The Dov Rule: Nobody’s as good as he thinks he is.

I used to play in a few old guy pickup basketball games with my dad when I was in high school and college. My dad’s least-favorite to attend was the Sunday morning at the local Jewish Community Center (JCC), which he’d only go to when his other games fell through.

Why?

Mainly because it was too crowded. The game, which ran from 10-12, was five-on-five to nine points, each basket counting for one point, and at any given time there would be 5-10 players waiting. So if you lost, you were waiting for at least one game, probably two, sometimes three. And they were slow games.

Plus, some of the regulars weren’t fun to play with. One player, whom we called Penn State Guy because he wore Penn State stuff every week, was very talented but yelled at anyone on his team who dared to shoot the ball. Another, Larry, was at an athletic disadvantage and tried to even it out by playing dirty — he’d try to clank you with his knee brace or pull your shirt.

But the player I talk about the most from that game was Dov. Dov was one of the older players in the game, probably late 60s or early 70s. He looked like Albert Einstein — long white hair and a big mustache — and off the court seemed like a nice guy.

Dov was the best guard and one of the three best overall players of the regulars. For an older player, he was still fast enough to drive to the basket, and was often able to convert a good percentage of his off-balance shots. And even though there were no threes in this game, he was a reliable outside shooter.

I didn’t mind playing in the same game as Dov because unlike Penn State Guy and Larry, he wasn’t a “can’t play with, can’t play against” type of player. To my dad, less so — he usually guarded Dov, who called a seemingly-endless stream of reach-in fouls. That probably got old.

Anyway, on our bagel run after a game, my dad coined what we now call The Dov Rule.

Nobody is as good as he thinks he is.