Misadventures in Saturday Balling 09/05/09

The Fob Academy was in full effect this past Saturday, but I didn't play with them. Got to the courts about 11 AM and I saw a group of them on one court. They had their cones set up for drills, too. I don't know why. They placed one at the top of the three-point line and one more at each end of the free throw line. One dude would practice curling to the cones at each end of the free throw line and his buddy would pass him the ball. Then the first dude would take a jump shot. A third guy stood around offering his moral support to both of his friends. It was all very heartwarming to see.

The problem was that I have no idea what was the point of having those three cones set up. It was basically one guy doing the same thing over and over again at the same two spots. It's not like he was posting up on a stationary chair like Chairman Yi. None of the cones were necessary at all, unless he had some sort of learning disability which prevented him from remember where he was supposed to curl and where he was supposed to shoot. If that's the case, then I suppose I accept responsibility for being a scornful jackass. But I highly doubt it.

There were a lot of players from the Fob Academy that day. They just claimed one court and had full court games among themselves. The guys I usually played against weren't there, either. Or if they were, I couldn't tell 'cause all Asians look pretty much the same to me.

I ended up just shooting around for a while. My buddy Ma (aka OptionZero) was there, but he was in a halfcourt three-on-three game. Surprisingly, Tiffany showed up. (I can't think of a good nickname for her.) Shot around a bit. Then we played horse. I'll keep it real. I lost to a girl. After that, I knew it was gonna be a lousy day for basketball.

Fortunately, the first game I played, I had this one white dude on my team who was just a dominant player. He was probably around 6'3 or 6'4. Pretty athletic and had relevant basketball skills. We just kept feeding him the ball. He could score in a variety of ways because no one else on the court was close to his size and strength. He posted up, he slashed to the hoop, he drilled jumpers, he rebounded, he blocked and changed shots on defense... Dude was just a complete player. We pretty much killed the other team. I missed two fast break layups that I usually make. That's what happens when you lose to girls at horse before you play with the big boys. Your game just goes downhill. I don't think your biorhythm can recover after something like that.

The second game we played, everyone decided to mix up the teams. I wasn't on the tall dude's team. We got murdered. I don't even remember the score, but it wasn't close. I had a pretty embrassing turnover that game, too. The tall dude had a shorter friend who was also really good, really quick and just good basketball skills. Anyway, this guy was guarding me while I brought the ball up the court. Now usually, players usually play kind of off in this situation. It was just one-on-one, and we had just walked across the half court line. I decided to test the guy, so I just started dribbling in one spot, daring him to move in closer. Dude called my bluff, only his reflexes were way quicker than mine. One swipe, two swipes, and suddenly he slapped the ball right out of my possession. By the time I realized what happened and turned around, he was already dropping in a layup. It was that bad. I knew I should have just gone home after Tif beat me at horse.

Yeah, it was just one of those days. I definitely didn't get enough rest Friday night. It was the Xbox. That Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is straight crack.

I think I will go play some of that now... I know I have a chance at winning in that game.

An Archive of Previous Misadventures in Saturday Balling

I'm posting up all the past installments of my "Saturday Balling" entries. Why? I don't know. For posterity's sake, I suppose. Went through the trouble of writing them so I might as well keep them. No one's gonna look at this anyway, so whatever. Maybe it'll all end up being something funny to laugh at in fifteen or twenty years.

08/29/09

This past Saturday was rather eventful, as some of you may already
have known. Not too many ETCers showed up. It was just Garland
"Chris Paul" Woo, Jeff "McInnis" Yim, and me. (Two of my old high
school pals rounded out the team.) Yes... The Fob Academy was in
full force once again.

