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.

Dream Team: Elite Athlete Diet

NB: This is a strict diet for elite athletes, this is not advice for the general public, we take no liability for misuse herein. Use all recommended product as strirtly directed by the manufacturer. Any misuse falls upon the indivudual.

As we are getting near the end of the season thought I would write a quick post to help get an edge now that I have guaged every bodies fitness levels and skill base.

Being elite level athletes we need to keep our fuel levels up, got to feed our hard bodies.

So here is my high performance dietary plan listed in detail below to be stuck to each week.

There is going to be some changes to your diet, but stick to it, support each other the results will speak for themselves.

We are warriors, just like the Spartans!

Breakfast

Toasted ham cheese and tomato sandwich from Brians’s shop on brown bread

(Brown bread is the healthy option, and get butter on both side. Butter is natural and contains twice as many pithocylistickes as artificially manufactured margarine)

X1 Can of Chilli Orange Smart Energy Drink (click to redeem a free can)

Brunch

X1 Short Black Coffee X6 Sugars

(No milk, we got to keep the fat down. Make sure you use un processed brwon sugar, white sugar has half the sugar content, the natural sugary goodness is stripped out when they bleach it white. Just like brown bred and brown rice, brown suger contains 100% goodness and is the healthy choice)

X1 Bag of Next Digital Jelly Beans

Lunch

X1 Chicken Hai Nan Laska from David’s Kitchen (extra Chilli)

X1 Can of Blueberry Smart Energy Drink (click to redeem a free can)

Afternoon Power Snack

X2 Chocolate coated Arnotts Scotch Fingers Biscuits

X1 Can of Citrus Smart Energy Drink (click to redeem a free can)

Post Work Friday Super Protein Snack

X1 Big Bite on Pitt St Lemon Pepper Chicken

X1 Bottle of Corona (no lime, it holds salt in your body and inhibits the absorbstion of the protein in the beer)

X1-2 Bowls of M&Ms, Chips or Sour Worms

NB: Feel free to sip on beers throughout the night to maximise your protein absorbtion, the big game is only two days away, you got to fuel up.

Pre Game Regime

X3 Cans of Chilli Orange Smart Energy Drink (Shot gunned, to get that caffeine into the blood fast)(click to redeem afree can)

…Now guys don’t forget to warm up on the day and stretch before the game to prevent injuries, also eat within 20 minutes post match to help your bodt recover up to 20% faster.

I reckomend a high protein Corona (no lime), or Chill Orange Smart Energy drink with a packet of ND Jelly BEans to really juice your bodies recovery.

Feel free to drop me a line with any questions.

Hoo-Raa.

Jamie Andrei

Acting  Snr. VP Dept. Head of ND Dietetics

Mily Way Galaxy, Planet Earth, Australia, NSW, Sydney.

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.

The day that champions fell

Match review: Sunday, 1 February 2009

Free Ballers 69 Next Digital 18

It was a dramatic day for sport. Tennis legend Rodger Federer faced off against his arch-nemesis, Rafael Nadal for his 14th grand slam. The Australian cricketers were also fighting to regain their #1 ranking from South Africa. No less dramatic or compelling was Digital Dream Team second basketball game against the Free Ballers.

In a day of upsets, Nadal broke Federer into tears, the Kiwis snatched victory from the Aussies with the last ball, and Next Digital was beaten convincingly on the hardwood. As Roger Federer and the Aussies found out, our opposition was too well drilled, better conditioned and alas highly skilled.

We started the game with 6 players, with Matt giving some last minute instructions to Tristan on how to play centre and telling James how to play zone. Then the backup arrived. Vincent and then Nick made a dramatic entrance at tip off to add some needed size and height.

The game did not start out well as the Digital Dream Team gave up a 13 – 0 lead. We clawed back with a layup from Pete and a few other baskets. But the Free Ballers were too much to handle as they kept beating us to the rebounds and pushing the fast break, and scoring uncontested shots.

Like a man against a tide, Aaron was our last line of defence. The points flooded in and there was not much we could do. I made a number of substitutions to no avail. Nick in for Tristan, Vincent in for James.

Personally, I don’t think any of the opposition players were that great, maybe one or two of them were ok. It’s just that the sum of their parts was much greater than ours. We’re still a fairly new team, with some guys that have only played a handful of games. Only 3 or 4 of us have played competitive basketball, and only two currently play at a competitive level (and I’m one of them and I’m injured). We don’t have many players that can handle the ball confidently other than Aaron or Pete, nor much scoring outside of those two. We were in for a long day against a well drilled and fit team.

The positives from the game were the following:

- Pete had a couple of really HUGE blocks and a couple of 3′s, drawing a couple of ooh’s and aah’s from the bench

- Aaron had a coast to coast move showing off his handle with a behind the back dribble. As Nick said to me “60 more of those and we’ll be fine”.

- Nick making his presence felt at centre.  As Tristan noted “Should I be rubbing up against guys like Nick? I can do that….Just give me the word”.

- James fighting for the ball, on his hands and knees, losing the ball to another player and then tripping the guy after he took the ball off him. That’s what we need! More aggression, less lollies.

- Most importantly, the guys remained enthusiastic throughout the game and the effort was never lacking

Going Forward

Things that we have to work on is our zone defence. We’re a bit out out of position and everyone needs to cover their area and communicate with each other. Once you let another player in, the whole thing collapses. It’s like in the movie 300, how they explain the spartan phalanx formation. We will be very difficult to score against if we can play defense like a unit. We also have to box out for the rebounds and fight for them. And contest shots. No easy baskets for the opposition.

I think on offense we also need some more options. At the moment, only Aaron and Pete are scoring. We’ll have to work on some team offense and learning how to swing the ball from side to side.

On a related note, Aaron/Pete/Matt/Vincent did some advance scouting and checked out the game on the next door. We saw half of a divison 6 game (we’re currently in divison 5), and we liked what we saw. The teams in Div 6 looked a lot less drilled and athletic. There weren’t really any tall players and I do believe that we can compete against them on a more even basis. So Aaron and I have spoken to the organisers and as a result we have moved down to Division 6.

At the moment, we’re still feeling our way around (or rubbing the opposition ala Tristan / Nick) and getting used to each other’s game and style. We can only get better.

And then we can cry when we lose our 14th championship to some young upstart.

Cheers,

Matt

Game #2 – Photos.

Good game.

Bloody hot.

Here are some pictures to go with the official report when it comes in from our professional sports correspondant.

this features feature the wolf man top right.