Three Out of Four Isn't Bad
The Saturday basketball schedule has been pretty light the past couple of weeks. Each child's team has had a game canceled, so there hasn't been anything more than an hour's excursion since before the Super Bowl.
Today made up for it and then some. My daughter's team played a double-header with no intermission in the morning, and my son's team did the same in the afternoon. The end result was three wins, which was about as much as could reasonably have been expected.
Li'l Sweetie (Mrs. Hard Starboard is "Big Sweetie," with the "big" only by comparsion) and her teammates spanked their first opponents 28-10, with "our" point guard racking up what must have been two dozen steals. She could literally pick any and every girl on the other team clean any time she chose. If "we'd" been able to make layups, the margin of victory would easily have been doubled.
The second game was a 23-13 defeat, "our" second of the season. While my son was calling this a "revenge" game (from the 20-4 humiliation inflicted by the same team earlier in the campaign), I looked upon it as a "yard stick" to judge how much progress LS and her mates had made since then. And, all in all, the progress has been considerable.
The contest was nip & tuck, back & forth, [insert competitiveness cliche here]. The "Bad Girls" led by four for about a six-minute stretch of the late third and early fourth quarters. This was the time when "we" could and should have seized control of the game, but "we" couldn't buy a hoop with a platinum VISA card. When the other team finally hit a shot to break the impasse, the wheels came off with a blatant over-and-back infraction and one of our girls shooting at the wrong basket. "We" never scored again and they pulled away.
I attribute that failure to fatigue, though the fact that the other team hasn't lost a game in two years is probably also a significant factor.
Li'l Sweetie played adequately, but still plays passively instead of aggressively. I'd be surprised if she continues playing in junior high, but I certainly won't discourage her if she does, seeing as how I wish I had at least tried out for hoops when I was that age (a bad experience with seventh grade football made me permanently gun-shy about athletics).
#1 son's team, meanwhile, swept its double-header, 33-28 and 38-27.
I was worried after the first game. "We" ran up a 24-6 halftime lead and then proceeded to cough up almost all of it in the second half. It looked like the boys were running out of gas, they didn't have a chance to take a break either, and their second game opponents were the club that gave them their closest contest of their season. But they sucked it up and played a better, more complete game overall than in Game #1.
My son doesn't stuff his hands in his pockets since we got him basketball shorts that don't have pockets. But he still has difficulty keeping his head in the game, and plays what used to be described as "matador" defense. Plus he was having a devil of a time keeping his footing for some reason, which mystifies me because his basketball shoes are almost brand new.
One area where the boy is more aggressive than Attila and all his Huns is shooting. This is a function of him almost never getting the ball, which is not unusual at upper primary level and when you're as puny as he is.
I'm sorry, that sounds like a shot, doesn't it? Well, it isn't meant to be - he is puny. Maybe he'll end up 6'9" someday, but right now he's just lilleputian.
This wouldn't matter in and of itself if he could handle the ball. Unfortunately he's as good at that as he is on focusing on the game and playing defense, and for the same basic reason: none of those things are "fun" to him. But shooting the ball is.
In other words, he's a two guard in a point guard's body. And he'll never make anybody forget Allen Iverson.
Except perhaps in his shot selection. Today at the end of the first half of Game #2, he drained a three-pointer at the buzzer that had the whole gym in pandemonium. It was such a highlight reel heave that it inspired me to coin the phrase "Dan-town," a modification of "downtown" using his given name. Unfortunately he drew the wrong conclusion from that success and attempted another one in the second half that, shall we say, didn't come quite as close to the mark. And he knew it was a bad shot, judging from the fact that he fell to the floor and feigned beating his head repeatedly against the hardwood.
The shame, if you can call it that, is that he has the "misfortune" of playing on an elite team, so he is at the bottom end of the foodchain as far as touches are concerned. If his coaches designed some plays for him to come off of screens where he could just shoot without having to create his own shot (think a pint-sized Reggie Miller), he could be a stud. But they've got games to win and better players to use, and I can hardly blame them for going with what most consistently works.
I'm afraid the wife and I can't count on living off of any pro contracts in our golden years. But at least our children are having fun, and are winning.