I got to the courts first. Surprisingly, there was nobody there.
Literally. For a while, I was the only dude there, so I was just
shooting around until people started arriving. The Fob Academy
arrived after like half an hour or something, as did Garland and one
of my other friends. We started off with some three-on-three. That
game was pretty forgettable, but I'm pretty sure the good guys
triumphed, 'cause evil never prevails. One of the fobs was okay (he
could shoot) but the other two were just kind of tall and slender.
Not too many actual skills that concerned me.

Once the rest of the Academy and my other friend arrived, it was on.
There were two other guys there, so the Academy got one of them and we
took the other. Full court, five-on-five. (Jeff showed up a few
minutes into our game, if memory serves.) It started off as a pretty
ugly game. Lazy fobs resorted to a 2-3 zone 'cause none of them could
man-up. Lousy wusses. We were missing our outside shots for a while,
and one of my friends wasn't boxing out so we kept getting beat on the
rebounds on offense and defense. The Fob Academy probably had six or
eight offensive rebounds and, like, two second-chance points. (Their
field goal percentage was pretty low, I'd say. One of the guys kept
grabbing boards but he had the filthiest shooting form I've seen in my
life, and even though he tried, he could never get it in.)

As you know, Garland got injured during the game. What many of you
may not know, however, is how he was injured. This is what happened:

Hurm. Well, I was gonna make up a story to make him seem superheroic
and everything, but after at least fifteen minutes of trying, I've
come to realize that I'm just not that creative, so I'll stick to the
truth. The basic story is that he twisted his left knee something
fierce after he threw down a vicious tomahawk jam on the fobs. The
Asian man's body just isn't built to withstand such thunderous
athletic activity at such intense speeds, so his knee buckled.

At the time, we didn't know how serious his injury was. We just
stopped playing, carried him off the court, and hoped he'd get
better. Jeff came into the game and took his place. He joined in at
the right time, too, 'cause we must have been down like 8-2. He was
definitely the difference-maker in the game.

Them fobs were dirty, too. For example, we made a shot from beyond
the arc, so we thought it was worth two. However, they started saying
that every shot was only worth one point - AFTER they had counted two
of their own three-point shots as two points! So even though they had
nine or ten points at the time, they really should have had two fewer
points. This was seriously the kind of argument that starts fights at
streetball courts. We decided not to start a fight, so we just
acquiesced, humoring their deceitfulness.

And course, being the Fob Academy, they called tons of stupid fouls.
Every week I go, I see these guys, and every week they call about
thirty extra fouls. I hate that... For example, one of them would
just try to drive in from the top of the key, and he expects a foul,
so he calls it immediately. It's friggin' stupid. I don't know why I
even play them. (Other than the fact that there is often no one else
to play.) They argued and whined every single possession. They had
this one possession where they called four fouls. Shoot, I'm
surprised they didn't start saying that our players should have fouled
out.

I managed to exact some measure of vengeance, though, when I had the
ball and drove to the sideline. One of the fobs' legs barely brushed
me, and I immediately called a foul. Then I picked up the ball and
looked 'em all in the eye. That was pretty satisfying. I guess after
that, they either felt ashamed or scared, and they didn't call too
many fouls.

So, like I said, with Jeff in the game, we had new life. We had a
great comeback. Jeff was sinking jumpers, slashing to the hoop, and
finding ways for his teammates to score. Eventually, it became a one-
point game that just started going back and forth. It was around this
point when one of the fobs, this dude in a blue shirt, started getting
all loud and cocky and whatnot. I guess he thought he was rallying
his teammates or something, by shouting things like, "They can't do
this!" and "We can make it!" but I thought he just seemed like a
tool. None of his teammates seemed to respond to him verbally,
either, he looked silly. He'd make a shot and then pound his chest
and scream... Now, if he were Kevin Garnett, I'd be intimidated, but
he was just some skinny Asian guy at Lowell. Not really the same.

