Joe's Basketball blog

Well, finally a win for Boone County Lumber. A pretty poor game for me, though. 0-2, both from three-point range, 1 assist, 2 turnovers (one to Skander, one to Dustin), 1 assist (to Bobby), and two rebounds.

Dustin won the tip, tipped it to me, and I threw over the top to a wide-open Skander - who blew the lay-up. I figured it was going to be a long night. I was guarding 3 for them, and he kept taking me off the dribble. It got really frustrating when he took me off the dribble at the 3-point line, I called for help, and sure enough, he went all the way to the basket for a lay-up.

The other guys are talking about how much better we are when we're in man-to-man. The other guys are wrong. Don't get me wrong; I hate the zone as much as anyone, but we are an awful defensive team, and outside of Dustin (for the group we had last night), a bad rebounding team. (Dustin may be the best rebounder in the league. His only problem is that he's also the closest thing we have to a shot-blocker, and, of course, shot-blocking generally costs you rebounding position.) We played a bad team, only beat them because in the second half, all of our outside shooters caught fire at the same time. Our defense was BAD. BAD, BAD, BAD.

There's a reason we go zone, and have only been successful when we've played a zone in the past. That reason is that we are TERRIBLE at team defense in man-to-man when a player - ANY PLAYER - gets beat. And we have several people who can't guard a player man-to-man without getting beat. Next week, we'll go up against a different team - a team that has mobile players who can beat their man off the dribble or off the cut. And if we go man-to-man against them, we'll give up lay-up after lay-up.

Of course, 3 and 22 for us can't play zone. And 22 can't play man, either, and I'm not all that hot on 3's man defense - he's playing for steals, and to his credit, he gets a good number of them on cross-court passes. But he leaves his man - THE POST THREAT - to do it.

Skander played all 40 minutes - and then proceeded to learn the wrong lesson from it. The lesson he learned was that he had to play all the minutes to be effective. Of course, the reason he played all 40 minutes was because 1) we didn't have a coach on the bench, and 2) the person who WOULD HAVE gone in for him felt he was playing poorly, and kept his seat on the bench because he saw signs of Skander getting on track.

Truth be told, I normally don't mind making sacrifices. It's a big part of basketball. But I start to mind when a person feels that they're justified in saying they deserve to play every minute.

3 played mostly in control tonight, although he took a couple of really bad shots - even after we talked about it. One of them - which was better than most - was unnecessary, but after it went in, he called back, "Don't worry about me." If I had been having ANY sort of decent game at that point, I'd have subbed for him. The guy is apparently a player who thinks that any shot that goes in is a good shot. That explains, somewhat, when we were trying to kill the clock, he drove aggressively into the heart of the defense; after all, if he hits his free throws, then that's good - despite the fact that no time is coming off the clock.

Skander caught fire late and Steve caught fire late, and both hit some big shots. But the real victory was earned on the backs of Dustin and Bobby. Bobby turned in an INCREDIBLE game, in which he only dropped one pass - from number 3 - and it was a short pass with way too much pepper on it. (In other words, pretty much ANYONE would have dropped that one.)

I'm still very frustrated that instead of moving the ball through the point on the outside, we skip pass over the point. Against this team, we can do that. We'll get killed if we continue to do that, though.

What I saw out there last night was a great game by Dustin, a good game by Bobby, exactly what I expect from Steve, and a game where Skander started out poorly, but developed into the game and ended up with a pretty good game. But I saw an AWFUL defense, and I saw fool's gold out there in the game of 3, and while 22 was effective for the most part, it was because he wasn't looking to be a scorer but a distributor to a greater extent. If he stays that way, he'll be okay - outside of the mental lapse at the end of the game with a needless elbow of a defender on a post which got called and nearly triggered a fight. (Like I said in a previous entry - last year, he did more to make us absolutely hated than all the rest of the players of the team combined.)

I'm not sure if the chemistry I saw last night was the beginning of a trusting team where everyone is allowed to contribute, or a bunch of guys who all wanted to talk but fell into a good game where a few shots started dropping. Personally, I see the chemistry of the team as being explosive - in a negative way.

But I've got one big hope in the team: DUSTIN. This guy is an absolutely awesome player and teammate. He plays smart, he plays unselfish (he had the best pass of the night - a drop in to Bobby), an incredible rebounder, a good shooter, good at the free throw line, and an alert defender. A one-point loss to Ott Trucking, and a victory against Foundations while we've had Dustin. Now the schedule gets tough. Maybe Big Mike will be back soon, and we can give Dustin some help.

I'm not sure where Skander is going. At times, it seems like he's got the same attitude toward the game as 3, and simply is just a smarter player. And he respects how smart Dustin is, as he should, but doesn't realize that it's Dustin's attitude that's what makes him smart. And if Skander's attitude is going in the same direction as 3, then there's really not much point of me sticking with this team. I want to play with the Lees and the Dustins and the gold-shirt Scotts. A Skander with the right attitude is the most devastating Skander there is; whether it's these games with Mandell and the rest of his crew, or his trip to Savannah, or what, I don't know, but Skander's attitude is becoming a problem. I keep wanting to say, "Hey, why don't we go play at the Tribune on Monday," but truth of the matter is that I'm afraid to take Skander along. In times past, I didn't worry about it; I knew Skander's attitude was one of competitiveness, not arrogance. I'm not so sure that that's the case any more.

A win's a win, though, and I'll take it.