Locked in on the hoop

Basketball provides an outlet for those who ran afoul of the law

NEW BEDFORD - High above courtside at the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction - commonly known as the Ash Street Jail - the razor wire gleams in the sun, ensuring that fast breaks are confined to the basketball floor.

"We play in the rain, we play in the cold," says Touré Perry of Brockton. "We get our long johns on and we go to town."

Jail ball is different. The court lines painted on the concrete playground are ignored. This is jail, everything is in, except for the red brick wall on one sideline and the chain-link fence on the other. The outdoor baskets are like the walls in this jail, the oldest in the country: too high by almost a foot.

"We make do, man," says Perry, 27, who played for a traveling AAU team in the late '90s and is serving time for a parole violation. "You gotta adjust your jump shot - put an arc on it - cause the hoops are a little high. Plus, it's real physical. Look at my lip. I got this from an elbow."

Inmates call their own fouls, while armed correction officers keep their distance. There is no such thing as a flagrant foul, and a traveling call is out of the question.

"Yeah, there's some blood out there," says Mark Mitchell, 37, of Taunton, in custody on a drug trafficking charge. "They let us play until the fists start flying."

Mitchell, a rock-hard center, says he spent two weeks in lockdown for his role in a rare fight.

"Was it worth it? No, no," he says, shaking his head.

Sneakers are prison-issue Bob Barker's - "thin as paper," says Perry, the showboating point guard. The teams are indistinguishable. The drab green prison jumpsuits don't have numbers. These guys won't be mistaken for the Celtics, but they do make the extra pass and they hustle as if the iron doors have been left wide open.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson doesn't believe in weight rooms, but he encourages basketball. For 90 minutes a day, prisoners get out of cells so small they can touch both walls simultaneously. The basketball game has reduced tensions in the jail, inmates say. Now they have nothing-but-net dreams instead of just plain nothing.

"Out here I can fly," says Perry. "That's the best thing they got here, that basketball court. It's the only thing. Here, it's go hard or go to your cell."

Tyrone Young, 34, of Roxbury, who says he was charged with selling drugs, pretends he's elsewhere. Anywhere else.

"It makes you think you're on the streets playing with a whole crowd around you," he says. "Everybody's oohing and aahing. You get the rush, the applause. We fantasize."

Topics in the news

Talk to this trio of African-American men and you'll get a unique take on bad-boy jocks like Plaxico Burress, Michael Vick, Stephon Marbury, and O.J. Simpson.

Most of the inmates at Ash Street Jail are drug offenders, awaiting sentencing. This ancient jail opened when John Quincy Adams was president. Its most famous resident was Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted of the 1892 hatchet murder of her father and stepmother in nearby Fall River. Many historians believe she got away with murder, and no one else ever was tried for the crime.

Last Friday afternoon, inmates were playing five-on-five when Orenthal James Simpson was being sentenced to 9 to 33 years for his role in an armed hotel robbery over sports collectibles he claimed were stolen from him. The judge insisted there was no retribution for the 1994 slayings of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, for which Simpson was found not guilty. The verdict polarized America along racial lines. This time, the American public didn't seem as transfixed on the Juice.

But as word spread that Simpson, 61, might never see freedom again, some inmates were surprised.

"Wow. Basically, they're saying he got away with something before and now we got your ass," says Perry. "Absolutely. Fact. I know he's a knucklehead for the stuff he's into now. I can say that."

Young, the best pure jump shooter of the bunch, thinks Simpson was not guilty then and not guilty now.

"If the glove does not fit, you must acquit, remember?" he says. "This is O.J. Simpson. He doesn't have a criminal record. He went to school. He won a Heisman Trophy. I think his sentence shouldn't be 15 years. That's outrageous."

But Young doesn't think what Simpson did in Las Vegas was smart.

"I think celebrities can't do certain things because of who they are," he says. "You can't be O.J. and rob somebody, because you're going to be identified. He should have known that."

Mitchell says the verdict is ludicrous.

"He's getting tried all over again for the murder," he says. "How you gonna rob somebody for your own stuff?"

None of the men blamed the lengthy sentence on race, though there were no blacks on the jury.

Perry says the election of Barack Obama has helped soothe racial tensions that surfaced after the first O.J. trial.

"I think the race card is old, man," he says. "I think blaming things on white people is old, man. It's a new day."

The trio then turned their attention to Burress, the Giants receiver who accidentally shot himself in the thigh in a nightclub and faces concealed weapons charges. All three think he had good reason to carry a gun, although he should have had a license.

"You're a superstar, you're an athlete," says Young. "Everybody wants something. You are entitled to bear arms. Why wouldn't you get a gun license legally?"

But why carry a weapon at all?

"Because you've got wolves out there, hungry for anybody that's being successful," says Young. "Some of them is drug-addicted, but some of us is out there to take care of our families. You know what I'm saying? And that's the quickest, easiest way."

The men cited former Celtic Antoine Walker being robbed at gunpoint at his own home as an example of why athletes should carry a weapon.

Part of the problem is that the bling is too tempting, they say.

"If you're wearing my house on your wrist, you're wearing my Bentley around my neck, then somebody will want that," says Young.

Mitchell says Burress deserves what he got.

"He's stupid," says Mitchell. "To go into a club with a gun in your sweatpants. He's got all the money in the world. He could buy a holster. Bring somebody in. Bring guards. To shoot yourself in the leg, you gotta be dumb."

As for Burress's teammate, Antonio Pierce, who was at the nightclub with him and has agreed to talk to a grand jury, there is no sympathy, only the universal code of the hood.

"Snitches get stitches," they said.

A rallying point

Switching the topic from violence to money, all three jail hoop players think Marbury, the Knicks' estranged point guard, has lost touch with reality. You can't just pocket $21 million and not play ball, they say.

"Where's the love for the game?" says Perry. "I mean, go play basketball. Win games. You are getting an opportunity that nobody else has. Give me that opportunity. I'd play for the Oklahoma Thunder, the worst team in the league."

Next topic: Violence plus money.

As they speak, Vick sits in a Leavenworth, Kan., prison for operating a dogfighting network and killing pit bulls.

"It's a waste of talent," says Perry. "It's not justice if you're going to slay a man for making a mistake when there's plenty of people that don't do time. Look at [former New York Governor] Eliot Spitzer."

With politics as the last topic of the day, everyone is smiling.

President-elect Obama, they all agree, has got game. There will be a basketball court in the White House soon and maybe world leaders could bring peace by working out their differences on the court, the men state in all earnestness.

"I hope he can fix the economy as well as he can shoot the ball," says Mitchell.

Stan Grossfeld can be reached at grossfeld@globe.com