Hoop Dreams

When it comes to sports I'm much happier participating than observing. The only sport I watch with any regularity is professional basketball. Yes, yes, I know, most NBA players are overpaid whining thugs. But I know a lot of underpaid whining thugs, so I can't hate them simply because they are well paid. And I just love the game of basketball, when played well it's a thing of beauty and when it's not played well...actually it can be a lot of fun then too.



Our friend coaches the Pine Hill girl's (7th-8th grade) team and invited Carol and I to the first game of the playoffs last night. Honestly, I wasn't really looking forward to it. "It's going to be really ugly" I thought to myself, imagining players dribbling off their feet and missing point blank layups. And there certainly wasn't going to be any dunking.

There was a lot of the comically awful play I'd been dreading, particularly in the first half as Pine Hill got smacked around by a taller quicker team and went into the break trailing 22 - 8.

Despite the flawed play of the first half, by the time the second half started Carol had a pine tree drawn on her cheek and I had P-I-N-E H-I-L-L 'tattooed' across my knuckles with green grease paint. Several times I found myself jumping to my feet and cheering for 'our' team to get back on D and for the love of God, to stop the other team's best player (the dreaded #30) from waltzing to the hoop for yet another layup.

In the second half the tide began to turn, #30 seemed to get tired and the Pine Hill girls, despite shooting what must have been a single digit percentage, just kept driving to the hoop. And as any coach will tell you that's when good things happen (it's just at this level things happen very slowly :-) A Pine Hill girl got tripped and banged her knee and had to come out in the 4th quarter. That seemed to get the Acorns* fired up.

As the end of the game approached the improbable had happened and like a made for TV movie, Pine Hill had scrapped it's way back and forced overtime. As overtime started, the injured Acorn was limping around the court trying to 'walk it off'. It goes without saying that she did her best Willis Reed imitation and got out on the floor at the start of overtime.

The details of what happened next are a bit fuzzy, because by this time I was all worked up and the subtle details like the actual score were lost in the haze. All I know is that the other team was shooting a 1 and 1 with essentially no time left on the clock and Pine Hill was up by a point or two...She misses the free throw! Pandemonium ensues! PINE HILL WINS! PINE HILL WINS!

Who needs dunks?

ptb

* I have no idea what the Pine Hill mascot it, or if they even have one. I also know acorns come from oak trees, not pine trees and we should call them the 'Pine Cones' or the 'Needles' or something more appropriate. But this is what we came up with and I need *something* to call them.