The Competion

     Yesterday Buster, who I mentioned in a previous post, picked me up and took me to Charles Darwin University to hoop because he heard people were playing out there. When we got there, there were only Filipinos playing. So we hooped with them for about an hour and a half. Two Americans and eight guys from the Philippines. Buster and I were on the same team, and we kept winning. That dude can hoop. When I first got here, the finals of last season were just concluding and I got to see him play in two games. The first game, he was broke and struggled against constant double teams from a better team. He had a poor shooting game and scored only six points. Then next game, he poured in a career-high 43 points and hit nine shots from behind the arc against the number one seeded team, but lost by three in the championship. Needless to say, even though he will eventually be my competition, he has been a good guy to workout with.

     Eventually Buster had to go. But I wanted to stay and keep playing, and I'm glad I did. Ten more guys showed up, and they were all players from my league. There were two guys from five different teams that came out and played (usually people play at the University all day long and people just come and show up whenever they can -- It's a constant open gym, and winner stays every game). So it was a good chance for me to get to know the competition. I matched up with a tough point guard from Australia who was fairly crafty. I just wanted to play, but he just wanted to talk to me about American shoes. One of Buster's teammates showed up too, a lights out, south paw shooter who plays the two-guard. He was checking me for a few plays, as was this 6'5 guard who I later found out led the league in scoring at nearly 30 points per game. He was tough, a lengthy fellow who loved to post up smaller guards and take big guys off the dribble. He had a plethora of skills, and was hitting multiple fade-aways and threes off the dribble. I was actually very happy to see this. It reassured me that I will be playing against competition that will make me better. As for Jermaine, he will be battling against length. There was one undersized big who was built like San Antonio Spurs under-appreciated power forward DeJuan Blair, but other than that, most of the bigs were 6'9 or 6'1o, skinny, and long. So J-Latt is going to have to put his strength to use down low. As for me, I will probably be the smallest guy on the court each game in this league, like usual. But while in most leagues I would be overlooked because of my size, out here they don't care. Instead, they put a target on my back because I'm an American. Everyone wants to take it to the "imports." But I played very well and was hitting my shot. Overall, I probably won ten games and lost two on the day. It just felt good to play. If anything, it got me hype for the season to start up. It's about a month away.