The readers (Joe in this case) request certain things to be covered on the blog and when it involves my own athletic prowess, I must oblige.
The biggest reason I did not write a story about the Indy Wahoo’s game last week at Jefferson Community Center revolved around the fact that we only had four players at the beginning of the game. We ended up with five regulars and one scrub off the street who played with us. I nearly passed out from that much physical activity so my brain could not remember many of the details. A quick recap:
I scored three points to slightly lower my average. No matter who I guarded they would say out loud, “post him up” and followed it by scoring over me consistently. I threw a couple great passes and a bunch of lousy ones and we won the game. We were the underdog, thus pushing our record to 4-0 and 3-1 against the spread.
Moving on to this week. With Dana gone to Eastern Washington, my days involve taking naps after school, watching the Mariners and playing video games. Thus the thought of running up and down a court appealed to me if only to avoid complete slothfulness. At around 5:00 p.m. I decided to eat a sandwich, some yogurt, a chocolate chip cookie, and some sting cheese. Nice small meal. Of course this does not count the Red Bull and chocolate croissant I had for breakfast. Shhhhh.
The game begins and we have six players. Of course I start. Was there any doubt? We win the tip as Matt Airy smartly taps it back to me. Good idea to get the ball quickly into the hands of our playmaker.
We start off pretty slow. And by pretty slow, I mean awful. Like a four grade girls team. The score stands 6-4 with ten minutes gone by in the first half. And we are losing. The opponents (Ballahalics) are in a zone. How the hell do you spell Ballaholics? Jesus, what a stupid name (as a reminder we did not create the name Indy Wahoo’s for ourselves, but our opponents do come up with the names such as Crunk City).
As the point guard my job is to distribute. And I pass early. Then no one ever passes back to me. Airy is missing threes. Airy throws the ball consistenly to the other team early. Big man Tim misses lay ins. I miss a three. We are ridiculously bad. This is pretty much how the entire first half plays out as we are down by six. The bright side involves only being down by six after playing so awful. The dark side remains my lack of touching the ball. Seriously, let’s get the ball to me a little more. Of course when I do shoot, I either a) miss horribly or b) miss horribly because the ball glances off my own forehead as I am shooting. I know, I know.
The second half begins and we play with a renewed vigor in part due to our switching to a 2-3 zone. This change in philosophy hits me hard. As a coach, I never have my team play zone especially at the freshmen and JV level. At the varsity level, you need a zone as a counter defense similar to a blitz package in football or a circle change in baseball. What convinced me to play zone in this game was my chest and throat area. They seemed to be both full of pain, suffering, Red Bull, and turkey and havarti sandwich. It is very difficult to play while burping up dinner constantly.
You know how they call point guards like Steve Nash a coach on the floor? Well w
e literally had three coaches on the floor with Airy (pictured on the right), Matt Butler, and myself. It’s like we jumped in a time machine and went back to the days of Lenny Wilkins as player/coach. The advantage to having three coaches on the floor is that we constantly communicate because when our players don’t we want to bang our heads against the backboard repeatedly. Thus our 2-3 became a chatterbox 2-3 and it stifled the Ballaholics.
Our lack of offense in trying to break the opponent’s 2-3 zone kept us down in the five to eight point range for much of the second half. After some ill-advised shots by my teammates and a lack of touching the ball, I subbed myself out of the game. Not only that but my body would not respond to what my mind asked it to do such as cutting to open spots in the zone for easy buckets. While out of the game, I contemplated my role on this team. As the other team called time out, I stepped up my game. I told the guys that we need to just throw the first easy pass and trust each other; we are too busy trying to make the perfect pass.
Side note: in this league, timeouts do not stop the time. Hence, I believe they should be called runningclockouts or rest for old dudes time.
The game resumed and we still trailed as our worst player, Harry, chucks up a three that misses. Time to sub myself back in. We trail by five when I enter the game with about 6:30 left. The score reads 49-44 bad guys winning. Unfortunately for them, we start to gel. We are gellin like a felon with no watermelon. That is such a better line for those shoe insoles commercials.
The biggest reason I did not write a story about the Indy Wahoo’s game last week at Jefferson Community Center revolved around the fact that we only had four players at the beginning of the game. We ended up with five regulars and one scrub off the street who played with us. I nearly passed out from that much physical activity so my brain could not remember many of the details. A quick recap:
I scored three points to slightly lower my average. No matter who I guarded they would say out loud, “post him up” and followed it by scoring over me consistently. I threw a couple great passes and a bunch of lousy ones and we won the game. We were the underdog, thus pushing our record to 4-0 and 3-1 against the spread.
Moving on to this week. With Dana gone to Eastern Washington, my days involve taking naps after school, watching the Mariners and playing video games. Thus the thought of running up and down a court appealed to me if only to avoid complete slothfulness. At around 5:00 p.m. I decided to eat a sandwich, some yogurt, a chocolate chip cookie, and some sting cheese. Nice small meal. Of course this does not count the Red Bull and chocolate croissant I had for breakfast. Shhhhh.
The game begins and we have six players. Of course I start. Was there any doubt? We win the tip as Matt Airy smartly taps it back to me. Good idea to get the ball quickly into the hands of our playmaker.