Good thing Social Security is going to be privatized, huh?
Today made up for it and then some. My daughter's team played a double-header with no intermission in the morning, and my son's team did the same in the afternoon. The end result was three wins, which was about as much as could reasonably have been expected.
Li'l Sweetie (Mrs. Hard Starboard is "Big Sweetie," with the "big" only by comparsion) and her teammates spanked their first opponents 28-10, with "our" point guard racking up what must have been two dozen steals. She could literally pick any and every girl on the other team clean any time she chose. If "we'd" been able to make layups, the margin of victory would easily have been doubled.
The second game was a 23-13 defeat, "our" second of the season. While my son was calling this a "revenge" game (from the 20-4 humiliation inflicted by the same team earlier in the campaign), I looked upon it as a "yard stick" to judge how much progress LS and her mates had made since then. And, all in all, the progress has been considerable.
The contest was nip & tuck, back & forth, [insert competitiveness cliche here]. The "Bad Girls" led by four for about a six-minute stretch of the late third and early fourth quarters. This was the time when "we" could and should have seized control of the game, but "we" couldn't buy a hoop with a platinum VISA card. When the other team finally hit a shot to break the impasse, the wheels came off with a blatant over-and-back infraction and one of our girls shooting at the wrong basket. "We" never scored again and they pulled away.
I attribute that failure to fatigue, though the fact that the other team hasn't lost a game in two years is probably also a significant factor.
Li'l Sweetie played adequately, but still plays passively instead of aggressively. I'd be surprised if she continues playing in junior high, but I certainly won't discourage her if she does, seeing as how I wish I had at least tried out for hoops when I was that age (a bad experience with seventh grade football made me permanently gun-shy about athletics).
#1 son's team, meanwhile, swept its double-header, 33-28 and 38-27.
I was worried after the first game. "We" ran up a 24-6 halftime lead and then proceeded to cough up almost all of it in the second half. It looked like the boys were running out of gas, they didn't have a chance to take a break either, and their second game opponents were the club that gave them their closest contest of their season. But they sucked it up and played a better, more complete game overall than in Game #1.
My son doesn't stuff his hands in his pockets since we got him basketball shorts that don't have pockets. But he still has difficulty keeping his head in the game, and plays what used to be described as "matador" defense. Plus he was having a devil of a time keeping his footing for some reason, which mystifies me because his basketball shoes are almost brand new.
One area where the boy is more aggressive than Attila and all his Huns is shooting. This is a function of him almost never getting the ball, which is not unusual at upper primary level and when you're as puny as he is.
I'm sorry, that sounds like a shot, doesn't it? Well, it isn't meant to be - he is puny. Maybe he'll end up 6'9" someday, but right now he's just lilleputian.
This wouldn't matter in and of itself if he could handle the ball. Unfortunately he's as good at that as he is on focusing on the game and playing defense, and for the same basic reason: none of those things are "fun" to him. But shooting the ball is.
In other words, he's a two guard in a point guard's body. And he'll never make anybody forget Allen Iverson.
Except perhaps in his shot selection. Today at the end of the first half of Game #2, he drained a three-pointer at the buzzer that had the whole gym in pandemonium. It was such a highlight reel heave that it inspired me to coin the phrase "Dan-town," a modification of "downtown" using his given name. Unfortunately he drew the wrong conclusion from that success and attempted another one in the second half that, shall we say, didn't come quite as close to the mark. And he knew it was a bad shot, judging from the fact that he fell to the floor and feigned beating his head repeatedly against the hardwood.
The shame, if you can call it that, is that he has the "misfortune" of playing on an elite team, so he is at the bottom end of the foodchain as far as touches are concerned. If his coaches designed some plays for him to come off of screens where he could just shoot without having to create his own shot (think a pint-sized Reggie Miller), he could be a stud. But they've got games to win and better players to use, and I can hardly blame them for going with what most consistently works.
I'm afraid the wife and I can't count on living off of any pro contracts in our golden years. But at least our children are having fun, and are winning.
Good thing Social Security is going to be privatized, huh?
posted by JASmius at 11:47 PM
<<< Home