WASHINGTON — On the morning of the biggest speech of his life, Barack Obama found himself, quite literally, sidelined.
Obama shot baskets by himself at the Denver Athletic Club, talking trash to his friends as they ran the basketball court in what had become a campaign ritual, the pickup hoops game.
Worried that he might get elbowed in the jaw hours before he was to accept the Democratic presidential nomination before 80,000 people, the players convinced Obama he'd better sit this one out.
"There was a particular concern about not wanting him to turn up with a busted lip," said Alan S. King, a Chicago attorney and a regular in Obama's movable basketball games. "That's the only time he's ever done that."
On some of the most momentous days on the election calendar, Obama has defused the tension by hitting the basketball court. The tradition began the day of the Iowa caucuses in January. Obama set up a game while nervously awaiting the results, knowing that a poor showing in the caucuses might kill his campaign.
He played ball; he finished first in the caucuses.
Obama and his crew skipped the election day games in New Hampshire and Nevada -- and lost the balloting in both states. Was there a connection?
"He was trying to figure out what we did differently in Iowa," said Eric Whitaker, a friend since graduate school at Harvard. "He said, 'We played basketball in Iowa, and we didn't play in New Hampshire and Nevada. We have to start playing again.'
"We've played every primary day ever since."
Old friends from Chicago have flown in just to play. To round out the teams, Obama plucks a few athletically inclined aides and any stray players who happen to be in the gym that day. Games might last an hour or two, with two teams of five squaring off as Secret Service agents stand guard. The public and the press are usually barred.
Play is competitive. Obama bruised a rib playing the day of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries in May, when Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias knocked him to the floor.
"Barack was between Alexi and the basket," Whitaker recalled. "Alexi lowered his shoulder and took him out."
Vic Lombardi, a Denver sports TV anchor recruited to play in a game that same month, said the competition was so fierce that one of Obama's sneakers came apart.
