SlamBall is ridiculous. No other word serves to describe it. And it is, without a doubt, American through and through, from the concept to the packaging to the participants to the founder, Mason Gordon. It’s just pure highlights; forget NBA Jam comparisons, SlamBall is to real sports what a montage of pornographic money shots is to real-life sex: divested of all but the most visceral elements.
This is the thing that is coming to China.
According to China Daily (via NiuBball), “One hundred Chinese players will be selected from tryouts, internet submissions and selective recruiting and will join an August training camp in Hangzhou – where they will learn the game and train alongside some of the top SlamBall players in the world.”
If you’re interested in trying out (applications can be found on SlamBall’s website), the only thing you’ll need to know is that it’s played on trampolines and features a lot of hitting.
And forget Gordon’s spiel (who he gives to anyone who’ll listen) about how his sport “started in this little warehouse in East Los Angeles, and I had this idea to create a sport that was like a real-life human video game, a sport where athletes could jump higher and hit harder, and the concept was to combine the best elements of all these other team sports like basketball, football, gymnastics, ice hockey, and to create something totally new.” (You can watch him saying those words in this YouTube video [here on Tudou] from March, in which he appears to introduce the game to a Chinese audience [specifically, to Tudou's English-speaking Chinese audience]). We prefer the idea of letting images speak for themselves, so above and below, moving images for you of a highlight-inducing game.
Just so you know: it took me two minutes to ejaculate excited, inhuman sounds while watching the below video (the dunk by No. 23, White). How long will it take you?
Here’s another sweet video package:
