Where Amazing Happens

The NBA’s slogan is “Where Amazing Happens”. Night after night, in the past few weeks, we’ve seen Kobe swishing 3′s. Lebron’s thunderous dunks, Derrick Rose slicing through the defence and Dwight Howard bringing down shotclocks. 

In Alexandria, Sydney Australia  - amazing happened. The digital dream team battled the Cauli’s down to the wire. We jumped out to a quick lead and were soon leading by 20 -11. Our shooting was insane. Eric was knocking down 3′s from everywhere using his patented jumpshot where he launches himself forward and springs up like a bunny with both feet up. Damien was hitting jumpshots from the baseline.

The Cauli’s were a bigger team and as the game progressed, they started to dominate the boards. Slowly, they kept snatching the offensive boards. We were the superior skilled team with better shooters, but they grinded their way back into the game. It got to a stage where it was tied at 23.

I threw in John, our new recruit. I wasn’t sure what to expect but he was a revelation. Playing at centre and forward, he gave us that extra “oomph” in the middle. He was grabbing rebounds, and playing aggressive and going to the hole.

Nick also played well, with solid defense using his size a lot more effectively.

Late in the game, with a minute to play, the dream team was down 2 pts. Aaron took a huge 3 and were suddenly up 1 (41-40). It was a crazy 3. The game was so intense. I couldn’t even twitter. Even the other team was watching.

The other team then scored on the way down. We had 40 seconds left and brought the ball up. Eric had the ball and passed to Damien, who had his back turned and was not aware the ball was coming. Turnover. The other team started racing towards the halfway line and Eric fouled the other player in ball and all, wrapping him up. The opposing player reacted and the ref’s call a T (technical). It was ludicrous. Ridiculous. That’s how you foul in that situation. You have to wrap them up but they deemed it to physical.

It went to foul shots and he knocked down 1 of them. So we were down 3 points. We started fouling to stop the clock and get the ball back. We eventually did with 3 seconds and Pete was in the process of launching a full court shot and was clobbered by the other team. It should have been a foul with 3 shots!

Although we suffered a loss, it was a great game and a thriller to be a part of.

Digital dream team – where amazing happens.

Live Game Telecast

Hi Guys,

We have launched our own on line TV channel.

http://www.mogulus.com/digitaldreamteam

During the week it will loop our game highlight, feature some training videos, NBA and basketball highlights.

Each weekend we will be broadcasting the game live.

This Sunday from 7pm will be our 1st test broadcast. It will be a single camera live broadcast to test the technology and hardware infrastructure.

Please bare with us as we hay experience a couple hiccups, to friends and families back home, feel free to kick back, watch the game and live chat with us live this Sunday.

Aiming for the Corporate games 2010

I attended the Corporate Games today for basketball at Condell Park. It was pretty cool. It’s a big tournament like March Madness =)

They had 13 pools of competitors, with about 4 teams in each pool. But some of those pools were mixed and womens. So there must have been like 8 pools for Mens Only, which is about 32 teams by my estimation. Seems like too many, perhaps there was less.

Anyway, the corporate games are designed for corporations to play in different sports. Teams are charged per head for competitors e.g. basketball is $55 per person. The money raised goes towards Diabetes Australia.

I saw a couple of teams play like GE, The Professionals (real estate), St George, Oakten, and IBM. I also saw Steve Carfino play for one of the teams.  Someone commented that he was a former MVP of the NBL! Wow. I heard from Justin that he plays premier league at Sutherland. He’s put on weight since his playing days, but he’s still got game, good awareness and his shot is butter. He nailed like 2 three point attempts with ease in practice. but he couldn’t hit them during the game (missed two) and he’s still got great handles and had some great layups and defence. 

Next year, I’d like to enter a team if everyone was willing to join. We really need a deep squad to advance. Because each pool involves 3 round robin games. The best record from each pool moves onto the the next round, which is elimination (ie. knockout) style. To win it all, you’ll need to play another 3 games. In total 6 games! Each game is about 24 mins long (2 x 12min halves).

I spoke to the directors of the corporate games, Ellen Goff and another American guy. There are not pools based on skill levels e.g. one pool for highly skilled another for beginners. Rather, the better skilled teams are put into separate pools along with the crappy teams. This is to ensure that the good teams play each other as the tournament advances. Therefore the cream rises to the top and the riff-raff gets kicked out quickly.

I honestly believe our team is in with a chance. We are an above average team as we play in a proper mens comp in Alexandria. There are no corporate teams in Alexandria – they are all real ball players. This is not to say that corporate teams do not have real ball players. I’ve seen some decent corporate teams at KGV.

But I generally find that non-corporate teams are better because they can source their players from anywhere and often include guys that have played together for a while. I saw the better teams, and I know we can beat some of them. We’re definently better than the crappy teams there. They consist of guys that are too short and just don’t know how to play. The teams that advance, they usually have a couple of guys that are really good, and some other decent players that look like street ball players (i.e have not played comp before) but can still bounce a ball, pass, etc…

I’m happy with our current team, as long as we keep improving and stay together to play in the Corporate Games. I’d also like to add Justin to the squad since he plays at Sutho and we talk about basketball all the time. You know guys can play if they are obsessed with basketball like myself =)

This is my Next Digital Dream Team lineup for 2010:

• Tristan  (C/F)
• Nick  (C/F)
• Vincent  (PF)
• Matt  (F/G)
• Aaron (G)
• Damien (G)
• Justin (G)
• Pete S (G/F)
• James (G/F)
• Jamie (F)
• Ben (SG)
• Peter W (F)

You are supposed to have minimum 7 – 10 players in the tournament. I’ve included more (currently 12), including one ex-employee and a staff family member, because they play on our current team and they are good. As its 1 year away, obviously not everyone will be able to make the day due to commitments, injuries, or may have left the company.

