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.

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.