We start off pretty slow. And by pretty slow, I mean awful. Like a four grade girls team. The score stands 6-4 with ten minutes gone by in the first half. And we are losing. The opponents (Ballahalics) are in a zone. How the hell do you spell Ballaholics? Jesus, what a stupid name (as a reminder we did not create the name Indy Wahoo’s for ourselves, but our opponents do come up with the names such as Crunk City).
As the point guard my job is to distribute. And I pass early. Then no one ever passes back to me. Airy is missing threes. Airy throws the ball consistenly to the other team early. Big man Tim misses lay ins. I miss a three. We are ridiculously bad. This is pretty much how the entire first half plays out as we are down by six. The bright side involves only being down by six after playing so awful. The dark side remains my lack of touching the ball. Seriously, let’s get the ball to me a little more. Of course when I do shoot, I either a) miss horribly or b) miss horribly because the ball glances off my own forehead as I am shooting. I know, I know.
The second half begins and we play with a renewed vigor in part due to our switching to a 2-3 zone. This change in philosophy hits me hard. As a coach, I never have my team play zone especially at the freshmen and JV level. At the varsity level, you need a zone as a counter defense similar to a blitz package in football or a circle change in baseball. What convinced me to play zone in this game was my chest and throat area. They seemed to be both full of pain, suffering, Red Bull, and turkey and havarti sandwich. It is very difficult to play while burping up dinner constantly.
You know how they call point guards like Steve Nash a coach on the floor? Well w
e literally had three coaches on the floor with Airy (pictured on the right), Matt Butler, and myself. It’s like we jumped in a time machine and went back to the days of Lenny Wilkins as player/coach. The advantage to having three coaches on the floor is that we constantly communicate because when our players don’t we want to bang our heads against the backboard repeatedly. Thus our 2-3 became a chatterbox 2-3 and it stifled the Ballaholics.Our lack of offense in trying to break the opponent’s 2-3 zone kept us down in the five to eight point range for much of the second half. After some ill-advised shots by my teammates and a lack of touching the ball, I subbed myself out of the game. Not only that but my body would not respond to what my mind asked it to do such as cutting to open spots in the zone for easy buckets. While out of the game, I contemplated my role on this team. As the other team called time out, I stepped up my game. I told the guys that we need to just throw the first easy pass and trust each other; we are too busy trying to make the perfect pass.
Side note: in this league, timeouts do not stop the time. Hence, I believe they should be called runningclockouts or rest for old dudes time.
The game resumed and we still trailed as our worst player, Harry, chucks up a three that misses. Time to sub myself back in. We trail by five when I enter the game with about 6:30 left. The score reads 49-44 bad guys winning. Unfortunately for them, we start to gel. We are gellin like a felon with no watermelon. That is such a better line for those shoe insoles commercials.
We start to inch back into it. Like the good coach that I am, as we are down three with 2:30 left, I tell our team that there is a lot of time. Butler hits a free throw. Down two. My cat like reflexes provide so
me stellar defense in this stretch including a ridiculous one handed-grab out of thin air-spiderman type steal. Which brings me to my next point.Spiderman 3 was one of the top five worst movies I have ever seen. It now stands in a list with Crazy/Beautiful, King Kong, Congo, and Waterworld (featuring Santa Clara Hawaiian girl). I don’t think I actually watched Waterworld, but we always used to like to bring it up because this girl from Santa Clara was an extra in it and she hated that we brought it up. But seriously could more stupid things happen in Spiderman 3? I hate it.
So Tim scores inside and the game is tied up. We get a stop and the ball is pitched ahead to Airy who bangs in a three to put us up 52-49. That’s right, lockdown defense led by me. We are flying around the perimeter to prevent any threes and we grab the rebound. Actually I grab it. And I will not pass this baby. They foul me and kind of twist me around. I throw my elbow out as if to say, “get off of me”. Ready to ice the game I bend my legs to get prepared for the one-and-one. I release, rotation, and clank off the front rim. Luckily Butler grabbed his 87th rebound of the game and we kicked it out to call timeout with about 20 seconds left.
I volunteer to screen for Airy as we inbound and I set a beauty. He gets the ball and is fouled. Two free throws later this game is iced and I need some ice. Zero points and maybe four rebounds. Not a shining performance but another win for the Wahoos. At 5-0 and now 3-1-1 (we pushed this one) against the spread, we feel nearly unstoppable.
As Airy and I sit and relax before getting ready to leave the gym, Harry comes over to say goodbye. Airy says, “Harry, you can sub in whenever. Don’t be afraid, just grab me. It is fine.”
Harry responds, “I guess the more I know you guys the more comfortable I will be to do that. To I guess, just be an ass”.
Being an ass is fine Harry, just as long as you don’t ever sub for me.
4 comments:
Seriously... can you give me a call to sub? I can do it all... And I will not sub for you either.
Also, agree on Spider-Man 3, it sucked! Waterworld is tight though!
Push = loss.
Vegas rules homie.
Good job on moving to 5-0.
Havarti is known to reduce stamina and hand-eye coordination.
maybe you were in so much pain because you ate sting cheese. that sounds brutal.
1. Thanks for answering my prayers.
2. Thanks for reminding me (with that picture) how sexy I am.
3. Best line: "What convinced me to play zone in this game was my chest and throat area."
4. You definitely should be a sportswriter.
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