Barack Obama is shown playing basketball at Riverview Elementary School in Elkhart, Ind. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

President Obama: He's "Got Game"

The U.S. president has a very hard job. He leads the strongest country in the world.

Yet the president is like everyone else. He must relax and stay healthy. He must exercise.

U.S. presidents have chosen many different kinds of exercise. George W. Bush rode a mountain bike. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter jogged. George H.W. Bush sailed boats. Ronald Reagan rode a horse. Gerald Ford enjoyed skiing.

Richard Nixon bowled. John F. Kennedy played touch football. Dwight Eisenhower golfed. Teddy Roosevelt boxed and hunted. Abraham Lincoln wrestled when he was young.

The new president, Barack Obama, plays basketball. He was on his high school team. He never was a star, but people say he is a good player.

The president plans to keep playing hoops. Obama is 47 years old and 6'1". He is in good shape even though he smokes cigarettes.

He says he will ask for a basketball court to be built at the White House. The presidential home already has a swimming pool and bowling alley.

Obama can find a full court at Camp David, MD. Camp David is a get-away spot for presidents.

Obama cabinet can make up a team
He will have no trouble finding other players. Each president chooses people to help lead the government. Obama chose people with experience. All have experience in solving problems.

Some of them have basketball experience. Some even more than the president, reports the Mercury News of San Jose, California.

Arne Duncan is Obama's choice for education secretary. He is 6'5". He played pro basketball in Australia. James Jones, incoming national security adviser, is 6'4". He played in high school and college.

Eric Holder was co-captain of his high school team. He is Obama's choice for attorney general. Susan Rice, Obama's pick for U.N. ambassador, was a star guard in high school. Timothy Geithner, the choice for treasury secretary, likes pickup basketball games.

So does the president. Basketball has meant more than exercise to him. He was one of the few blacks in his Hawaiian high school. Playing basketball helped him to feel accepted.

"At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts," he writes in his book, "Dreams from My Father."�

The young Obama "didn't know who he was until he found basketball," says his wife's brother, Craig Robinson. "It was the first time he really met black people,"� Robinson told the New York Times.

Robinson met Obama when he began dating Robinson's sister, Michelle. She asked her brother to play ball with Obama. The idea was to judge the boyfriend by how he behaved on the court. Obama passed the test.

Robinson played basketball at Princeton University. Now he is men's basketball coach at Oregon State University.

Obama may not get a chance to pick a new justice for the Supreme Court. But he already has picked players for the basketball court.