The Chinese Community Center. “I usually found someone old enough and feeble enough to play against,” he readily confided.
When it came time to retire in the 1990s, he and his wife moved to Weaverville to be near their daughter. Still craving basketball, he began traveling the 40 or so miles to Redding for pick-up games at the Y. Eventually, they moved to Redding.
The rest is history, or at least it will be. At the Y in the year 2000, Cohen met Joe Sombath, who back then at age 35 was a mere “apprentice” to Cohen’s 67 years. Fifteen years later, Sombath has entered the unofficial ranks as a senior player, and the 10 a.m. senior game started by Cohen has become an established feature of the gym’s weekly schedule.
“I started the 10 o’clock game when we first moved here,” Cohen said. “I was the father of it, and it looks like it’s gonna go beyond our time.”
Don Cohen and Joe Sombath, founders of the 10 a.m. seniors game at the Shasta Family YMCA.
Battle of the Octogenarians.
Basketball Makes You Taller
Some readers may recognize Don Cohen’s name because he used to write a column for A News Cafe.com called “Wine on a Dime.” What most of those readers don’t know is that Cohen won a bronze medal in the Olympics.
OK, it wasn’t really the Olympics, but for seniors competing in the United States, it’s the next best thing. The National Senior Games are a seriously big deal, and this year Cohen wrangled his way on to the Hard Faces, an octogenarian team playing out of Hawaii, featuring 6-foot-10 Tony Davis, a former Harlem Globetrotter.
For Cohen, rubbing elbows with true basketball superstars is its own reward. “Most of them have a little more interesting basketball careers than I do. That’s part of the kick for guys like me.”
If you feel that basketball jones itching inside of you, don’t think you’re going to be playing senior pro anytime soon. Pick-up games at the Y during senior hours, 10 a.m. till noon, as competitive as they can be, are one thing. Officially sanctioned state and national championships are quite another.
For one thing, while the game is still played half-court, forget about 5-on-5. Official senior games are 3-on-3, for men and yes, women. There are two 20-minute halves and a 35-second shot clock. Divisions are determined by age: 50+; 55+; 60+; 65+, 70+, 75+ and 80+. Teams are limited to 12 players.
If you think it’s hard to round up a dozen players to play 80-year-old basketball, think again. A dozen teams competed in the 80+ brakcet at this year’s national championship.
The senior tournaments at the state and national level are quick to point out that players better be ready to play, as in this warning from the Masters Basketball National Championship:
“We stress the very competitive nature of an MBNC game. You could be playing 5 games in 5 days and you will find that the games are played at an intensity level similar to what you may have experienced in high school, college or the pro level. MBNC games are definitely not what you might experience in your local recreation league and teams need to staff and prepare accordingly.”
Traveling to Minneapolis for this year’s game was a homecoming of sorts for Cohen. He saw school buddies he hadn’t seen in years. They were still alive, but they seemed to have shrunk in stature. The former six-footers noted that they had diminished in height, but Cohen seemed to be taller.
“I used to be 5-foot-10,” he said. “They both used to be 6-foot-1 and looked shorter than they used to be. I didn’t think I’ve shrunk any. When I got home, I had the doctor measure. I’m now 5-foot-10 ½.”
Does basketball make you taller? Maybe if you’ve got a basketball jones as bad as Don Cohen’s. That’s not to scare anyone off from senior ball at the Shasta Family YMCA, weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon. Just ask him.
“If you get to be my age, if you’re breathing, you’re qualified to be in it.”