That blue shirt fob really had it in for me, though. He kept looking
at me and trying to take me off the dribble and stuff. We started
playing a little rough as the game progressed. To his credit, he
didn't call a foul every time I made contact with him. (It was more
like every other time.) We got tangled once or twice fighting for
some loose balls and he tried to trip me. I ain't gonna lie to you
all; I brought out some of my dirty tricks on him. I kinda pushed him
in the back a few times when we were fighting for rebounds and
"accidentally" elbowed him a few times. Pushing him in the back was
kind of dangerous because he was jumping and could have crashed into
the metal support pole for the hoop. I guess didn't really mind,
though.

The best part was that we finally managed to win the game. We were
playing "Win by Two" and it was hard-fought. Jeff made the assist on
the game-winning basket, too. He basically saved our honor and
pride. The look of disappointment and frustration on the fobs' faces
was great. I mean, a couple of the fobs seemed like nice people; one
of them actually seemed to show genuine concern when Garland went down
and helped me carry him off the court. But that blue shirt guy
irritated me. Yeah, I definitely didn't shake his hand and say, "Good
game" after we won. That's something I learned how to do from LeBron
James, baby!! Why would I want to shake hands with someone who wanted
to beat me up? IT DON'T MAKE NO SENSE

I think the blue shirt fob's shirt was some sort of Christian-based t-
shirt, too. It had some sort of Jesus Fish design on it and, I think,
the name of a church or something. Too bad. If I weren't a Christian
myself, I probably would have asked him, "Where is Jesus now?!" and
laughed at him or something.

In the future, I hope more of us would play ball on Saturday
mornings. Either we could have enough people to play amongst
ourselves, or we can simply continue to assert our dominance over the
Fob Academy. I think so far, I'm 5-0 lifetime against the Fob
Academy. They haven't defeated me yet, and I plan to continue the
streak.

WHO WILL RIDE WITH ME?!

08/22/09

Last Saturday was interesting. I encountered the same group of "pesky
fobs" that we played a couple weeks ago when the pastor played. When
I got to Lowell, it looked like they were running the Fob Academy
there... They had cones set up on one of the courts and they were
doing drills and stuff.

My buddy Chris (not the Birdman) was visiting from San Jose, and we
shot around while waiting to see if any ETCers would show up. While
we were warming up, the Fob Academy started doing footwork drills with
the cones and increased the intensity. Eventually they started
playing five-on-five. I don't know if they were trying to impress us,
but the Elbow Fob was there so I didn't respect their game. Also,
they had to stop every three seconds because someone would either call
a foul, a double dribble, or a moving screen.

After a while, my old friend Ken showed up. Three of the Fob Academy
members challenged Ken, Chris, and me to some three-on-three. While
we played, Justin "Timberlake" Travis Earnest Ho (aka TYRONE) and
Danny "Manning" Ng showed up. One of those fobs was pretty good. He
could make decent jumpshots and his handles were okay. The other two
fobs were just tall and had blond hair. It was close for a while. I
think we were actually down by six points but Chris started heating up
and the fobs had no answer. They had no interior d and we just kept
driving it to the hole. At one point during our run, one of the tall
fobs thought he could kill our momentum and tried to fire a long range
bomb, but I timed my jump correctly and swatted him back into his
mother's womb. That was pretty much the storyline of the first game I
won that day.

The next game we played was with the same three fobs. This time
Justin and Danny were on my team. Justin had no fear of getting his
ankles broken; the dude played in his sandals. Now, if you're a
regular baller, you know that there's a certain dress code for when
you go to the courts and play. I don't know what's more ridiculous,
showing up to a basketball court with intention of playing while
wearing jeans, or showing up wearing Birkenstocks. The decent fob
player took one look at Justin Travis and scoffed openly. I couldn't
understand what he said to his comrades in Chinese, but I bet it was
the fob equivalent of "This guy doesn't even have shoes. It's gonna
be a slaughter, so we might as well go easy on them."

