For many men, pick-up basketball can quickly become more heated than the most spirited political debate, or even their biggest relationship fight.

Whether someone was goaltending, the ever-occurring “traveling” allegations, and of course the insistence that someone actually stepped out of bounds right before they made the winning shot.

But when this user was playing against someone who kept trying to trick them into passing them the ball, he used their own trick against them to win the game!

Check it out!

Basketball player tried a petty trick on me, I did it back to him and won the game

This is during a pick-up basketball game at a local gym. Anyone who plays knows of someone like in this.

Pick-up games are very different from any league games in the way that the opposing teams do not have matching uniforms, we are all just wearing whatever we wore to the gym that day.

There are no referees or scoreboards, the players themselves all have to collectively agree on the rules and score.

Now when you get into one of these games, often you have just met some if not most of the players on the court with you.

So essentially, there was no way to know who was on your team and who was your opponent!

There’s no real way to remember who’s on your team once the game gets going, but you figure it out soon enough.

Back to tonight. Usually I play with familiar faces but tonight a lot of people showed up I’ve never seen here before. No problem, we quickly formed teams and got the game on the way.

Now there is a semi-unethical trick you can do in these types of situations where it is not clear who is on whose team.

If you are not on my team and have the ball, I can yell something like “Pass it here!” and the opposing player will pass me the ball since they are unsure of who their teammates are.

And while OP said this wasn’t technically against the rules, it was still a pretty cheap trick.

There are no rules against this. Usually your own teammates will be annoyed at you for your lack of self-awareness.

I have never used this trick and tend to look down on those who do as “cheating” although I would never call someone out or stop the game to address this.

Basically don’t be dumb enough to fall for it. Anyways, this guy on the other team tonight tried this MULTIPLE times with myself and my teammates to no avail.

I encountered this often when I was a teenager but now that I’m in my 30’s and playing with grown adults I have even less tolerance for this.

But even after he stopped, the guy’s behavior had really rubbed OP the wrong way…

Eventually he stopped once he saw it wasn’t working, but it still annoyed me. The game goes on and both teams even the score where it becomes next point wins.

Now Mr. Trickster has the ball and it looks as he will single handedly try to win the game for his team.

Unfortunately for him, he made a poor choice of movement and ends up stuck in a corner with two of my teammates surrounding him looking to the steal the ball away.

In his desperation to get the ball to an open teammate, he turns his head in my direction as I am running towards him.

And OP realized this was the perfect moment to use his own dirty trick against him!

As soon as I see his face I yell, “Right here!” and without a thought he tosses the ball right into my hands.

Since nobody was expecting this, there is no defense on our side of the court and I get an easy layup to win the game.

I wish I had gotten a better reaction out of him from this, but he was a good sport and high-fived everyone like we all do at the conclusion of a game.

But I was sure glad to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Like I said, I usually don’t like this trick, but have decided tonight going forward I will only use it if it’s used against me first.

Do people really do this in a PICK-UP basketball game? It’s not like its the NBA championship game, do you really need to win that badly?

Reddit went to the comments to share their own underhanded pick-up game strategies…

Other hoopers thought there was a fairly obvious solution to this dilemna.

And finally, some people took the opportunity to say just how much they hated basketball!

“Get your head in the game!”

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.