.

Okay so I use profanity (Misery Part II)

We are now 1-3, yea baby! (Thursday Adult Basketball League, Chatsworth)

I really thought we were f**ked after finding out our best player (Anthony) was not going to make it due to an aggravated knee injury. After a disaster of a start (0-3) were poised to lose our 4th in a row. This also meant i had to play point guard full time. So I held a small meeting with my teammates before the game, this isn't my team and these guys are a lot older than I am but I felt it was incumbent that I point out some of our weaknesses since I'm the most experienced basketball player in the squad. The opposing team was superior in height and sheer build (two of them look like body builders). What concerned me the most was our inability to rotate our zone defense, our inability to force turnovers boxing out for rebounds and simply denying the ball to cutters. Incidentally the opposing team is not a jump shooting team, this I thought would work to our advantage since we have a tall interior defense and if we could deny passes we have a good chance of winning the ball game.

We went on a 10-0 run after giving up the first basket and never looked back, we really drained the life out of their cheering squad quickly which consisted of the players significant others, most notably the beautiful Asian girl who i fell in love with (kidding) which is the big white guy's gf (this really pissed me off... lol) We forced turnovers and blocked some shots. We still need a tremendous amount of fine tuning on offense but that'll have to come later. Right now I'm quite impressed with the way these guys responded on Defense, defense definitely won us this game.

Back to the Game

At the 14 minute mark (up 10 points) of the 2nd half the opposing team decided to play man to man defense and they put their smallest player on me. This annoyed me quite a bit and i wanted to punish them by breaking the game wide open and pull away. I scored three quick baskets on the little guy, now were up 16 points which prompted a timeout. After the timeout they had their biggest guy on me (I felt instantly better with the garnered respect). On our next possession I had the ball on top of the key, I knew I could take the big guy off the dribble and so I drove down towards the basket, their center (who is the big white guy with the beautiful Asian GF) attempted to take a charge and stood his ground under the basket, I saw what he was trying to do so I took it to him with great thrust only find out he was more rigid than he looked and i bounced right off him, all of 5'11 185 lbs of me against this citadel of a man. I hurt my knee in the process as it banged against his instantly swelling up. I made both of my freethrows and sat out the rest of the game unable to continue (i think i heard a hint of a chuckle from the GF after the incident..... biatchh.. lol)

With 6 minutes left and a 16 point lead I told my team to kill some time when we had possession. To my dismay my instructions were ignored as they kept trying to extend the lead. After a quick missed shot and a transition basket by the opposing team I was indignant, to express my displeasure I bellowed from the bench " WHAT THE F*CK GUYS I SAID SLOW IT THE F*CK DOWN". Apparently I was already warned twice by the officials for using profanity during the game and now from the bench lol 'and i forgot this' . Albeit the profanity was towards my own teammates they still called a technical foul on me and rewarded two free throws to the opposing team. Okay so maybe I'm too critical with these inexperience guys, I want to lose because the opposing team executed better and not because we screwed up, that's all!

Anyhow I was proud of the way this team responded to our pre-game meeting and the adversity of missing our best player. This win is a testament to our aspirations to improve as a team (plus i wanted to shut down the cheering squad... damn that Asian girl is beautiful haha).

Next Thursday is a bye week due to Yom Kippur. The organizers are Jewish.

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Friday, October 07, 2005