![]() We play it on the road, play at homes, we'll sit for four, five, six hours and play it.” We play that game probably three, four times a week. “We'd rather play booray than go out to the club,” he said. "If you're going to play cards, you're going to play booray."īobby Portis, LaVine’s teammate with the Bulls, summed it up. "I know some NFL players play it, some baseball guys, but the NBA, it's the game," Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine said after a late-season game against the Brooklyn Nets. If anyone wants to play cards, deal me in.” Phillies left fielder Rhys Hoskins says booray is big in baseball, too. There is some time to kill, and if we have an excuse to compete, we're going to do it. “You get in a baseball clubhouse, that competitiveness is always flowing,” said Philadelphia Phillies left fielder Rhys Hoskins. The game has made its way to other leagues, most notably the NFL and Major League Baseball. Nothing brings out the competitiveness in a group of NBA players like a game of booray, a no-holds-barred, shit-talking, pot-matching, free-for-all that often ends up expensive for all. “For that moment, they’re taking your soul.” It’s like putting Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Floyd Mayweather on a gambling table. "I’ve heard that those Celtics teams, with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, those guys were betting Rolls-Royces on a plane. > Sign up for The Action Network's daily newsletter to get the smartest conversation delivered into your inbox each morning. And then there’s the game within the game. Once the pots get big enough, booray becomes a test of wills - bravado meets balls meets bank accounts.įor NBA players, the game is a metaphor for basketball, which itself is a metaphor for life. ![]() If a player gets booed (fails to win a single trick), he must match the pot. Here’s where it gets fun (or, if you’re losing, infuriating): If two players tie for the most tricks in a hand - say a 2-2-1 split - the pot remains, and players re-ante. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett were big into booray. The player with the most tricks at the end of the hand wins the pot. There are five tricks up for grabs in a given hand. Say the dealer flips a club to start the game: clubs become the trump suit, and a two of clubs - the worst of the trump cards - would beat an ace of any other suit. The player to the dealer's left plays a card, which can be topped by a higher card of the same suit, or by a trump card. ![]() Once the dealer establishes the trump, players are allowed to stay in or fold their hands, and those remaining can discard up to five cards and redraw to complete a five-card hand. There’s a big advantage to being the dealer, especially in the NBA version of the game, which allows the dealer to choose the trump suit after he looks at his initial five-card hand. ![]() Players are dealt five cards, with the dealer flipping over one of his own cards to reveal a trump suit. Played with a standard 52-card deck and with anywhere from two to seven players - but typically four or five - booray is most similar to spades and hearts. Nine years after a game of booray ignited a showdown between Washington Wizards teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton - an incident that derailed Arenas’ career, ended Crittenton’s and sent the Wizards into a tailspin - Arenas shares never-before-discussed details with The Action Network about that infamous hand of cards and what really set Crittenton off.īOORAY TRACES ITS origins to the Acadiana region of French Louisiana, Cajun country, and before that, to France and the royal court of King Louis XI, whose finance minister, Jean Bourré, was considered one of his closest confidants. It’s poker meets spades and the cause of numerous skirmishes around the league - including one of the biggest scandals in the history of the sport. The game - Bourré, if you’re from Louisiana, or booray, if you’re from anywhere else - is one of the NBA’s biggest mysteries, a card game played in the backs of airplanes and locker rooms. It was never about the money, and it was never about the fight, and it was most certainly never about the guns. Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language. ![]()
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