So of course we still whipped their sorry derrieres. At one point,
the Fob Academy was like, "Okay, this Birkenstocks guy can score, we
better guard him." But by then it was all too late. I don't even
remember what the storyline of that game was. For those fobs, getting
beaten by a team with a guy wearing Birkenstocks was probably the most
humiliating and most degrading event of their entire lives. But for
us, it was just another Saturday.

Also, I must point out that Jean-Marc sent me an awesome text message:
"Better is one day in His courts than a thousand elsewhere." Psalm
84:10, baby! (Okay, so I had to Google the reference because I'm not
as spiritual as some of you others...) Let this be a call for any and
all of you who read these entries to also drag yourselves out to the
courts so we can worship God through our aggressive, but loving,
domination of lesser basketball players.

Taking this piece of encouragement to heart, I went back to the Lowell
courts later that afternoon. (Some of my old college buddies came
down to SF to visit me and play ball because our plans the previous
week were spoiled when I selflessly decided to give three bridesmaids
in distress a ride to Oakland.) So I almost literally spent one day
in His basketball courts.

My afternoon games were more intense five-on-five fullcourt games...
What's annoying is that we lost all three games we played, and to the
same basic group of people. (The Fob Academy had left by then.) The
first game we lost was by like one or two points, but it was my fault;
I made a lazy pass that led to an easy layup for the other team, and
that was the winning play for them.

The other two games we lost were crap, though. Those games were
basically two-man shows where two of my teammates just dominated the
ball and kept driving and trying to force up tough shots while the
other three of us kind of just stood around the perimeter. (The three
of us who didn't touch the ball much were angry at our other two
friends, but somehow we found it within ourselves to forgive them.)

In the second game we lost, there was this really annoying chubby
white guy on the other team. I think his name was Sherman. The dude
had absolutely zero basketball skills. His entire game consisted of
standing around and screaming, at the top of his lungs, "HE GOTS THAT,
BABY, HE GOTS THAT!" over and over. That's seriously all he did. He
didn't contribute to the game in any other way. He was just a body,
yelling that inane phrase on every single possession. That was his
way of playing defense. It's been a long time since I've encountered
a person that irritating, the type of person I wish I could punch in
the face without breaking my own hand. What angers me is that the
dude sucked and didn't contribute to his team's play, but I still
lost. Please pray that I will never see this guy again because if I
do, I will probably end up sinning when I end his life with my bare
hands.

On the other hand, I went the entire day without dropping a single f-
bomb, so at least there's that.

08/15/09

I don't know exactly what action took place last Saturday, as I wasn't
there. Some of you who were there told me that there was a decent
turnout, though, and some of the Focus kids showed up to play with and
learn from the veteran ETCers. From what I understand, Gilbert
"Arenas" Kwan aka AGENT ZERO was beasting on them all. Not sure if he
made anyone cry or quit the church, though. But I am glad he only
turned it on when I wasn't there to get crushed.

(For the record, I don't care how young a kid is; I will never
intentionally let him win. You should see me when I am playing ball
with fourth and fifth graders. I might let them make a couple of easy
shots to keep them encouraged, but I don't let them beat me. Gotta
toughen them up.)

It is nice that people are coming out on Saturdays to play the game.
It pleases me to hear that people are having good fellowship while
going all-out to destroy and humiliate every opponent that steps on
the court. That's basketball, baby. That's life. That's how the
world should be.

So the reason I wasn't able to play last Saturday was 'cause I went to
a wedding up in Sacramento. I was gonna play basketball with some of
my old college buddies that night, after the wedding, or maybe even on
Sunday afternoon, but something unexpected happened. I already told
some of you what happened, but I still think it is an amusing story.

It turned out that three out of the five bridesmaids needed a ride
back to Oakland. My buddy, the groom, made a general announcement
about it and said they were all single. It was basically every man's
dream scenario. Somehow, I don't know how, but somehow, I was the
only person at the wedding who was going back to the Bay Area.

