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
