My New League Makes Me Happy :)

I'm going to break with my habit of posting almost exclusively on NBA topics today. See, there's another League that has taken my interest lately. No, I'm not talking about Big West Basketball. That goes without saying. No, I'm talking about the Mar Vista Rec Center Winter League, Majors (10/11/12 years old) division. I will be taking the MVRC Jazz to the mountain top from my perch along the sideline. I'll try to list the times here so all of my many (2) readers can come and support the kids and see some good, clean, fundamentally sound basketball. After each game, I'll try and give a recap and include any significant stats, game trends or interesting/funny moments during the game.

We had our draft on Tuesday. We based the draft on rankings we determined by putting the kids through basketball drills a week earlier and rating each basketball skill on a 1 to 5 scale, then averaging those scores for a final number. Some of the kids weren't able to make it to the evaluation day, so the coaches who knew them gave us all rankings based on what they knew about their athletic abilities and basketball skills. Now, the fact that all of the other coaches in the league have sons playing created some interesting dialogue. Here's one of my favorites:

Coach 1: How would you Rank your son?

Coach 2: Umm... I would say he's about a ... uhh... four or so.

Coach 3: No! There's no way your Kid's a four. I'd Say a two. 2.5 at BEST.

Coach 2: ...Um ... Oh.


That's great! You're basically telling the guy that his kid sucks. Yes, I'd say a good time was had by all. I ended up with what looks like a pretty good team. Now, I can't wait to get all the kids in the gym and start practicing. As I was drafting, I kept in mind the different ways that we could use the players' skill sets to our team's advantage. Originally, I thought that we might do a 40 minute full court press a la Rick Pitino, but that was shut down quickly when I found out that I don't control substitution patterns. I'm not trying to tire out all of my kids. I'm going to love this! I know that it's not much, but for someone who loves basketball as much as I do, this is going to be GREAT!!! I'll keep you all (both) updated.

In other news, one of my friends from college, Ross Schraeder, was caught up in a great YouTube Moment in Spain recently. Yeah, that's him with the double-low-fist celebration. Good Job on the Buzzer-Beater, Ross. Keep up the good work! It was kind of an illegal pick, but with .9 seconds left, it's not called "illegal", it's just "Savvy".