(Sidenote: Our very own Chris "The Birdman" Wong also happened to be
at the same wedding, but for some reason he needed to stay in
Sacramento that night. When I asked him why, he said something about
having to sleep in his own comfortable bed. Typical.)

Anyway, despite my plans to play ball that night or the next day, I
ended up volunteering to give the three bridesmaids a ride back to the
Bay. But this was a game I had no idea how to play, if you get what
I'm saying. I mean, I know how to play basketball. I know I ain't
the greatest baller or anything, but at least I know how to play
enough to not utterly embarrass myself. I think I was just in over my
head.

Driving a hundred miles with three single bridesmaids (that I just
met) was a high pressure situation. I kept trying to think of
interesting things to say that could be interpreted as charmingly
disarming. Nothing. It seemed like our conversation throughout the
car ride was pleasant but completely platonic. No flirting, no
coquettishness, no nothing.

I even started driving at the speed limit, reasoning that driving
slower would allow us to share more time together, and that perhaps
I'd be able to think of something witty or at least leave a memorable
impression. Nope. Nothing happened. Sure, they thanked me and
everything, but I doubt they will remember my name in a week's time.

Maybe I should have tried harder to catch the garter during the
wedding reception. I could have grabbed it, you know. It seriously
went right to me, but I consciously decided not to stick up my hand
and I just let it fall on the floor. I wonder if that would have
helped me. That is something I will never know, and a regret I will
have to live with for the rest of my existence in this dark world.

I guess I am not clutch in real life.

08/08/09

I would like to make playing basketball on Saturday mornings a regular
thing, if possible. Lowell basketball courts, 11AM. I won't be able
to play this weekend, but I delegated and made Garland "Chris Paul"
Woo this week's honorary team captain. Hopefully any and all of you
who want to play ball will be encouraged to play this Saturday. If
not, then I will definitely be there next week the fifteenth. (Unless
we get raptured before that day comes, or something.)

This past Saturday was some good times, if I say so myself. Had a
decent turnout, probably around a dozen of us were there. Pastor
Alton showed up and I got to be on his team, so obviously we destroyed
the other guys we played. It was definitely one of those rare sports
moments when I felt comfortable believing that God was on my side, if
you know what I mean. I was also more motivated than usual to display
good sportsmanship and not cuss inadvertently.

The first game, we played amongst ourselves 'cause we had enough
people. My team won and then some pesky fobs had next, and they tried
to step up to us. Man, those guys were annoying. There were four of
them, so Garland was on their team. (I guess he is too old to stay up
past 11:15PM but not so old that he can't run around the basketball
court like Speedy Claxton in his prime.) They played like little
pansies (Garland excepted, of course), calling numerous fouls that
would have made even Tim Donaghy ashamed. Every little amount of
physical contact resulted in a foul for those guys. One of them even
tried to tell me I was setting a moving screen when I was simply
attempting to walk into position to set a legal pick one foot away
from the defender. And some other fella called a double dribble on
the Pastor! That's blasphemous. I don't know if I've ever seen
anyone call a double dribble in street ball.

Some of those guys could shoot, I suppose, but they were no match for
us once we decided to get tough. Pastor Alton exhorted us to "take it
inside" and just pound them like nails down low. Those lousy fobs
were soft like cotton candy and we swallowed them up in the paint.
MELT IN YOUR MOUTH, BABY

I also saw Gilbert "Arenas" Kwan and Chris "The Birdman" Wong after
they played tennis. I saw them playing basketball on one of the other
courts and I just didn't want none of that.

After most everyone left, I stayed and played another game with some
strangers. We played against that team of pesky fobs again. We
whooped them again, of course. It was bad. We had such a big lead
that one of the guys on my team was trying to do White Chocolate
behind-the-back passes on fastbreaks and stuff. I also had a really
satisfying block on one of those fobs. I think he wanted to call a
foul on it, but he was too busy trying not to cry from embarrassment.