hOOPs

From the website archives...

Fall ushers in the end of baseball. Football is well underway. Hockey is getting tuned up. And so, sadly, is basketball.

Yeah, I know: lots of folks dig basketball. I ain't one of 'em.

In my younger days, I was so-so overall in sports: pretty good in kickball, dodgeball, football and track (I had good speed and good hands in those days, which was also sometimes helpful on dates). I was good in two-man volleyball, okay in softball, floor hockey and team handball (a sporting mix of football, soccer and hand-to-hand combat). I was substandard in baseball, and miserably abysmal in basketball.

Basketball...ack phooey. I hate the sport. My only favorite thing about basketball season is the end of it. But I was subjected to it anyway, in junior and high school gym class. I sucked at it. My classmates knew I sucked at it, and knew I knew I sucked at it. So when the class got to the time of year we started playing basketball, it was time for Skunky to do what Skunky did best: foul. On those rare occasions my shot actually went into and through the basket, teammates, opponents, coaches and whatever spectators there were, all stopped and stared, as if they'd seen a reconstitution of one of the x number of Wonders of the World or something.

Fact was, even at 6' 2", the local elementary school teams wouldn't have taken me if there'd been a waiver program for the junior/high schools to deal me on.

Naturally, I took this marked lack of talent into college, with absolutely no intention of demonstrating it any further. However, friends convinced me to join an intramural basketball league and be on their team, even though one of them knew my reputation from high school, having been a classmate. It didn't hurt that at the time, I was dating an absolute angel who was also a basketball fan of the first order.

The things we do for what we took for love in those days, but I digress.

I joined a team with varied skills at the game: two who'd played high school competitive basketball; one who was a balanced athlete in numerous sports; another who was there for the fun and little else; and me, the anti-Chamberlain (Michael Jordan was not yet a household word in the mid-late 70s). All together, we were a team of record-breaking caliber, and in our first match-up, we proved it. We met a team of five guys who'd played together on their high school varsity team. It was their polish versus our potpourri. And we set a record I somehow think will forever stand: we lost, 75-8.

That's not a typo.

The coordinator of the intramural program -- the same guy who'd encouraged me to join, insisting it was "all in fun and all talent levels were welcome" -- expressed his wish to us that night that our team disband. In his words (less a couple colorful metaphors), "you guys are just gawdawful".

That got our collective hackles up, after his original greasy assurances, and we decided to see the season through. All 8 games of it. The coordinator was nonplussed, while our opponents admired and applauded our fortitude, appreciating our being the equivalent of a free spot on a bingo card.

I will say that we actually did improve with each game -- in our second 'game', we did score into the double digits, and were only flogged by 40 some-odd points -- and were actually in a couple of the latter games up to the end of the first minute of play. We even won a game, so as to finish 1-7, and holding the coveted 'bottom' of the league (no stress in having to look over ones' shoulder for anyone trying to catch us, which was how we looked at it). We won that game using all the practiced skills and lessons we'd learned throughout the season. And in some small part because our opponent -- at that point a 2-5 team themselves -- failed to show up, allowing us to win via forfeit.

They obviously didn't realize it was us they were supposed to play.

Bottom line for me: it was a season to remember to forget. Unlike the angel I was dating in those days, Terry. She didn't care that I missed lay ups or fouled with a statistical regularity that was truly *yawn*; she believed, at least back then, that I had other attributes, but I digress again.

Just for the record, in our 7 games, I scored 13 points, never made a lay-up, had 3 or 4 rebounds (purely by accident) and committed 28 fouls, without fouling out of a single game. I would have made an almost credible Denver Nugget, back when they really sucked.

Then again, even when they sucked, the Denver Nuggets were never that bad.

So don't look for me to get excited about basketball season. Give me football, or bowling, TV remote aerobics, or my very fond memories of chasing Terry around, which was a helluva lot more fun than drooling a stupid basketball. Even if I found myself to be as out of my class with Terry, as I was on the basketball diamond, trying to pass to the power tackle.

Whatever.