You gotta carry this crucial list

In case you just skimmed through your newspaper Thursday, the section with the picture on the cover of a carved-open basketball with flowers planted in it wasn’t our special Hoopfest guide.

Although you might want to send such a bouquet to the hospital room of your favorite over-50 curb warrior come Monday.

The Hoopfest section was the one with the basketball actually being used as a basketball. It was thick with listings of every one of this weekend’s participants, a rundown of the top teams in the “elite” or “open” or “delusional” divisions, and a locator map to help you find where your nephew, your grocery checker and the goof at the next desk are playing.

In other words, everything you need to enjoy Hoopfest XVI. Except this:

It didn’t tell you who has game.

Excuse me. Got game.

If you say “has game,” you don’t got game.

Now, you can always go on the theory that the only real ball in Hoopfest is played on the boulevard, where the “elite” or “open” or “guys with really big gear bags” divisions play. But that lacks a certain imagination or at least a sense of adventure. Besides, there are real players spread throughout the Hoopfest grid – but with 44 city blocks and a dozen parking lots to cover, you’re not going to want to go on a blind safari in search of them.

So I’m here to help.

It’s my vast experience, honed over 15 Hoopfests, that a player’s game cannot be distinguished by height, physique, age, designer footwear, road rash or number of knee braces. Everyone talks a good game, so oral clues are out. Not so remarkably, the biggest and loudest crowds gather on behalf of the worst players to heckle the other team and bully the court monitor.

So there is only one infallible gauge: what’s on a player’s shirt.

The printed T-shirt as a road map to the soul has pretty much been outstripped by the tattoo and the customized cell phone ringer, but we’re not interested in that here. What a player wears to Hoopfest, however, is an obvious indictor of how polished his game is and the signal he wants to send both to opponents and casual observer.

For instance, a guy wearing a Memphis Pros T-shirt has game – oops, got game. Anyone who can appreciate the lore of the old American Basketball Association – and the team that gave us Steve “Snapper” Jones, still the best television foil Bill Walton ever had – is a player, even if he never masters the bank of Hoopfest’s wooden backboard.

On the other hand, anyone wearing a Tour de France shirt is hopeless. I think this is self-explanatory.

A Budweiser shirt? No game.

Moose Drool? Got game. Probably a hangover, too.

Orting Soccer? Got game. But Wapato Tennis? No game.

I know. Sometimes it’s a fine line.

The following are all examples culled from previous Hoopfests, and I’m proud to say that a random sampling – that is, seeing a T-shirt and stalking the wearer to his or her court – has demonstrated beyond a doubt the accuracy of this system. Except, of course, when the wearer turned out not to be playing in Hoopfest, but merely a spectator.

Anyway, your cheat sheet:

Vermont Basketball – got game.

Kwik E Mart, Home of the Chunky Squishee – got game.

Lithuania Olympic Team – got game.

Dist. 24 Wrestling Championships – no game.

Turn and Cough – got game.

Sorry Bunch – no game.

Curly (of the Three Stooges) – got game.

Carrot Top – no game. No clue.

NY Style – got game, as long as the wearer is a 4-year-old girl.

Working Class Hero – no game.

Life of the Party – no game.

Valley Bowl Warheads – got game.

Intramural Champions – no game.

Over-30 Rec City Champs – used to have game.

I Have 9 1/2 Toes – got game.

Free Beer/See Other Side for Details – no game.

Tommy Bahama – no game.

Ralph Lauren – no game.

Air Jordan – got clothes.

Adanacs Lacrosse – got game.

Klahowya Football – no game.

World Series of Softball – wrong game.

Crackerheads – got game.

Dirt Turkeys – got game.

Tool – no game.

And1 – got game.

PF Flyers – no game.

Nike – no imagination.

Seduce Me Please – no game.

Up Yours – no class.

Westside Barbell – got some guns.

George Nethercutt 4 Congress – got his butt kicked.

WWJD? – well, he’d get some game, for one thing.

Battle for No. 1, Notre Dame 31, Florida State 24 – terrible game.

Todd No. 1, written in pen on a tank T-shirt, with a Burger King crown – got issues.

Italian Stallion – no game.

A.C. Slater – got game.

Accufacts All-Stars – got in your business.

Blues Brothers – no game.

College – got game.

Loggers Jubilee – got lumber.

Wet Dog Fur Open – got ugly.

Chronicle Prose – I like it, but no game.

Mission Village Laundramat – got a sponsor.

Stateline Showgirls – got a better sponsor.

Great Northern Masonry – gotta get a new sponsor.

Got all that?