"Check the ball, man," snapped a tattooed teenager in droopy shorts and a backward baseball cap. "No blood, no foul," he quipped later on, after knocking his opponent to the concrete.

A scene from the classic basketball movie "White Men Can't Jump"? Typical banter from a New York City playground?

Not exactly.

But games stopped and heads turned when the only Russian ever to play in the NBA -- current Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko -- stopped by to help promote playground ball, or "streetball," to those who stuck around.