But this is our World Cup Corporate Games 2010 train-on squad. If anyone else would like to put their hand up, more than happy to include them (e.g. Lordy, James Duthie, Brett, etc…).

By March 2010, we’ll all have in total 3 seasons of playing for the Digital Dream Team in a proper comp. Everyone will be experienced. In addition, we’ll have some regular comp players in Aaron, Pete, Damien, Justin and myself. If we add James from Melb, that’ll definently boost our chances. 

I can just see a starting lineup with Aaron, Damien at the guard position, Me and Justin at forward, Tristan at centre. Imagine me, Pete, Justin and Aaron all running the fastbreak! Vincent bringing the heat! And Nick dominating in the middle! James Li (aka Mr Sly) and Jamie giving us that energy boost off the bench. Ben drilling those outside shots! And Peter W crashing the boards. I can just see it! 

To the 2010 ‘chip!

Matthew Ho

Next Digital heats up Alexandria

Scores:
Digital Dream Team 36
Xplosive 41

The rising temperatures soared throughout the day in Sydney. Bush fires raged throughout the state of Victoria.  As the mercury rose, so did the level of Next Digital’s play in their latest match.

We had dropped down a division after last week’s hammering by 50 points. Most of us were confident that the drop down would improve our chances and the our spirits were up.

First half

We started the game with Aaron and his brother Damian at guard. At forward we had Tristan and Pete and Nick as our centre. This gave us a bigger and taller lineup, and I planned to use James and Jamie as our energy guys off the bench. The game started off really well for Next Digital, and for the first time ever (!!), were were in the lead. It was 6 -4 at one stage, and then we lead again later something like 15 – 13.

Aaron and Damian formed a pretty good combo at guard as both were good ball handlers. Damian is a bit shorter than Aaron and could handle the ball, enabling Aaron to move off the ball. We were able to use two to fast break the other team, utilising their ball handling skills and speed. Pete’s shooting was off, and he remained scoreless throughout the first half. It just wasn’t his day. Aaron gave him a pass in the low post, Pete then spun around and was open. He then shot the ball too hard off the glass as he thought the defence was behind him (but he was in the open). But it was the right idea, because when your shooting is off, you need to attack the basket in a different way.

At about 10 minutes, I made my first substitution, James in for Tristan. I wanted to keep Nick in there, because he was playing good defence. He was starting to tire, but the other team couldn’t score with him in the middle as he was clogging up the area. James replaced Tristan’s position on defence but he was bit out of position. As I have stated previously,  you have to stay in position because the zone defence is strongest when we are all in position. The team we were playing against was doing everything one-on-one, so a good zone defence would keep them out all day. As long as had people in the right position protecting their area, they would find it difficult to score against us.

I motioned to Nick, give me another 2 mins, and then I will call a timeout as I needed to give him a breather. I called timeout and the the score was 20-14. It was easily the best game we had so far. The guys were keeping up with the other team. Pete needed to keep shooting and he needed to post up more, utilising his strength and size. I thought about taking Damian off, but Pete stated that he was playing well and we needed him becuase he was a threat. Damian said he was ok, so I gave Pete a rest.

The guys were playing great defence, except sometimes one side would collapse and they would sneak in and grab some rebounds and put back. The training we had the other day with boxing out was working, as we were grabbing the rebounds. I put Pete back in with 4 minutes to go. Jamie also picked up two fouls. I don’t mind the fouls as he wasn’t letting anyone in. But you need to shuffle your feet to get in front of the defender, use less of your arms to keep them out.

It was easily the best firsthalf of the 3 games we had played so far. Our big guys were keeping them out and our guards were scoring easy baskets on the fast break. Tristan also scored a shot, and holled from the bench and I yelled out “you the man” and then Tristan gave me the basketball handsign, two fingers down indicating his shot went in for two points!

Second half

We had lot of momentum in the second half. Everything was going well and one stage it was 30 – 30. Whenever you have momentum, you dont want to change anything because everything is going right. Pete drilled a 3, he also was taking it to the ring aggressively and scored on a tough layup.

However, from a coaching perspective, you have to balance that with maintaining the energy levels of the players. Players will start to tire out,  lose their energy and you can lose the intensity. It’s hard to know when that point is. I tried to ride it out as long as I could. I called another timeout and made some fresh substitutions.

The game started getting away from us and it blew out to a 10 point lead. It was 32 -41 at one stage, but we ended up scoring the last couple of points. The score line was 36 – 41, so we only lost by 5 points, which is pretty good. Everyone was positive after the game and Pete joked “start carving the championship rings”.

I feel a lot more positive being in this division and that we can win games. We could have beat that team, if our defence and rebounding was better, and if Pete shots were dropping. But overrall it was a good game and we can build on this, particulary at training. If we can get Damian to play, and then we have Vincent coming back, we’ll have a strong team. We’ve also got Ben, Peter W, and myself coming back from various injuries.

Going forward – next week’s training

More rebounding and defence practice

Pick and roll drills – to free up the ball handler from the defence

Swinging the ball around the perimeter to find the open areas, and to shift the defence

Shooting practice  – from the elbow, FT line, at the 45 degree angle.